Modern companies, whether small, medium or large businesses, use numerous software products in their work. These include office packages, cloud storage, website content management systems, and other equally important software.
In this article we will look at the differences between BPM, CRM and ERP systems, as well as why they are needed and how they help business.
Definitions
BPM (Business Process Management) system is a specialized software product and/or hardware-software complex that provides convenient management of enterprise business processes. Within such systems there may be auxiliary tools for activity planning, for simulation and modelling, for monitoring and analysis, as well as for quality control.
For example, our own product Projecto is a BPM system.
Alternative names for BPM systems:
BPMS — Business Process Management System,
BPMT — Business Process Management Tool.
Implementation of BPM-systems at an enterprise allows optimizing and automating business processes, as well as improving their quality and ensuring the introduction of specific numerical indicators by which activities can be evaluated.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems are software solutions or Internet services that provide effective automation of processes of interaction with clients and customers, thereby improving the quality of service.
CRM is a kind of aggregators of all possible contacts of your employees with potential or already established customers. The program controls transactions, guides the client through standard sales stages, exchanges data with other tools and software solutions for transaction support: internet telephony, chatbots, marketing and advertising mailings, CMS-systems (content management systems), etc.
The main task is to provide full control of the manager or business owner over the processes of interaction with customers.
The following tools sometimes include to the varieties of CRM-systems:
SFA-systems — Sales Force Automation,
EMM-systems — Enterprise Marketing Management,
CPM-systems — Corporate Performance Management,
EPM-systems — Enterprise Performance Management.
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems are software products and complex solutions that are responsible for the integration of production processes with resource, asset and financial management processes. The main purpose of implementing such information systems is to optimize resources and plan them properly.
The most striking example of such a product is 1C:ERP Enterprise Management.
As it is clear from the definitions, some of the functions of BPM, CRM and ERP-systems overlap, because in all three cases processes are managed: more general (BPM), with a link to sales (CRM) and with a bias to production (ERP).
But in reality, they are completely different products and their application areas are also different.
What is the difference between BPM, CRM and ERP
BPM systems are much more complex than CRM systems. The functionality of CRM-systems is built around the processes of interaction with customers, mainly communications and cheque accounting.
It turns out that CRM is a special-purpose tool for salespeople, and it is needed only to increase and automate sales, to record contacts and support transactions. Therefore, its use will be justified only in the marketing department or in the sales service.
Within the ERP systems on the market, predominantly rigid business process models are used. All of them are built around production. And production is always associated with the procurement of raw materials and supplies, planning of human resources involved in production lines, etc.
ERP systems are designed for a specific production model and allow you to effectively manage the existing processes.
Because of this architecture, the processes in ERP systems are almost static. To change something in the ERP model, the underlying business process model has to be redesigned.
However, they take into account financial transactions more efficiently and provide a more or less up-to-date picture of what is happening in terms of the distribution of available resources.
BPM systems are a more general category of enterprise software. They flexibly adapt to any type of organization and department, regardless of whether it is a sales or production department.
Here you can plan and launch automation of any business processes, tasks and projects.
But at the same time, BPM software is very weak in the field of accounting of material and financial resources. The programs help to account and distribute mainly human resources. But they set the trend and the main vector of enterprise development. While CRM and ERP systems serve this development.
Let’s summarize to help you decide what you need to implement in your company:
- BPM-systems are needed for designing such business processes as project planning, drawing up a detailed list of tasks, distributing them among employees and services, collecting reports and feedback.
- ERP-systems are needed for resource accounting (and as a consequence — for their convenient planning). They are used mainly in enterprises that have their own production line.
- CRM-systems serve sales and communication with customers. This is a specialized tool for salespeople.
So what exactly to implement? Everything! To be more precise, what you require for your company. No one forbids you to use all of the above types of systems at the same time.
If you have a sales department — give them a CRM-system. If you have your own production — use ERP. You have a lot of employees and you need a clear management system? Use BPM.
In most cases, you can set up adequate data exchange between these systems.
Not enough of these features? There are other information management systems for business: SRM (for supplier relationship management), BI (business intelligence), SCM (for supply chain management), WMS (warehouse management), PLM (product lifecycle management), EDMS (electronic document management system) and many more.
Instead of conclusions
To be fair, it should be noted that modern business automation systems have recently become very complex and often combine the functionality of several specialized systems at the same time.
Moreover, many services are moving to a cloud format and are able to integrate with popular competitor solutions. And it can be very difficult to figure out where, what, why and who is better. To make it easier to choose a BMP system, if you opt for them, we have already done a comparative analysis for you in the article ‘How to choose the best task tracker for your team’.
At the same time, additional functionality means an obligatory increase in complexity (implementation, customization, usage, etc.), which does not always lead to cost reduction and real automation, as well as other positive effects for the company.
We at Projecto concentrate our efforts mainly on one area — an enterprise project management system in the cloud.
Our approach: it is better to implement a specific pool of tasks, but do it well, than to do everything at once, while unnecessarily increasing complexity and accessibility for end users.
