Enterprise Resource Planning or Customer Relationship Management

ERP and CRM are two major applications found in nearly all medium to large-sized organizations.  

 

ERP systems are the large accounting and operating systems which capture most of the transactions in an organization, such as inventory control, accounts receivable, accounts payable, general ledger, human resource management (payroll, benefits), etc.  Most large organizations license ERP systems from the major ERP suppliers such as SAP and Oracle. These systems are the “back office” or “foundational” systems in most organizations, and therefore are a vital component of the services provided by IT departments to internal users.

 

CRM systems are systems at the front end of the supply chain.  CRM systems integrate customer contact points such as phone calls, email, fax, face-to-face, and internet to provide product and service information, to process orders, to collect payments, to deliver products, and to service customers before, during and after the sale.  Most large organizations license CRM systems from the major CRM suppliers such as Seibel and Convergys.  Many CRM systems are also integrated back into the ERP systems. 

 

Because these applications are large, expensive, and challenging to implement, your group should focus on only one—either ERP or CRM.

Enterprise Resource Planning

Your group might begin the presentation with size of the ERP market in terms of dollars, the promised benefits of ERP, and the potential pitfalls.   The idea is to convince the audience that the topic is important to general managers.  Next you will have to fully explain the concept of ERP:

 

From Wikipedia: “Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERPs) integrate (or attempt to integrate) all data and processes of an organization into a unified system. A typical ERP system will use multiple components of computer software and hardware to achieve the integration. A key ingredient of most ERP systems is the use of a unified database to store data for the various system modules.”

Some conceptual pictures might help, such as:

 

Source: http://www.itwales.com/cgi/showsite/images/998919Answer_BK.jpg viewed Dec 19, 2006

A 5 minute video or demo would also be a great way to explain ERP to the class!

The group might cover the revenue, profits, stock price, strategies  of major the ERP suppliers.

The meat of the presentation might  be one or two case studies of organizations that have adopted ERP and how ERP affected the organizations’ business processes. There are many ERP implementations in St. Louis companies, including Monsanto, Sigma Chemicals, Purina Mills, and Anheuser-Busch.

Provide the Company Background by including:

  • Size of company in terms of sales and profits
  • Major products the company sells
  • General characteristics of their customers
  • Organizational chart--who does the CIO report to?
  • How many people work for the IT organization?
  • What is the annual IT budget?

The ERP project case should include:

  • Project scope, time and budget estimate
  • Actual project delivery date and budget
  • Use of outside consultants
  • Changes in business processes
  • Degree of success and failure of the project
  • Lessons learned by the company

The group should end the presentation on best practices for ensuring successful ERP projects.   Are there practices unique to ERP or are the best practices the same for any large IT-enabled project we learned about in class?

If you have other creative ideas, please feel free to discuss them with me.

Customer Relationship Management

The group may begin by briefly explaining the CRM concept, presenting statistics on the dollars spent on CRM, industry leaders, and arguments why retaining and upselling to current customers is more profitable than attracting new customers.

 

Some conceptual pictures might help, such as:

 

 

Source:  http://www.dmreview.com/editorial/dmreview/199912/1999rg_004_2.gif   viewed on Dec 19, 2006

A 5 minute video or demo would also be a great way to explain the CRM to the class!

The group might cover the revenue, profits, stock price, strategies  of major the CRM suppliers.

Ideally, your presentation should include one or two case studies of organizations that have adopted CRM and how it affected the organization.

If you do a case study, provide the Company Background by including:

  • Size of company in terms of sales and profits
  • Major products the company sells
  • General characteristics of their customers
  • Organizational chart--who does the CIO report to?
  • How many people work for the IT organization?
  • What is the annual IT budget?

The CRM project case should include:

  • Project scope, time and budget estimate
  • Actual project delivery date and budget
  • Use of outside consultants
  • Changes in business processes (does the customer notice a difference?)
  • How data collected with CRM is analyzed and used
  • Degree of success and failure of the project
  • Lessons learned by the company

It would be great if we could actually see the CRM system--what do the screens look like, who uses the information captured?

The group should end the presentation on best practices for ensuring successful CRM projects.  Are there practices unique to CRM or are best practices the same as other large IT-enabled projects?

Other potential ideas for the presentation:

  • A brief overview or demonstration of CRM software (10 minutes or less)
  • Lists of companies adopting CRM
  • Issues with outsourcing CRM

If you have other creative ideas, please feel free to discuss them with me.

 

Some helpful readings:

 

Goodhue, D., Wixom, B., and Watson, H., "Realizing Business Benefits Through CRM: Hitting the Right Target in the Right Way," MIS Quarterly Executive, Vol. 1, 2, June 2002, pp. 79-94.

 

Swift, R., "Executive Response: CRM is Changing Our Eras, "  MIS Quarterly Executive, Vol. 1, 2, June 2002, pp. 95-96.