Implementing CRM without ERP in Manufacturing Industry
Going back to ERP vendors pre-take over(read merger and acquisitions) era, CRM and ERP was well segregated in the usage of applications.The CRM suite usually meant marketing, sales and service applications while anything other than these was ERP applications .Few years back ,a lot of ERP vendors realized that separating these two was not giving any substantial benefit to the implementing organizations. Not to mention in lot of cases it was an opportunity lost for these vendors as customers would never think of a single product vendor for both of these applications.
CRM application alone was nothing more than a desktop(or analytical)application which defied the entire purpose of implementing CRM or ERP.
Probably the answer to the following questions will help us understand this truth which prompted lot of ERP vendors to launch single business suite(instead of CRM,ERP)
Can an organization realize the benefits of Implementing:
a.Marketing-Sales Online application without implementing order management
This can be debated at length however the bigger truth is unless the leads and opportunities convert to a visible revenue ,an organization will not realize the return on investment on such an application. Not to mention that sales analysis will be a lot better in an integrated environment than in a standalone environment
b.Quoting application without Order Management
This will unnecessarily put a load on the order entry representatives to enter the order details again in case a quote ahs been converted to an order.Not only that, it will also result in data loss in capturing as to how many quotes have been converted to order since the information is not maintained in a single system
c.Financials and Order Management without implementing customer data management
An inappropriate customer modeling will introduce issues in terms of managing credit limits for customers in Account receivables.Not only this in absence of a clean customer data(which can be achieved using customer data librarian),customer search ill become nightmarish for ERP applications
I would say that not only from product vendor's view, even the CRM implementers must take a holistic perspective (including ERP applications) while designing any system. After all, ERP is all about designing an integrated system and not a silo!
