What are OA, ERP and CRM?

OA, CRM and ERP are often mentioned in the workplace (or system name), and new colleagues who just joined the company are very confused. Baidu Encyclopedia explains them like this:

OA mainly deals with people, approval and other management-related content, which is used for internal management of enterprises. OA, English full name is Office Automation, Chinese name is Office Automation. Interpretation of Baidu: a new office way combining modern office and computer technology. There is no unified definition of office automation, and all new technologies, machines and equipment used in traditional offices belong to the field of office automation. By realizing office automation, or digital office, we can optimize the existing management organization structure, adjust the management system, increase the ability of collaborative office and strengthen the consistency of decision-making on the basis of improving efficiency.

CRM is mainly centered on "customers" and is used to manage customers and orders. CRM system, full name of customer relationship management system in English, full name of customer relationship management system in Chinese. Baidu Interpretation: Use software, hardware and network technology to establish an information system for enterprises to collect, manage, analyze and utilize customer information. It takes the management of customer data as the core, records all kinds of interactions between enterprises and customers in the process of marketing and sales, as well as the status of various related activities, and provides various data models to support later analysis and decision-making.

ERP focuses on the systematic management of internal business processes, realizes internal information sharing, and pays more attention to R and resources. ERP system, the full name of English is Enterprise Resource Planning, refers to a management platform based on information technology, integrating information technology and advanced management ideas, and providing decision-making means for enterprise employees and decision makers with systematic management ideas. It is a new generation of integrated management information system developed from MRP (Material Requirements Planning), which expands the functions of MRP and its core idea is supply chain management. It jumps out of the traditional enterprise boundary, optimizes enterprise resources from the scope of supply chain, optimizes the operation mode of modern enterprises, and embodies the market's requirements for enterprises to allocate resources reasonably. It plays an important role in improving business processes and enhancing the core competitiveness of enterprises.

The relationship between OA, CRM and ERP As a production system, ERP provides goods and supply chain support for the data warehouse in CRM. The analysis results of CRM and the forecast of market development will provide decision-making data for ERP system; The approval required by ERP, CRM and other systems can be handled through OA system. Therefore, although the three have different emphases, they are interrelated.

The following is an example to promote the sales of sub-lines, which Cheng doesn't understand. Joe is going to visit Ken, a client. He filled out a business trip application in OA and sent it to the supervisor Ben for approval. Apply for transfer to financial Anna, and record the corresponding funds in the system; This application was also transferred to Fanny, the human resources department, and recorded in the sales attendance. Joe created a sales lead for Ken's business card in CRM system, constantly updated the status in subsequent customer maintenance, and associated the final result approved in OA with Ken. If the visit is successful and the order is placed, the order will be transferred from the system to ERP, and the production department will arrange the production plan. After receiving the order amount, financial Anna will input the received money into ERP and arrange for the products to leave the warehouse. To sum up, it is difficult to complete all the business processes of an enterprise by a single system. If one of them breaks away from the offline (paper version record) process of the system, not only the circulation time will become longer, but also the workload of employees will increase to a certain extent. This is why the better the company is managed, the higher the degree of system application.