Anjneyulu Gangishetty: not importent

January 26, 2010 by Deepanshu Mehta

In this section you will first learn what Siebel is and then how to get started on developing Siebel.

It is very important to understand as to why many industries need Application software like Siebel. Many companies have simplified their business processes by using Siebel. So we will first start with learning what Siebel is about, then we will follow the process of installing it, then the implementation and the data model.

Siebel CTI provides integrated inbound, outbound, and transfer call routing based on comprehensive information about the customer, agent, channels, and service level agreements, ensuring optimal productivity for each customer interaction. Siebel CTI helps decrease call times and improve customer intimacy. It supports off-the-shelf integration with popular CTI middleware providers to provide integrated call handling, call tracking, and automated screen pop capabilities with a broad variety of Automated Call Distributors (ACDs). Siebel CTI includes Siebel Adaptive Communications API, a framework that supports the ability for middleware vendors, systems integrators, consultants, and customers to integrate additional third-party middleware applications and leverage the features of Siebel CTI.

Product Requirements Siebel CTI does not include any Siebel developed Adaptive Communications API drivers. The customer may purchase Siebel CTI Connect, which includes the Siebel developed, tested, and validated Adaptive Communications API driver and CTI middleware server software.

Siebel SmartScript and CTI Siebel SmartScript accelerates agent effectiveness with a workflow-based, dynamically generated user interface that helps guide every interaction with a customer. Siebel SmartScript can be invoked automatically several ways, such as based upon business rules, through screen pops, by Siebel CTI, or programmatically. By providing agents with a complete set of call script tailored to their customers needs, businesses ensure the quality of calls, prevent data-entry errors, and reduce training times.

Siebel Communications Server Siebel Communications Server is modules that supports communications features for Siebel Call Center, Siebel Email Response, and other Siebel Business Applications.

Communications channels supported for Siebel Business Applications include voice, email, Web collaboration (including Web chat and voice-over-IP), fax, page, and wireless message. This section describes email server, fax server, and CTI middleware support for Siebel Communications Server, and email server support for Siebel Email Manager.

The following modules or features use the infrastructure provided by Siebel Communications Server (communications drivers and profiles, communications templates, and Communications Outbound Manager and Communications Inbound Manager server components) to send outbound email, fax, or other types of messages, or to receive inbound email and inbound wireless messages:

1. Send Email (outbound email)

2. Send Fax (outbound fax)

3. Send Wireless Message (outbound wireless message)

4. Siebel eMarketing (outbound email, fax)

5. Communication requests (outbound email, fax, page, wireless message)

6. Siebel Workflow (outbound email, fax, page, outbound and inbound wireless message)

7. Siebel Email Response (inbound and outbound email)

8. Siebel Wireless Messaging (enables SMS and other message formats)

The following modules or features use or extend the infrastructure provided by Siebel Communications Server (communications drivers and profiles, and Communications Session Manager server component) to support agents using the communications toolbar for the voice, email, or Web collaboration channels:

1. Siebel CTI

2. Siebel CTI Connect

3. Siebel Universal Queuing

4. Siebel Email Response

Siebel CTI Connect server (based on Dialogic CTI middleware modules) runs on Microsoft Windows 2000 & Windows 2003 Server/Advanced Server (CTI refers to computer telephony integration). When you are using Siebel CTI with Siebel CTI Connect, any application server machines running.

Siebel Server with Communications Server components that support Siebel CTI must also run on Microsoft Windows 2000/2003 Server/Advanced Server.

Posted by Zidni Agni at 9:32 PM 0 comments

Labels: Siebel CRM, Siebel CRM On Demand, Siebel CTI

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

What is Siebel CTI?

CTI is stands for Computer Telephony Integration. Basically CTI is call routing based on customer profile in the related software, usually the CTI will display screen pop-up with customer information in the application user interface. CTI also used as controlled call transfers with customer data, campaigns, predictive dialing and call blending.

Siebel CRM Software integrates the CRM Siebel Web Client with the CTI middleware and the telephone switch through the Siebel Communications Server infrastructure. Siebel CTI enables an integrated context sensitive “softphone” application. The telephone switch provides notification of telephony events through the CTI middleware to the Siebel Communications Server. Then, the Siebel user interacts with the telephone system with the Siebel Web Client.

