The more the merrier, this proverb might not just be true for everyone when it comes to picking the business management solution for a company. But for some, this could be just as valid as the proverb enacts. The battle of ERP vs CRM, HRM & Accounting for picking them as a single solution or not always plays a dilemma on people’s minds.

This is a confusion that if not addressed correctly might affect the overall business process in the long run.

Suppose in the beginning, you might have felt that your company wouldn’t require the service of a complete ERP solution. So you decided to get just CRM, HRM or Accounting as a separate solution. But after a few months, you started to realize that it is becoming difficult to maintain separate solutions for each department of CR, HR & Finance. What would be your next step to fix this predicament in the future?

Well, you will get all the answers to it by the time you finish reading this post.

What Does ERP, CRM, HRM, & Accounting Solution Mean in a Business

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP}

In any business setups, ERP solution works as a packaged business management application mostly utilized to boost the performance, productivity and profit growth of the company.

More essentially it is a solution that gathers data and information from different departments of the enterprise. Moreover when it comes to integrating & interpreting the key external and internal management areas of the company.

ERP blends with significant realms like sales, purchases, customer relations, human resources, manufacturing, accounting, inventory, and other relevant services in order to ease the business workflow and processes within the enterprise.

Customer Relation Management (CRM)

Largely known as specialized software, responsible for taking care of the customer and lead generating functionalities of a company. The basic purpose of the solution is to keep in touch with customers while you connect with new ones.

It basically works as a front-end tool in the office mostly used by the marketing & business development team in order to uplift the sales and profits of the company by improving the customer experience.

This is either done by enhanced targeted ads or customized deal communication from the customer information collected from its database.

Human Resource Management (HRM)

This solution deals with the welfare & management of the employee within the company through computerized software. The main purpose of it is to work as an all-in-one employee management system.

The solution mainly serves the entity of HR departments of the public or private sector. It essentially takes care of all the major divisions of human resource management like recruiting, onboarding, hiring, retaining & nurturing the qualified talent in the company using separate designated modules for each of them.

WordPress Accounting

This solution for a business mainly refers to the major financial aspect of the company to be managed through a systemized computer software. The main objective of it in business is to have a satisfying financial accounting system.

It provides the company with full control over the financial information of the business that plays a big role in the important decision making for the future. Its service in a company includes receivable and payable accounts, trial balance, payroll and more.

Many solution providers also bundle the accounting software with additional business activity related modules of services like sales order, purchase order, invoices, electronic payments, timesheet, expense, and other billing information.

Roles of ERP, CRM, HRM & Accounting as a Solution

The features of ERP, CRM, HRM & Accounting might differ from one solution provider to another. But there are some common roles that remain the same in all of them. So what are the common functionalities of them? Let’s find out in brief details below.

ERP Functions

As a comprehensive version of a complete business solution, ERP is responsible to manage a number of departments of a company at a time. There is inventory & supply chain management, customer communication & relation management, financial asset management, and lastly, it has human capital management.

In terms of inventory management, the ERP solution has the ability to produce an automated ordering process as well as early notification for the level of low stock. While for supply chain management it mainly holds the capacity to monitor quality, regulatory compliance, manufacturing, purchase orders, distribution.

Even though the single standalone solution of CRM is said to contain more advanced features to client management but there is WP ERP’s CRM module that beholds many extensive features to effective customer dealings.

Starting from client & company contact management to comprehensive customer, growth and activity report a powerful complete ERP solution nowadays covers all the basic needs of customer administration. It also allows its users to integrate with several email marketing applications to run marketing campaigns effectively.

As for account management drill, ERP solution majorly processes fixed asset management, accounts payment & receipts, general ledger as well as financial forecasting, company budget & tax calculation.

The efficient management of employees is an important part of ERP solutions. It help manages all the essential HR-related element in a company. This includes leave management, salary distribution, employee details, attendance & working hours, announcements.

Moreover, a more dynamic solution like WP ERP also allows the integration of project management tools to enable the user to manage projects more efficiently.

CRMs Functions

The standalone CRM solution deals with the advanced functionalities of client handling. This mostly includes client contact management, lead management, customer engagement tracking, retargeting & marketing campaigns management.

It enables the user to edit, update and track any customer contact information efficiently. Moreover, one can assign contacts to different team representatives and include them in different accounts. Also, the user can easily gather details of contact & company to generate a lead for the future.

In order to enhance the sales process, you can manage & access client history with this solution. The marketing team can also understand customer’s psychology and segment them to plan a remarketing program later on based on their purchasing and buying history. Moreover one can easily calculate the effectiveness of the marketing campaigns analyzing the performance of it.

