Why an ERP-CRM?

Without being exaggerated, the ERP-CRM is the key tool for a correct business management: a tool that centralizes information and documents related to the customer.
The ERP-CRM centralizes the customer and structures the information according to the management needs of the company: it is important that the customer is the central information reference. With this premise, the ERP-CRM, not only allows a more fluid management, but ensures greater support both commercial and post-sales.
But let's see more in detail the reasons why a company should adopt an ERP-CRM for its own management.

Conduct a comprehensive business activity

The continuous transformation of the needs of the companies, requires to have always updated information to be able to satisfy, or even foresee, the needs of new customers. Managing new contacts correctly is of fundamental importance to provide support to the commercial area.

The ERP-CRM allows you to organize campaigns designed in advance and designed for different categories of potential customers: but let's call them with the correct term, the leads, the potential customers, the embryonic clients. The campaign is usually related to a series of leads, contacts and companies. The campaign can create opportunities that may or may not resolve into tangible activities. All these entities, campaign, lead, contact, company and opportunity, over time and with appropriate reports from the ERP-CRM, can give a precise picture of the commercial choices made and, possibly, be a fundamental tool for calibrating decisions.

Control of production activities

The fact of having all the centralized information, focused on the single customer and shared with the business actors, inevitably leads to having under control the productive activities that are taking place. This implies not only greater precision in the execution of tasks, but also a continuous and daily analysis of any defects in the production and / or information flow.

After-sales support

The commercial effort is very high: winning a new customer costs about six times what it costs to maintain and satisfy it once it is acquired. This figure speaks volumes about the importance of after-sales support: the ERP-CRM provides tools to open requests, directly from the customer, to support purchased products or services. Taking charge and resolving any problems in adequate time, increasingly, binds the customer to the company which, consequently, determines the loyalty.

A company that does not support the customer in the after-sales phase is almost certainly destined to lose a large part of its customers, creating discomfort and confusion about the quality and validity of the company's commercial and production capacities.

Routine operations automation

During the work day, how many repetitive tasks could be automated?
Notification of invoice issue, request for payment, taking charge of a support ticket, updating the progress of a ticket, updating the warehouse, notification of a corporate event (campaign), modification of the customer's company data, comments issued by the customer and answers from the company manager.
ERP-CRM allows customized automation for many repetitive operations, allowing operators to focus on productive activities.

Centralization and sharing of information

The rapid diffusion of ERP-CRM in business management is mainly due to the fact that it allows all information to be centralized and shared with company actors according to customizable criteria and permits. Even all the documentation, which is often in paper form, can be managed, in digital form, by the ERP-CRM, providing a fast and precise search. It is important to underline that it is possible to define in detail the access permissions to the information both with respect to the company operators and to the customer himself.

Digitization of documentation

The paper documentation has high costs both for the material itself and for the management and research. The solution is to use documents in digital format. Switching to the digital format does not necessarily require digitalizing the entire history, but simply starting to do it. It is suggested, however, to think of reorganizing the existing paper documentation, according to the same criterion of the ERP-CRM, so as to have a single search rule: the customer as the primary index.

Customization, but respecting the standards

But will ERP-CRM be able to cover "the form" of my production activities? The answer is "yes". An ERP-CRM is initially configured with the common and most widespread characteristics, but has a very high degree of customization of form and action. It is important to emphasize that an ERP-CRM has two fundamental actors: the module and the tool. The module is the customizable container of information, the tool is the application that allows the creation, modification of the module, customized too.
This way of structuring the ERP-CRM technically, allows to organize the data in a "portable" way between different ERP-CRM: if tomorrow one wants to change ERP-CRM, the migration costs would be very limited. In the evaluation of a new ERP-CRM, what must first be evaluated are the tools made available for modifying the modules, customizing them and creating ah-hoc modules.

But is it enough to have an ERP-CRM? Training, incentives, competitiveness

Obvious that "no". Bringing technology into the company thinking it is sufficient to be competitive is a mistake. Technology must be able to use it.
Training is of fundamental importance to learn the mechanisms of ERP-CRM and to become familiar. Training, like a good salary, is an incentive for the company work group, which feels enhanced and consequently brings value and strength to the company itself.
Becoming competitive, as well as having a commercial power on the market, means being at the forefront with technology and professional preparation, not only for the use of ERP-CRM.
To think that, to become competitive, we must push more and more to lower the costs of the suppliers and the salary of the employees, leads inexorably to a closed road. The commercial power is fueled by the quality of the service / product supplied, maintaining a high level of satisfaction of suppliers and employees.