Siebel CRM Software gives a validated out-of-the-box integration with Siebel CTI Connect for telephony switch manufacturers, such as Avaya, Nortel Networks and Siemens. Siebel CTI also gives the Siebel Adaptive Communications API programming layer. Siebel CTI may be used with all Siebel eBusiness base applications.

Siebel CTI Features

Multi-channel Communications Toolbar, agents may be associated with multiple Communications configurations and multiple ACD queues. Better hold/resume support for Multiple Lines, enhanced Not Ready provides the ability to select Reason Codes. Communications elements may be routed by an intelligent queuing engine such as Siebel Universal Queuing. Zero-Install, Highly Interactive Web Client. Unified Communications Control, Persistent Customer Dashboard, Global Time Zone, Search Center, Audit Trail and SmartScript Enhancements.

Posted by Zidni Agni at 4:34 AM 0 comments

Labels: CRM Siebel, Siebel CRM, Siebel CTI

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Siebel CRM On Demand vs Salesforce.com

Nowadays, the cloud computing had becoming new trend in the CRM software market, starts with salesforce.com and followed by Siebel CRM On Demand. Siebel CRM On Demand it self is a new software developed by the Siebel based on the original Siebel CRM Software that already lead the CRM market in the world. So, what is exactly the Siebel CRM On Demand? we take this from the www.exforsys.com,

Siebel CRM OnDemand is an innovative, low-risk, flexible, hosted customer relationship management (CRM) solution brought you by the company that invented CRM –Siebel Systems.

With Siebel CRM OnDemand, you can you can easily evolve your customer relationship strategy using the industry’s premier CRM solution – with little or no up-front IT investment. More robust deployments can take advantage of Siebel’s extensive services offerings – based on leading CRM best practices — to assist with custom implementation and integration requirements.

The result is that Siebel CRM OnDemand provides businesses of all shapes and sizes with a centralized repository of customer data and a real-time snapshot of all customer interactions. So no matter what your CRM requirements are, Siebel CRM OnDemand accelerates business value and lowers overall Total Cost of Ownership.

This is quite same with the salesforce.com main service,

Sales force automation (SFA) software is a type of program that automates business tasks such as inventory control, sales processing, and tracking of customer interactions, as well as analyzing sales forecasts and performance. Businesses may have a custom version developed specifically for their needs, or choose from among the increasing number of sales automation software products, such as Interact Commerce's ACT! and GoldMine Software's GoldMine. Sales automation software is sometimes called sales automation software software, and sometimes called customer relations management ( CRM ) software.

SFA packages typically include a Web-ready database, an e-mail package, and customizable template s. A three-tiered architecture is typically used to separate the database, server, and application to reduce programming demands on clients. A module-based design is generally used, to allow users to customize the package to suit their needs.

Posted by Zidni Agni at 6:47 PM 0 comments

Labels: Cloud Computing CRM, Siebel CRM, Siebel CRM On Demand

Partner Applications Module in Siebel CRM 7

Siebel Partner Portal

Robust web application enabling partner users to access critical information and tools to transact business with the brand owner (vendor) and common customers. Siebel Partner Portal provides a comprehensive, web-based partner portal designed to support all partner activities. The Siebel Partner Portal allows partners to access critical information and tools necessary to transact business with the brand owner and their customers.

Siebel Partner Commerce

Commerce add-on to Siebel Partner Portal enables partners to access critical information and tools to transact business with the brand owner (vendor) and common customers.

Siebel Reports for Partners

The Siebel Reports allows partners to schedule, run in batch and interactive modes, and distribute reports using an easy to use and intuitive user interface. Partner users can choose to queue reports to run periodically at a pre-determined time, or to better utilize computing resources by having particularly long reports run at off-peak times. They may also share the reports within the organization and with external organizations.

Siebel SmartScript for Partners

Siebel SmartScript for Partners gives partners a way of walking through structured questions to arrive at answers.