Due to all the database being stored online, therefore any user within the company can get access to it from a centralized point. Data duplicity can also be reduced using its data cleaning function in order to avoid wrong insights.

HRMs Functions

The functionality of this solution involves everything related to employee management and its performance development. This also includes the job description and performance profile creation.

The management of job site along with automated qualification keyword searching is just another functionality that HRMS operates. Get a complete overview of the general info of the employee. View the details of their leave & active task log. If any company assets are registered or documents are uploaded under any employee then get complete details of it.

Get to screen and review employee information collaboratively. Moreover, automate the employee communication process and integrate with a number of useful modules to enhance functionalities. Monitor and analyze the ongoing development as well as keeping track of the overall growth of the human resource department.

Accounting Functions

It works as a basic financial accounting system for a company that provides accounting-related information mostly helpful for the future strategy-making for the business. The accounting solution enables tracking of financial data centrally within the international system of multiple languages, organizations, currencies, charts of accounts.

The solution also helps in generating general ledger, account payables & receivables of the company transaction. Also when it comes to managing the fixed asset of the enterprise the solution plays a role in maintaining acquisition, depreciation, etc.

In many solutions, the functionality also includes a financial process of legal merging of assets, financial status and earning of an association that acts as if it was for a single project. Moreover, it facilitates the opportunity to strategize the commercial parameters of the enterprise. It triggers an early alert in case the influencing factor becomes hard to identify when they become cynical and complicated to analyze.

Which One Is Ideal for Your Business

Both ERP and the single solutions of CRM, HRM & Accounting has its own purpose to serve in business. But it is also essential to understand when and why should you pick one of these solutions for your company. Otherwise, you might just regret your decision in the long run.

So in case, you are still having the trouble of understanding the suitability of choosing between getting complete ERP or its solutions separately then the following pointers that would probably help you decide better.

Choose complete ERP software as a standalone solution when

• You feel the need for an all-in-one solution to manage the medium to large enterprise with integrated CRM, HRM or Accounting in the same platform
• You want to reduce the cost of overall business process & optimize revenue
• Access to CR, HR & Accounting related information at one place is necessary
• You want a solution that centralizes both front- & back-office business processes
• A company need to consolidate the given information collected from the different functional human resource, customer management, financial department of the enterprise from its framework of integrated CRM, HRM, and Accounting

Choose CRM, HRM or Accounting as a standalone solution when

• You feel the need to use any single solution separately at a time to manage the small to medium-sized business with the company
• You want to enhance your sales, employee satisfaction, account management process individually
• A company wants its related information to be accessed using each individual solution of the separate module
• You are required to utilize the solution to conduct front office activities
• The company needs a collection of data from any single functional module of HR, CR or Accounting at a time.

Final Verdict on the Debate

Now picking from these two types of standalone solutions will mainly depend on the kind of business you are currently dealing with. Suppose your company is mainly dealing with customers and managing other resources manually or with other common methods, then even getting a standalone CRM solution would do a satisfactory job for your business management.

Same for the case of single HRM and Accounting solution. But in case your company deals with the customer, employees and its financial activity drills at the same time and wants everything in the same platform access and manage then the complete ERP solution would be the better one to go for.

One Perfect Solution for All Your Business Needs

By now, you probably got the right idea about the perks of using complete ERP against a single CRM, HRM or Accounting solution. You might still feel that having to use CRM, HRM or Accounting as a single module is the way to do it.

Being aware of that, there is a complete ERP solution called WP ERP that satisfies all your business requirements in the most prolific way possible enabling you to activate CRM, HRM or Accounting module totally separately.

In WP ERP, you can either use CRM, HRM or Accounting module individually or you can simply use & enable all of them based on your needs with just a single click. On top of that, if you are struggling to manage the timely project of your company, then you can even integrate WP Project Manager, an effective project management tool with it.

This convenience gets the people to experience complete ERP as well as any of the three major business management modules in the same solution.

Want to try Complete ERP incorporated with CRM, HRM & Accounting solution? Then…

And also, in case you are still unsure about whether your business requires the combination of CRM, HRM, and its Accounting right now on the same platform, then there is WP ERP to take care of it right away.

Now no matter even if you feel, at the moment you only require the service of CRM, HRM or Accounting at a time but also want to keep the option open for complete ERP for the future when your priority changes & business expands, then you might find WP ERP really useful & fascinating for your enterprise.

So what do you think is better to use in your business? Is it the complete ERP or CRM, HRM, & Accounting as a single solution? Do share your views on this with a comment below.