Category Blog

While consumer electronics garners the lion’s share of people’s attention for its role in revolutionising humankind, its less glamorous sibling, enterprise IT, has somewhat played the role of the unsung hero in enabling companies to produce products and services for us to devour. Enterprise resource planning (ERP), and customer relationship management (CRM) systems are two solutions that lie at the heart of successful business operations.

While CRM solutions focus on how consumers engage with a business, chronicling and keeping a record of their journey from potential leads to becoming customers, ERP systems provide companies with a central database from which they can derive data about matters that keep the business ticking.

CRM traces its origins to sales force automation (SFA), popular in the 1990s as a database that housed customer information for sales and marketing purposes. Meanwhile, the ERP has its roots in the materials requirements planning (MRP) systems, which was focused more on the manufacturing industry.

Present-day ERP systems come with sophisticated financial automation solutions that help businesses operate efficiently and increase productivity, resulting in higher profitability. While cloud ERP systems come equipped with their own CRM solutions, the latter is a standalone system that can be integrated with the former.

Cloud ERP systems in the market currently offer companies unprecedented visibility of their business processes. Meanwhile, the standalone nature of CRM systems, while offering companies a consolidated view of their customers, often lack the visibility associated with cloud ERP systems.

The advent of the digital age has seen CRM and ERP evolve into systems that have become more than the sum of their parts. Below we examine the differences between CRM and ERP and how businesses can benefit from having one or both systems to help their operations.

CRM

Present-day cloud CRM systems can be accessed anywhere, anytime, and on any device, provided you are connected to the internet. Below are some of the features of cloud CRM solutions:

Sales Force Automation

Most digital-age CRM solutions allow users to set custom rules that automatically enable sales teams to execute a task based on triggers or events. For instance, if a customer fills out a contact form on your website, the CRM solution will ensure the sales subject matter expert gets the message.

Marketing Automation

This feature augments the decision-making process of marketing teams by identifying, orchestrating and carrying out data-driven campaigns. This process reduces the complication that often occurs during the lead qualification and conversion processes.

Customer Service Management

By giving you a 360-degree real-time view of your customers, CRM systems play a crucial role in ensuring businesses respond quickly and effectively to changing consumer needs. CRM systems also track all points of communications that customers engage in during their purchase journey.

Partner Relationship Management

Companies can have a real-time flow of information between businesses and their partners. This is especially important when businesses run joint campaigns, giving full visibility to companies in partner-focused sales and marketing processes.

Mobile

One of the greatest conveniences offered to workers in the digital age is the ability to monitor work proceedings on their mobile devices. A research paper published by Forester showed that 50% of sales and marketing teams improved their productivity by keeping track of things through their mobile devices. Meanwhile, a Nucleus Research revealed that 65% of sales team were achieving their sales quora thanks to CRM’s mobile functionality, while for those who were using non-mobile, the figure stood at a miserly 12%.

Reporting and Analytics

Real-time dashboards showing consumer data go a long way towards helping sales and marketing teams to understand their customers better. It helps them tailor campaigns to target ad groups based on demographics and other groups. It also helps companies unlock new insights that will help strategic decision making.

ERP

The ERP system in its present incarnation is a holistic system built on cloud that consolidates data for companies from various business processes, covering Finance and Accounting, Global Business Management, Inventory Management, Order Management, Supply Chain Management and Warehouse Management. Below we look at how each of these features can help your business.

Finance and Accounting

The process of keying in financial data and those pertaining to accounts can be one that is painstaking and riddled with human errors. For businesses to operate efficiently and respond quickly to changing market conditions, the automation of finance and accounting processes goes a long way towards helping businesses stay competitive.

Global Business Management

For companies with subsidiaries, having a consolidated view of data is of paramount importance. In addition to this, there is a laundry list of regulatory requirements for companies that have subsidiaries in foreign countries that they need to adhere to. Most cloud ERP systems are available in multiple currencies and languages and are customisable to ensure compliance with different regulations imposed by different countries.

Inventory Management

Through the automation of inventories, companies can keep their inventory costs low, while meeting customer expectations. Cloud ERP systems also offer accurate forecasts that enable businesses to be well prepared to meet consumer demand.

Order Management

By integrating all the systems in a company and providing the business with a consolidated view of data, the order management process can be streamlined by eliminating bottlenecks and preventing errors. The smooth flow that ensues will ensure timely invoicing and payment.

Supply Chain Management

For successful businesses, the location where their products are produced or stores never matters. By using a cloud ERP system, businesses can ensure the procurement of raw materials, determine the quantity of stock in their inventory, ensure replenishment in line with supply and demand.