Posted by Zidni Agni at 6:31 PM 0 comments

Labels: Partner Module, Siebel CRM, Siebel CRM On Demand, Siebel CRM Service Modules

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Siebel Reports for Partners

Intended Audience:

Sales organization employees, call center employees, field sales and service employees, channel partners, channel managers, purchasing department, and management.

Unit of Measure: Registered User

Product Description:

Product Requirements, Restrictions and Dependencies

• Siebel Reports is required for the Web Client users. Pricing Requirements

• Siebel Reports is an integration of Actuate eReporting Server, which is a royalty bearing third-party product. Therefore, this product may not be discounted more than 80%.

• Can only be sold with Siebel Partner Portal

Key Functionality

• Generate and view pre-built reports interactively from Siebel Application views. Run reports interactively or schedule them to run at off-peak times. Users can access reports via the web browser and grant others permission to view. The report viewer supports navigation, search, and email functions. Administrative users may create new reports and customize pre-built reports.

Posted by Zidni Agni at 6:42 PM 0 comments

Labels: Siebel CRM, Siebel Reports for Partners

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Siebel SmartScript for Partners

Intended Audience:

Partner Sales, Service and Marketing representatives

Unit of Measure: Registered User

Product Description:

Siebel SmartScript for Partners gives partners a way of walking through structured questions to arrive at answers. By providing partners with a complete set of script tailored to specific situations, businesses ensure the quality of data capture, prevent data-entry errors, and reduce training times.

Product Requirements, Restrictions and Dependencies

This partner options requires, at a minimum, one license of the corresponding “Named User” (i.e., employee-facing) program for administration and set-up of the partner-facing programs. For example, if the customer licenses Siebel SmartScript for Partners, then the customer must license at least one Named User of Siebel SmartScript.

Posted by Zidni Agni at 6:43 PM 0 comments

Labels: Siebel CRM, Siebel SmartScript, Siebel SmartScript for Partners

Friday, July 31, 2009

Siebel Partner Portal

Intended Audience:

Partner users, employed by partner: Partner Sales agents / managers, Partner Marketing agents / managers, Partner Service agents / managers, Partner Alliance managers

Product Description:

Robust web application enabling partner users to access critical information and tools to transact business with the brand owner (vendor) and common customers. Users are partner, broker, dealer, agent, distributor, reseller or OEM employees.

Siebel Partner Portal provides a comprehensive, web-based partner portal designed to support all partner activities. The Siebel Partner Portal allows partners to access critical information and tools necessary to transact business with the brand owner and their customers.

Siebel Partner Portal enables channel partners to conduct business effectively with their brand owner organizations by providing out-of-the-box functionality for real time information sharing, such as news and message updates, and access to relevant literature, along with comprehensive set of collaborative tools for market development funds management, opportunity and account management, eCommerce selling tools (optional modules) and service request management. Siebel Partner Portal provides partners with an intuitive, easy-to-use, web-based interface to communicate, collaborate, and conduct business effectively with its brand owner organization.

Designed to work in collaboration with Siebel Partner Manager, commerce and order management functionality are extended with Siebel Partner Commerce.

Product Requirements, Restrictions and Dependencies

• Requires, at a minimum, of one Partner Manager license.

Key Functionality

Siebel Partner Portal includes the following:

• Browse the anonymous partner portal as an unregistered user

• Partner recruitment and registration

• CHAMP joint planning with brand owner

• Self and company profiling

• Manage Activities

• Track and manage certifications

• Register as individual or register as a company

• Browse and download marketing and product content through information catalog

• Receive news and personalized partner messages

• Receive web/email offers and eNewsletters (Requires Siebel WebMarketing)

• Generate reports and charts (Requires Siebel Report Server)

• Track account, competitor, industry news and product information (Requires Siebel Briefings)

• Manage accounts and opportunities

• Create quotes (Requires Siebel Partner Commerce)

• Place orders (Requires Siebel Partner Commerce)

• Log service requests

• Submit MDF requests

• Search and find partners - for customers or other partners

• Add and manage user accounts

• Shop for self or on behalf of customer (Requires Siebel Partner Commerce)

• Personalized pricing (Requires Siebel Dynamic Pricing)

• Online training (Requires Siebel Training)

Posted by Zidni Agni at 6:40 PM 0 comments

Labels: Siebel CRM, Siebel Partner Portal

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Siebel Partner Commerce

Intended Audience:

Partner Sales Agent, Partner Sales Manager

Unit of Measure: Registered User

Product Description:

Commerce add-on to Siebel Partner Portal enables partners to access critical information and tools to transact business with the brand owner (vendor) and common customers. Users are partner, reseller, dealer, distributor, broker, reseller or OEM employees. The Partner Commerce add-on module provides rich online commerce capabilities to partners, including product catalog, shopping cart, quotes and orders.

