The importance of moving from a standalone software to a platform approach

Traditionally, the IT function in organisations is composed of multiple solutions. They are more or less separated and each one covers specific business processes and delivers specific functionality. That works great when your employees only use one of these sub-systems. But reality is that your staff must work with many of these solutions on a daily basis. Not to mention the problems your customers experience due to this multitude of systems. How to solve this challenge?

Over the last decades, most organisations have installed ERP and CRM systems. Some larger organisations have even installed multiple ERP and CRM systems. Different systems per division. Per country. Or per industry. Or sometimes in random order as a result of acquisitions. And while these ERP solutions help to manage the ‘back-end’ processes of the organizations, the CRM solutions cover the ‘front-end’, being the current and potential customers. Not seldom, the alignment between front-office and back-office is unsatisfactory. Not only for your employees or departments who are confronted with different technologies, different user interfaces, different logic and different access requirements. But especially for your current and future customers! After all, if the left hand of your organization has no idea what the right hand is doing, your customers and their satisfaction are at risk.

This is of course not limited to ERP and CRM solutions. Think about the (lack of) integration between these solutions and your office tools, your Point of Sale solution, your document management system or your webshop. Just to name a few examples.

While some of your customers might have worries these days on where you store their data, only very few are interested if their data is then stored in your ERP or in your CRM system. In fact, they don’t care at all! What they do care about is your ability to deliver a perfect product or service with a superb customer support and a ‘no hassle experience’.

If you are serious about becoming a customer centric organisation and strive for success in your digital transformation initiatives, you do well to move away from your current stand-alone ERP/CRM solution and transform to a platform approach. Your Microsoft partner can tell you all about that.

Contact us to find out more or read about CRM & ERP integration here >