Warehouse Management

In a highly competitive market such as e-commerce, the strength of a company often relies not just on the quality of your products, but also on how quickly you can deliver your products. Cloud ERP systems are geared towards meeting the expectations of modern day e-commerce retail platforms.

In A NutShell

In a highly disruptive and competitive business environment, agile companies, whose systems are on the cloud, stand to adapt quicker to changes as opposed to those who operate on legacy systems.

The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of moving to the cloud, as evidenced by the smooth transition to the work from home norms – for companies who had migrated to cloud – necessitated by the pandemic.

CRM solutions offer sales, marketing, and customer service units of businesses with consolidated data to meet consumer needs and swiftly respond to customer complaints. On the other hand, the cloud ERP system is a much more comprehensive system whose influence extends beyond just CRM, covering all the critical entities in a business. It provides businesses with a single source of truth, allowing them to be agile, receptive, and ready for volatile market conditions.

Over the last decade, omnichannel retail has emerged as one of the most effective strategies for businesses fighting the tides of change brought about by the digital world. Contrary to popular belief, the advent of technology has not exactly spelt the doom for brick and mortar stores.

The omnichannel retail strategy provides customers with the choice of shopping across all channels, be it in physical or online stores, on smartphone apps or on social media. Customers then have the luxury of choosing the delivery of their purchase in the most convenient mode for them, be that through collection from a physical store or delivery to their homes.

Omnichannel retailing differs from the multi-channel approach by synchronising all platforms together, providing customers with a seamless shopping experience. This means a merchant’s offerings and prices would be the same regardless of whether a customer shops in a physical store, online store, smartphone app, or social media.

A 14-months study by Harvard Business Review involving 46,000 customers found that 73% of them used various channels during their shopping journey. The study further revealed that, out of this number, only 7% of customers identified themselves as online-only shoppers and 20% as physical stores-only shoppers.

The successful execution of the omnichannel retail strategy relies heavily on making use of best-in-class technologies. Customers shopping with omnichannel retailers expect a smooth and seamless experience in a highly competitive business environment as they flit between different channels. The onus then falls on retailers to provide services that measure up to the expectations of their customers.

The execution of the omnichannel retail strategy, however, has been one that is pockmarked with setbacks and difficulties. This is a result of the failure by businesses to undertake digital transformation and the decision to continue operating with legacy systems, leaving them at the mercy of their rivals who are equipped with technologies for the digital age such as cloud ERP, automation and big data.

Research by Econsultancy on omnichannel retailers in Indonesia revealed that 50% of the respondents operate on systems that are not able to provide data of customers across channels. Meanwhile 48% of the respondents said that their systems had poor data integration capabilities and that they were having to manually manage processes. Forty-five-percent of the respondents said the amount of data was too much for their systems to handle. 

In an environment where customers switch between different channels frequently, it is only logical that they are going to leave businesses with huge tranches of data behind. However, research by Neustar shows that these data become outdated within two years. Citing figures from the United States, the research points out to the fact that 37% of people in the US change their contact details within a year. Disparate systems running on legacy solutions render these valuable data obsolete. 

The lack of consolidated data in real-time can be highly damaging to omnichannel retailers who cannot afford to drop the ball in a highly competitive market.

Below we look at how undertaking digital transformation through the migration to the cloud and using solutions such as cloud ERP can help omnichannel retailers reap the full benefits that their strategy richly deserves.

360-degree, real-time view of data

The days when entities within a business operated in silos are over. For an omnichannel retail strategy to succeed, everyone who is a part of the business has to be on the same wavelength. 

As consumers flit between the channels whenever they wish to on the devices they prefer, it is of utmost importance for omnichannel retailers to have a consolidated view of all the business processes. 

Cloud ERP solutions allow omnichannel retailers to have a complete view of their customers in real-time, allowing them to take concerted action swiftly to respond to evolving customer needs.

Scalability

Running an omnichannel retail means being able to accommodate evolving business needs. Legacy systems are often blighted by its rigid architecture which does not allow systems to be customised or functions to be added. 

Omnichannel retailers who run on legacy ERP systems often end up forking out huge sums in expenditures trying to integrate new features into their present system. The problem with this method is that the scope for growth on legacy systems is finite. After a few iterations, chances are you would not be able to add additional functionalities to your legacy system, ending any chance of further foray into the omnichannel market.

Cloud ERP systems on the other hand, by the virtue of their architecture, are made for operations in the digital business world. Their nimble architectures enable you to constantly scale and add features as and when you need them on a software as a service (SaaS) basis.

Data integration

Customers who shop on E-commerce platforms fill up a lot of their personal details as they register before making their purchase. The flow of data becomes even heavier in an omnichannel environment as customer preferences are subject to change.