Product Requirements, Restrictions and Dependencies

• Requires Siebel Partner Portal

• Siebel Partner Commerce requires, at a minimum, one Named User license of Siebel Quotes & Order Capture for administration and set-up of the partner-facing programs.

Key Functionality

Siebel Commerce includes:

• Allows partners to shop for themselves or on behalf of end customers

• Multimedia catalog and online-ordering

• Distributed catalog administration

• Shopping cart, quotes and orders

• Integrated product and pricing configuration available (requires optional Siebel Configurator Runtime and Siebel Dynamic Pricer)

• Product comparisons

• Customizable checkout process

• Shipping and tax calculations

3)What is Siebel CTI?

Siebel CTI Features

4)Siebel CRM Marketing Automation module:

Siebel CRM Marketing Automation, Professional Edition provides the campaign management, customer management and marketing communications functionality that small and midsized businesses need to promote and market their products and services. Users can design and manage outbound campaigns through direct sales, call centers, and channel partners. Siebel CRM, Marketing Edition also provides list management capabilities to develop internal lists and load external list files and prospect management with promotion of prospects to contacts. Siebel Marketing's response management enables marketers to track customer responses and evaluate campaign effectiveness.

Siebel CRM Marketing Automation, Professional Edition includes the following modules:

• Marketing (including Campaigns)

• Marketing Resource Manager (best practices and automation of a marketing department’s planning tasks; includes Project Management and Collaboration for Marketing teams and Marketing Calendar functionality – see entry in General Options section of this document for more information on this module.)

• Marketing Development Funds (functionality to automate the creation, management and administration of marketing development funds for partners – see MDF entry in General Options section of this document for more information on this module.)

Users

Marketing personnel in small and midsized companies

Key Functionality

• Campaigns (Functionality to create and manage marketing campaigns and monitor associated details)

• Executive Information System (pre-built charts for Opportunities, Accounts, Contacts)

• Accounts

• Activities

• Contacts

• Literature

• Products (basic product catalog with pricing)

• Notes and Attachments

• Advanced Search (adv. search algorithms including term proximity, word stemming, term inflection, etc.)

• Anywhere (software tools to streamline and automate management of Remote Client)

• Assignment Manager (configurable rules engine to automate assignment of leads and opportunities)

• Audit Trail (logging capabilities to maintain a history of changes made to Siebel records)

• EAI (interfaces for enabling real time integration of Siebel to 3rd party systems)

• Remote Client (fully functional disconnected client)

• Reports and Reports Server (library of pre-built reports and report scheduling and generation)

• Sync (client-based synchronization of Activities, Calendar and Contacts to Outlook, Notes and Palm)

• Workflow (configurable workflow engine to automate execution of business processes)

• Siebel Server Sync for Exchange

• Siebel Encyclopedia

Posted by Zidni Agni at 9:32 PM 0 comments

Labels: Siebel CRM Main Modules, Siebel CRM Marketing Modules, Siebel Marketing Automation Modules

Siebel CRM Main Modules

Siebel CRM Systems as main player in CRM Industry provides basic modules generally used in the CRM industry. Such modules involves general business process in CRM. Those modules are:

Siebel Sales Module

Siebel CRM Sales Module provides up-to-the-moment, proactive intelligence to maximize sales revenue. With Siebel CRM Sales all levels of the selling organization can access the facts required to confidently pinpoint problems and deploy resources. Siebel CRM Sales allows managers to monitor sales pipelines and evaluate the performance of the entire sales distribution network. Siebel CRM Sales enables sales professionals to identify critical trends in sales cycle length, win rates, discounting, and competitive engagement. This level of visibility is vital to any organization deploying a high-performing sales force.

