ERP vs. CRM: What Is the Difference?

One way to summarize the difference between ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) is that CRM focuses exclusively on customer-facing business components. At the same time, ERP integrates all business components into one single source of truth. Both are important tools for managing your business and gaining insight into your business processes, but they represent different types of software. 

Explore ERP versus CRM, including how businesses use them and the features available in each type of software. 

What is the difference between CRM and ERP?

CRM and ERP are tools that capture and track data important to your company, but ERP is a wide-ranging solution for integrating many disparate areas of a company. At the same time, CRM focuses exclusively on the data you need to facilitate better customer experiences. Explore how these tools are similar and different and how you can use them together in an integrated platform. 

Is Salesforce a CRM or ERP?

Salesforce is a leading provider of CRM software. The company also offers ERP solutions and the ability to integrate Salesforce with data from other ERP solutions such as SAP, Oracle, and Workday.

What is ERP?

ERP, or enterprise resource planning, is software that helps organizations and companies manage their day-to-day resources, including projects, risk, accounting, projections for future needs, and supply chain operations. Including these different types of business operations in one software system makes it easier to share information and have all team members work with the same data. 

What can you use ERP for?

You can use ERP software to improve your business processes and run every department of your enterprise with more efficiency. ERP systems allow you to access real-time data to make informed business decisions, encourage your team to collaborate from a single source of truth, and streamline processes to lower your costs and make more progress toward your business goals. 

Some of the key features of ERP include: 

• Financial management: ERP software's financial and accounting features help manage accounts payable and accounts receivable and track income from different streams, integrating this data into one central location. 

• Inventory control: An ERP system can help you track inventory levels across multiple warehouses.

• Sales and marketing management: A sales management module in an ERP system can help you track sales data to optimize your marketing efforts and integrate with other departments to make it easier to track inventory changes, send invoices, and more.

• Supply chain management: ERP software that features supply chain management modules can help you optimize procurement and integrate with inventory modules for automated updates. 

• Human resources: You can track and support your staff with an ERP system, including time tracking and onboarding. 

• Business intelligence: ERP systems offer access to real-time data across all the departments you track within the system, allowing you to make data-driven decisions. 

ERP software can also include customer relationship management (CRM) as a feature or module within the program for even more integration. 

ERP examples

You can choose from many different ERP programs. Some of the top software to consider includes: 

• Oracle ERP Cloud: Oracle ERP Cloud’s features include financial management, procurement, project management, risk management and compliance, enterprise performance management, and ERP analytics.

• SAP Cloud ERP: SAP Cloud ERP offers tools for managing finance, supply chain, human resources (HR), procurement, sales, service, asset management, and manufacturing processes. 

• Microsoft Dynamics 365: Microsoft’s ERP solution features applications for sales, marketing, customer service, supply chain management, finance, and other business management. 

• QuickBooks Enterprise: QuickBook’s ERP software allows you to manage inventory management, pricing, payroll, access to cloud services, and field service management. 

What is CRM software?

CRM, or customer relationship management, software integrates all your customer information and interactions with them. Originally a tool for salespeople to manage customer data, CRM has grown into a software program with a mature suite of features to manage sales and marketing departments. 

CRM systems can help you manage customer information such as names, email addresses, other methods of contact, data about customer preferences or behavior on your website, past purchase information, and your history of communication, including sales and marketing contacts and customer support request history. 

What is CRM software used for?

CRM software allows you to gain better insights about your customers, optimize your sales activities, and provide an improved customer experience, leading to increased customer loyalty and sales. It automatically captures and logs those little details that make your customers’ experiences feel personalized to their needs and preferences. 

Some of the key features you will find in CRM software include: 

• Contact information management: CRM software stores and organizes all of your customer data, including contact information and your history of communication with the customer. 

• Automated marketing: You can use CRM software to automate marketing tasks and to draw from your customer data to personalize marketing plans to each customer. 

• Automated sales funnel: Your CRM software may include a function to automate parts of your sales activities and track where customers are on their customer journey. For example, you can set custom email campaigns that trigger during certain events, such as leaving the site with items in the cart. 

• Customer service support: CRM software can include resources to help manage customer service requests and quickly access all the information your service representatives need to provide customer support. 

• Marketing and sales analytics: CRM provides real-time analytics about customer behavior and the performance of your marketing activities so you can make better-informed decisions. 

CRM software examples

The best CRM software for your company will depend on what functionality makes the most sense for your industry. For example, you may prioritize the customer service features of CRM software, or you may require a robust CRM for sales and marketing. Some of the most well-known CRM software programs include: 

• Salesforce CRM: Salesforce CRM allows you to access features such as dynamic email marketing, built-in customer service, automation tools, sales forecasting, and a storefront builder. 

• Zoho CRM: Zoho CRM provides tools for lead management, deal management, process management, customer journey builders, analytics, and tools to support sales processes, such as a quote generator. 

• Oracle CX: Oracle CX offers marketing, sales, and service support. For example, as part of its marketing services, Oracle provides a unified system for customer data and tools for marketing automation.

• HubSpot CRM: HubSpot CRM offers solutions for sales, marketing, customer service, content development, operations, commerce, and more, as well as tools to integrate with enterprise management tools. 

• Mailchimp CRM: Mailchimp CRM can help support your marketing efforts with tools such as automation, A/B testing, lead generation, and predictive analytics.

ERP vs. CRM

ERP and CRM are both types of software you can use to optimize your business practices, but they focus on different areas. ERP is a software program with tools to manage multiple business processes in a comprehensive suite. CRM is a similar software program that allows you to access a data repository, but only regarding your sales and marketing activity, such as client information and notes on touchpoints with clients. You can also integrate your CRM into your ERP to provide a single source of truth for all your company’s data. 

Learn more about ERP and CRM on Coursera

ERP (enterprise resource management) and CRM (customer relationship management) both capture data and provide solutions for automating and improving your business operations. 

You can learn more about working with either tool on Coursera. For example, explore Salesforce CRM with the Salesforce Sales Operations Professional Certificate. In this program, you’ll have the opportunity to learn how to build reports, charts, and dashboards in Salesforce to communicate relevant information about sales performance to stakeholders and executives, as well as how to use Salesforce Sales Cloud Lightning to manage accounts, opportunities, products, quotes, and contracts.