To deliver top notch service to customers, omnichannel retailers need to have all these data consolidated and delivered on a single platform. 

Through migration to cloud, and by using solutions such as a cloud ERP system, omnichannel retailers are presented with easy low-code/no-code data integration solutions that provide advanced reporting capabilities.

The future of traditional bricks and mortar retail outlets has been the subject of much attention over the last decade. Countless column inches have been dedicated to predicting the impending doom. Although their decline has been gradual, the Covid-19 pandemic proved to be the death knell for these retail outlets.

Total retail sales in Singapore fell by a staggering 52.1% year-on-year in May 2020, after lockdowns were introduced to stem the tide of Covid-19 infections. The decline is the steepest witnessed in the island nation since records began in 1986. 

However, companies who had taken the leap of faith and embraced digital transformation did not just withstand the effects of Covid-19 on businesses but thrived amidst the pandemic. Online sales in June 2020 increased exponentially year-on-year, recording a whopping 151.2% growth. 

A recent joint study by e-commerce aggregator iPrice Group, online behaviour platform SimilarWeb, and mobile marketing platform AppsFlyer showed that Singapore recorded the highest surge in online shopping website traffic, witnessing a year-on-year increase of 35%. The study also noted, “that Singapore consumers spent an average of S$83.5 per order in 2020. This is the highest among the Southeast Asia (SEA) countries”.

Ethan Hsu, head of retail at Knight Frank Singapore, was quoted in a report on Business Times saying that the pandemic underlined the importance of online presence for retail outlets. This sentiment was echoed by Joel Leong, co-founder of e-commerce rewards site ShopBack, who said, “retailers need to continuously improve their e-commerce strategy and remain adaptable and nimble to seize opportunities”.

However, market observers are quick to caution that while the digital revolution gathers pace, it would be remiss to totally write off the prospects of brick and mortar outlets. The Gen Y and Gen Z generation, who will make up the lion’s share of future shoppers, are seen as a group that place emphasis on shopping experience. They may shop in a physical store before deciding on making a purchase on a platform that is most convenient for them.

Savills Singapore’s executive director and head of retail and lifestyle, Sulian Tan-Wijaya, in a recent interview with Business Times said: “(Gen Y and Z shoppers) are savvy and discerning and drive trends in retail. Contrary to popular belief, they would happily shop offline and even queue to spend thousands of dollars given the right experience and brand story.”

This approach that involves the combined offerings of retail stores, both physical and online, is called the omnichannel strategy. Such has been the meteoric rise of the omnichannel strategy that there are roles in some companies specifically dedicated to overseeing the successful execution of this retail approach. For instance, Walmart recently announced the appointment of a Chief Omni Strategy Officer.

As the omnichannel retail strategy is one that involves cross-channel shopping across a combination of different platforms, both online and offline, the onus is on businesses to provide a seamless shopping experience across all touchpoints. Below we examine how businesses can execute a successful omnichannel retail strategy.

Strong operation and technology foundation

The success of the omnichannel retail strategy rests heavily on how much a business invests in key IT infrastructure. A powerful back-end system that addresses all pain points in the delivery of services and products to customers is of utmost importance.

Modern-day cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems lie at the heart of a strong omnichannel retail execution. The ability of a cloud ERP system to consolidate data from multiple disparate sources will provide a strong central hub. This ensures a one-stop 360-degree view of every single touchpoint in your omnichannel retail business. 

Real-time view of key business processes

The key in any retail strategy moving forward does not rest solely on going digital, but it relies more on the ability of businesses to respond swiftly to customer demands. The CEO of Zalora, Gunjan Soni recently reminded businesses that “we can’t control the environment but what we can control is making sure that we are able to react very, very fast”.

In addition to offering a 360-degree view of your business, what makes cloud ERP systems stand out is that every data that is presented to you is taking place real-time. This means businesses have their fingers on the pulse, enabling them to turbocharge the delivery of services and products to customers.

Business Intelligence

One of the prerequisites for businesses in the digital age is having strong analytical tools at their disposal. Consumer behaviour for omnichannel customers is one that varies, and it is the obligation of businesses to make sense of the myriad of data at their disposal in order to offer a highly personalised shopping experience.

Analytics is one of the key strengths of cloud ERP systems. By consolidating data from different sources and in real-time, cloud ERP systems are equipped with predictive tools that can help businesses unlock new insights.

In a nutshell

Benjamin Franklin said death and taxes are the only certainties in life. Well, what did he know? You can now add disruptive business markets to the list of certainties. Technology has altered the business landscape at such a rapid pace that it would be folly to predict what retail may look like in 10 years time.