Siebel Marketing Automation Module

Siebel CRM Marketing Automation Module provides the campaign management, customer management and marketing communications functionality. Users can design and manage outbound campaigns through direct sales, call centers, and channel partners. Siebel CRM Marketing also provides list management capabilities to develop internal lists and load external list files and prospect management with promotion of prospects to contacts. Siebel Marketing's response management enables marketers to track customer responses and evaluate campaign effectiveness.

Siebel Service Module

Siebel CRM Service module enable customer agents interact quickly and consistently across a broad range of communication channels, such as telephone, email, fax, and page. Service representatives become productive faster, supporting a broader range of products and services, resulting in higher satisfaction levels in each customer interaction.

5)Siebel CRM Service module:

Siebel CRM Service, Professional Edition enables service agents of small and midsized companies to solve customer problems in a highly efficient and effective manner with comprehensive service request and solution management, as well as asset tracking. Complete customer service is made possible with integrated account and contact management. Powerful workflow technology helps managers track and improve service performance trends, resulting in greater customer satisfaction and loyalty.

With Siebel CRM Service, Professional Edition, customer agents interact quickly and consistently across a broad range of communication channels, such as telephone, email, fax, and page. Service representatives become productive faster, supporting a broader range of products and services, resulting in higher satisfaction levels in each customer interaction.

Users

Service agents and support professionals in small and midsized companies

Key Functionality

• Service Requests

• Service Assistant (activity plan templates for Service Requests)

• Executive Information System (pre-built charts for Service Requests, Accounts, Contacts)

• Accounts

• Activities

• Contacts

• Literature

• Products (basic product catalog with pricing)

• Notes and Attachments

• Advanced Search (adv. search algorithms including term proximity, word stemming, term inflection, etc.)

• Anywhere (software tools to streamline and automate management of Remote Client)

• Assignment Manager (configurable rules engine to automate assignment of leads and opportunities)

• Audit Trail (logging capabilities to maintain a history of changes made to Siebel records)

• EAI (interfaces for enabling real time integration of Siebel to 3rd party systems)

• Remote Client (fully functional disconnected client)

• Reports and Reports Server (library of pre-built reports and report scheduling and generation)

• Sync (client-based synchronization of Activities, Calendar and Contacts to Outlook, Notes and Palm)

• Workflow (configurable workflow engine to automate execution of business processes)

• Siebel Server Sync for Exchange

• Siebel Encyclopedia

Posted by Zidni Agni

6)benifits of crm software:

Every business has customers, which is why every business needs a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. At its core, CRM involves three basic steps: finding and developing customer relationships, keeping customers happy, and growing these relationships to enhance your business profitability.

It is imperative to a businesses success to know your customer and cultivate a loyalty to your product/service. CRM allows you to do this through its unique features and components that can help your business become more responsive to your customer's needs. CRM helps organizations of all sizes, within all industries to build more fruitful, productive relationships with current customers, and forge relationships with new ones. With CRM, you can quickly centralize customer information and streamline business processes with a solution that offers unmatched user adoption and business productivity.

Since the mid-1990s, businesses, government and other large organizations have poured billions of dollars into implementing customer management systems, such as Siebel, in hopes of achieving a 360 view of the customer, and driving profits through stronger customer relationships. Many customers found that the systems were difficult to

deploy, and once deployed, were di

8)differce between CRM & ERP

by admin

ERP and CRM are 2 more terms that often get attached to some very vague concepts.

If you’ve tried to look up information on this topic, you might’ve found a flood of very benefit-focused sales material that intentionally stays away the specifics. This can make it difficult for a non-technical person to clearly understand these concepts.

Increase Sales Reduce Costs

In the simplest terms, ERP and CRM are very similar, but suited to different purposes. They are both applications that allow employees to share and coordinate information throughout the organization… while also giving executives access to reports and forecasts based on the data collected within these systems.

