What Are The Differences Between ERP And CRM

The world of new technologies, and specifically that of ICTs applied to business, has evolved very rapidly in recent years, with many tools available to companies, all of which are focused on improving efficiency in any of the processes that take place in a company.

Among the most important tools that can be found are the ERP and the CRM, two ICT solutions that have proven more than enough to be of great use to those organizations that have them and that are not only software but that start from being true business strategies (as is the case of CRM) .

What is a CRM?

We generally refer to a CRM as software focused on improving customer relationship management ( Customer Relationship Management ). Thus, a CRM serves to have as much information as possible about all our clients, thereby facilitating their segmentation, which is very useful for designing effective sales and marketing campaigns.

What is an ERP?

For its part, ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning, which translated means Enterprise Resource Planning. In this sense, the ERP is a system that manages a large volume of information and allows standardizing and automating a large part of the company’s operational, economic, and administrative processes.

Thus, the main characteristic of the ERP is the philosophy of single data, integrating all the processes in a single tool and avoiding the duplication of information in the different business areas.

Differences between CRM and ERP

Purpose

Knowing this, the differences between CRM and ERP are pretty broad. The main one of all of them is its purpose. While the CRM is focused on improving management and customer relations, with the ERP, we will support the management of different processes in the company ( production, maintenance, human resources, billing, accounting, etc. ).

Modules

From these differences, all the others are articulated. To begin with, an ERP is made up of different modules that support the different areas of the company.

The CRM can contain different modules but is always focused on customer management, marketing, or sales.

Size of the company that uses it

We must also comment that CRM can be easily adapted to companies of any size, while an ERP is mainly focused on medium and large companies.

Implementation and costs

The implementation of these tools in the company is different. CRM is easier to implement. For its part, the ERP poses more difficulties, as it integrates other areas. For the same reasons, the costs of an ERP are also higher.