But what is certain is, if you are a business that is willing to ride on the crest of the digital wave and make sound investments in technology, you can rest assured that you are equipping your business with the ability to be nimble and respond fastest to the rapid pace at which changes take place in the market.

The rise of E-commerce is one that has been steady and consistent. E-commerce in its modern-day incarnation may seem like the playground of tech unicorns, but giants like Amazon and Alibaba serve as examples of businesses who trace their origins to humble beginnings. According to Shopify’s 5 trends for future of E-commerce in 2021, the Covid-19 pandemic turbo-charged the E-commerce sector where “10 years of e-commerce growth happened in just 90 days”. 

However, building a sustainable e-commerce business requires well-informed investments in key IT infrastructures. 

Most e-commerce platforms are built on front-end systems that serve to facilitate transactions. The handling of data crucial to business development and operations is often done manually on spreadsheets, a process that is regularly riddled with human errors.

The rapid pace of E-commerce transactions and constantly evolving customer demands necessitates the need for integration to a backend system that would be able to organise business processes, streamline flows, and generate new insights. This would go a long way towards building a sustainable e-commerce business

Modern-day IT software such as the cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems help companies automate key business processes, in addition to providing insights that can aid strategic decision making. 

Below are three benefits that e-commerce businesses can reap from having a cloud-based ERP system:

Removing IT Complexities

E-commerce businesses that succeed usually deliver seamless shopping experiences to their customers. This means their customers can view a product in a physical store, purchase it online, and have it delivered to their homes, with absolutely no difference in the prices or selection of products.

This approach, often referred to as the omnichannel retail strategy, can be an extremely complex endeavour for an in-house IT team to take on, as attested to by Cara Wang, a civil-engineering professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who summed it up in an interview with the Wall Street Journal: “The further down this road a retailer goes, the more its supply chain begins to resemble a spider web”.

This complexity has served to highlight the importance for businesses to embrace the cloud and engage the services of ERP services providers and solutions partners. By migrating to a cloud ERP, the responsibility of handling these complex processes is in the hands of vendors who employ some of the finest IT consultants. This also allows E-commerce merchants to concentrate on what they do best, business.

In a Nutshell

The cloud ERP, when implemented right, is an investment that will ensure the sustainability of the business. The insights unlocked can help e-commerce merchants tweak their business according to market trends and deliver incremental profits.

Managing your inventory is one of the most critical factors for any business dealing with physical goods. Manual methods of inventory management such as utilising spreadsheets can be proven to be inaccurate and time-consuming, which is one of the main reasons why businesses turn to ERP systems to effectively manage and optimise inventory level while maintaining data accuracy.

ERP system goes beyond merely managing stock quantities but also to expand to other key related areas such as financial impact of goods movement, procurement, order management and more. Here are the 5 benefits that an ERP can bring to you for your inventory management needs:

1. Gain Control and Visibility Across Multiple Locations

The inventory module in an ERP provides real time inventory visibility into stock levels across all locations, including warehouses, stores and goods in transit. ERP achieves this feat by recording and updating all inventory transactions in real time, whether through a direct user input, process automation or file exchange with other supporting systems.

It also allows you to set predefined parameters such as minimum stock levels to support inventory replenishment, or order allocation rule to automate order fulfilment. As a result, you can proactively monitor stock levels and sell-through, procuring inventory or transferring between locations as necessary to ensure inventory availability and minimise obsolete inventory.

2. Prevent Excess Inventory

Customer satisfaction and profitability require maintaining the right balance of stock levels to fulfil anticipated orders. Carry too much inventory and your capital is tied up in products that aren’t being sold. Moreover, there are costs to store and manage the inventory, particularly items with limited shelf life. However if carry too little, the business runs the risk of stock outs and an inability to meet customer demand.

With a modern inventory management system, particularly one that is integrated with the ERP software can help with forecasting and demand planning, ensuring that the perfect amount of inventory is kept on hand.

3. Automation in Cycle Counting

Using automation in your cycle counting process can improve the accuracy of your results. Automation also lowers staff costs, boosts worker productivity, provides trust in your stock levels and enables real-time visibility as your inventory changes.

By streamlining your inventory cycle count, you not only stand to eliminate the inventory costs associated with human error, but you can also benefit from further cost-savings.

4. Improve Customer Experience

As customers rely more and more on their smartphones to “window shop” for the products they’re looking for prior to visiting local stores to make their purchases. The need for an integrated inventory management system that constantly keeps websites up to date is more important than ever.