The way I see it, companies can only grow their profits in 2 ways:

• Increase sales

• Reduce costs

These can be thought of as 2 opposing forces, requiring 2 completely different strategies. For this reason, it would make sense for organizations to manage these 2 forces separately:

Customers and sales can be managed via a Customer Relationship Management system (CRM)

Employees and productivity can be managed via an Enterprise Resource Planning system (ERP)

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Most newer or growing businesses are simple enough that they don’t need an enterprise-wide set of integrated systems to manage their workflow. For them, the REAL challenge is getting those first customers and proving the business model.

However, since customer acquisition is a substantial cost center early on, there is definitely value to be gained in having a single system that combines Marketing, Sales, Contact Management and Customer Support.

When you combine these areas of the business, you keep a high-level view on the progress of your marketing activities and locate areas for improvement.

A good CRM should also help you forecast revenue by tracking the progress of your pipeline.

Many modern CRM systems even provide marketing and sales automaton functions, such as automated email.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

Once a company has achieved critical mass, they reach a point where cutting waste becomes a more effective revenue-generation method than increasing sales. (It’s easier to cut costs by 5% than to increase sales by 5%)

Another challenge presented by growth is lack of organization which can lead to expensive errors and poor customer satisfaction.

This is usually the point when a company will start looking into an ERP system.

ERP software has been around for quite a while. But they’ve mostly been the domain of larger, established companies. Earlier systems were strictly focused on operational areas of the company such as Finance, HR, Manufacturing and Order Management.

ERP systems help to standardize business processes, ensuring that information remains structured and useful. This is critical when you have 5 different departments – each with 10 employees – all generating business data.

Using ERP, employees across the organization can find, store and share information from a centralized repository. This ensures more efficient processes and workflow with fewer errors, while eliminating the need to transfer, re-enter or duplicate data.

For executives and management, ERP systems can give clear insight into the state of the organization, and assist them in locating opportunities for efficiency and productivity improvements. This is where the REAL value of ERP can deliver, by helping drive corporate strategy.

Although ERP – in the traditional sense – has usually been thought of in the context of internal operational processes, modern systems have also crossed over into other areas such as those traditionally covered by CRM system. Some ERP components are even designed to integrate with external entities such as suppliers and banks.

Hopefully, this overview has been helpful in showing the difference between ERP and CRM. In future posts, I’ll try to dig down a bit further and give a bit more insight into these concepts.

9)diff b/n CRM & ERP

For an entrepreneur who is planning to expand, these terms often trouble him. They seem to require a great deal of software knowledge which, I believe, majority of entrepreneurs (especially non-IT folks) won’t have. More than entrepreneurs, students in B-Schools lose the bigger picture and take ERP as a painful punishment.

“What is ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and how are they different? Is there any relation between them? How are they useful to my business and should I implement them?”

if you are a consultant, these might sound very familiar statements. If you are not a consultant then believe you me, any business owner would have these questions in mind.

Let’s talk the layman language…

Consider this; when you send a courier through any logistics company like DHL, FedEx, DTDC etc they give you a receipt with an alphanumeric code on it. You can then log on to their website and track the delivery status of your parcel to the destination with the given code. You can precisely track as in which city has your parcel reached, is it in air cargo, or delivered to destination. How is it possible?

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)

Plans the resources of an organization and hence is Organization-oriented. This is a software tool to keep a track of various departments of an organization at a central database. With expansion of a business, an owner’s biggest concern is to manage the chaos happening around and this gives a complete picture of what’s happening. It’s a multi-module tool that maintains information about finance, accounting, procurement, inventory, payments, delivery, support, payroll, human resource, and the list is endless.

erp crm differences The differences between ERP and CRM

[source]

Consider it as a crystal ball in the hands of each department that is transparent and gives information about other departments and business as a whole. You ask a question and ERP gives you an answer. Of course, this doesn’t happen by its own; each individual adds his own piece of information in bits and slowly becomes immense pool of information for the business.

You handover the parcel to the shop owner, he enters the details into his ERP-UI at his desktop along with the tracking code. The moment parcels of the day are loaded on to the truck, the shop owner changes the status of all parcels accordingly and the process is followed each time.