When customers are confident that the inventory items they see on a brand’s website are represented accurately, they’re more likely to visit their store and make a purchase. This can help to build trust and drive more foot traffic.

5. Facilitates Growth

Using an inventory management system, it enables you to easily plan for your growth and scale your business the right way. As your business develops, enters new markets, and diversifies its products, the system allows you to scale depending on your business needs. You can scale profitably without having to worry about spending on upgrades to your system.

Oracle NetSuite Cloud ERP

Oracle NetSuite Cloud ERP solution provides rich functionalities to manage inventories for many businesses, in order to make better and faster decisions. It allows you to highly control inventory including demand planning, procurement, fulfilment and finance in multiple locations from your favourite device in real time. Oracle NetSuite Cloud ERP also helps businesses to reduce errors and improve efficiency without wasting resources on manual reporting.

PointStar is a 5-Star Oracle NetSuite partner with extensive knowledge and experience in financial accounting/ERP and CRM solutions for small to mid-market and enterprise customers. Established in 2008, with offices in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Ho Chi Minh, our expertise ensures successful implementation of Oracle NetSuite Cloud ERP for more than 100 clients throughout the region.

To learn more about Oracle NetSuite Cloud ERP, please contact our Oracle NetSuite experts.

With the easing of the lockdowns and the economy in recovering mode, e-commerce has become increasingly important as many companies have been forced to completely revamp their online presence to adapt and foster direct relationships with their customers during this unprecedented time. 

However, the front-end e-commerce site is not the only area that businesses need to address. Dissociating the back-end systems such as finance, order and inventory management systems while operating an e-commerce site can increase inefficiency. Manually entering data from online orders or batch importing can cause delays and errors. These order and inventory issues create dissatisfied shopping experiences such as shipping delays or items being out of stock, which subsequently lead to lower conversion and retention rates.

Some businesses attempt to bridge these disconnected systems by relying on third-party tools to process data exchanges. It’s often unreliable and requires ongoing fees and maintenance for such as integrations, add-on applications, extensions and payment gateways. These factors can reduce productivity and increase inefficiencies.

Here are some common aspects of e-commerce challenges:

Engaging Experiences

In order to attract new visitors and convert website traffic into sales, businesses need to deliver relevant and engaging shopping experiences. Getting first-time purchasers to make their second purchase requires businesses to provide value beyond the initial transaction.

Although gaining new customers is important, growing customer loyalty and lifetime value are also crucial to the long-term health of a business. Businesses need to drive shoppers back to their website, by not only relying on the quality of products but also finding ways to increase average order values and frequency of purchase.

Inventory Insights

Providing a positive online shopping experience without considering whether inventory is available to ship can impact on shopping experiences that affects the brand value and trust. Not being able to display stock availability on your website, shoppers will not be able to make informed purchasing decisions. Furthermore, without these insights, inventory managers won’t be able to make distribution adjustments to maintain inventory level which can result in lost sales. While at the same time, when businesses overstock popular products to keep up with demand, they will hurt their cash flow and risk being stuck with excess inventory.

Order Management

A company without a single platform to manage all orders coming from various channels will face a challenge to fulfil orders in an effective and efficient manner. The delay in processing and shipping out the orders will impact on the customer satisfaction level, especially if the customer can quickly shift to different brands or sellers. Additionally, customers mostly will not tolerate any order inaccuracy. Therefore, it is important to provide them with the best shopping experience to retain their loyalty to your brand.

An order management system unified with e-commerce, inventory and finance can increase customer satisfaction, decrease labour and shipping costs and increase profit margins.

Unifying E-commerce with Your Business Systems

It’s difficult to get a full understanding of your customers’ interactions and behaviour when your customer, order, inventory and financial data are stored in separate, channel-specific silos. The manual works to replicate data sources of orders, product information and pricing in your e-commerce solution and business systems are ineffective and can cause errors.

When e-commerce is unified with ERP, CRM, order and inventory management, businesses will be able to gain real-time visibility into every aspect of their business. Integration between front-end e-commerce system and back-end business systems are no longer needed. All systems will work seamlessly together and, organisations do not need to manage separate systems and key in data manually

Oracle NetSuite SuiteCommerce

Oracle NetSuite’s e-commerce solution, SuiteCommerce, is natively unified with NetSuite business applications, enabling companies to manage their entire business with a single solution. It provides a single source of customer, order and inventory data providing unprecedented, real-time visibility across organisation to make informed timely business decisions.

SuiteCommerce also has access to any data or field stored in Oracle NetSuite back office in real-time and provides a complete view of your customers’ activity and experiences. By housing operations under one unified system, organisations see a lower total cost of ownership than other disparate solutions.