Information about the payment received from customer goes to the finance department, which also captures other information like cost to company, salaries due and other operations costs. If it’s a manufacturing company, information of procurement and production are also captured by respective departments. For the time being, you may call this, capturing of this information at all levels and analysing it later for business benefits, as “Analytics”.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

In my previous articles we learnt about CRM, you must check them out here and here; they are probably easiest definitions! CRM is Customer-oriented and managed by marketing and sales department which often represents organization to the world. Just like ERP manages information inside organization, CRM manages information about existing and potential customers so as to build better relations with them.

The objective of CRM is to make marketing and sales department capture maximum information about customers to offer them better deals and maintain relations by understanding their needs.

ERP vs CRM

Is there a connection between the two? Definitely yes! They do have a little overlap in the operations. Moreover, a CRM can be clubbed with ERP at the central database level and both can interact easily.

Maintaining leads via website is an integral part of CRM. An online store of any product needs to interact with inventory management module of ERP to check the availability of a product before it is displayed on the website. Along with this, the supply chain module should interact with CRM so that customers can be promised a specific delivery date and time.

Not every B2C business model can keep detailed information about its customers. Therefore, a provision is made where you enter your courier code through website; it interacts with concerned ERP module and gives you desired information about delivery status of parcel. To bring a smile on customers face, CRM can shoot mails to customers informing them about confirmed delivery along with name of the person who received it.

With time, CRM is becoming a vital part of ERP, which was not true until early years of this decade. However, the requirements and possibilities of implementation depend from business to business. If you (or your IT department) are smart enough, you can tweak the model of the combination favouring your business.

10)dif b/t ERP AND CRM

Companies competing in the marketplace today rely on key tools to streamline processes and provide the necessary visibility and control to maintain a competitive advantage. These tools include both enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) software. While both platforms rely on some of the same information to deliver value within your environment, their respective roles are actually very different. Integration between CRM and ERP software is essential, but a clear understanding of what you should expect from each platform is critical to overall success.

ERP Software – the Nitty Gritty

ERP software offers a platform to enable companies to more effectively manage accounting processes, warehouse functions, supply chain activities, inventory control and more within one platform. Integrated ERP software ensures all key employees can update the platform in real-time with information important to other departments within the company. If a shortage is encountered in the supply chain that will slow distribution on the warehouse floor, ERP software will capture this issue. Robust ERP software provides a clear and accurate picture of where your company stands at any given point in time, providing all necessary information across all departments.

CRM Software

CRM software fulfills a much different role within the enterprise as compared with ERP software. CRM is focused on customer management – capturing information pertaining to a customer account. That information is used by sales reps to schedule follow-up activities and close sales; managers to forecast sales to C-level executives; warehouse managers for supply chain efficiency; and even accounting personnel to update the customer’s account. Every interaction between the company and the customer should be captured in the CRM software to build out the value of the relationship between the customer and the company, securing loyalty and additional revenue.

ERP Software and CRM Software – the Integrated Approach

As both ERP software and CRM software manage information important to your company, it stands to reason that they may be easily confused. Understanding the value they deliver when integrated, however, can ensure you get an optimal return on your investment in both platforms. Consider the sales rep ready to close a multimillion dollar deal with one of your biggest clients. If he has failed to leverage either CRM or ERP software in managing this deal, your company could very easily fail to meet delivery demand and lose the business. When the deal is properly forecasted and managed in the CRM platform, the necessary information on the account is captured in the ERP software.

ERP Software – Clear Visibility with Integration

The clear integration between CRM and ERP software provides the necessary visibility to ensure you can meet customer expectations, while also staying in line with internal goals. Your accounting department can determine if you have the funds available to secure the necessary supplies, your inventory manager will measure his current stock against your projections and your warehouse manager will determine if he can meet the customer’s delivery expectations. If challenges are presented, the sales rep can be notified ahead of time, closing the deal with all necessary information.

This integration is often an easy next step as the same companies that offer CRM platforms also offer ERP software. Companies such as SAP, NetSuite, Oracle, Sage and Microsoft Dynamics deliver clean integration and value-based ERP software to ensure you can track the information you need to track, and provide access to those who need it to make clear business decisions. ERP software clearly ties together all information pertaining to your supply chain, warehouse, accounting and inventory into one platform for optimal business performance.

Anjneyulu Gangishetty

Sunday, October 30, 2011

not importent

No comments:

Post a Comment