Ch. 7 - Cross-Functional Enterprise Bus. Systems

On Tuesday night, we learned a LOT about the seven main types of cross-functional systems. The three most important are:

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM): which is managing the full range of the customer relationship by having one point of contact. We learned about CRM in Principles of Marketing; it was actually one of the most important points we learned in that class because CRM helps with direct and targeted marketing campaigns. I'm actually finding quite a few similarities between Info Systems and Marketing, so it's pretty cool that now what I learn in classes is beginning to overlap because I already have a knowledge of certain systems before they are even explained in this class. Under CRM, there is also the potential for cross-selling and up-selling. This is kind of off-topic, but I am REALLY familiar with up-selling. I used to work at the movie theatre in the concession stand, and basically we were trained to always try to up-sell the customer (instead of buying a small drink, how about a medium for 50 cents more? It was pretty annoying. But it was pretty effective actually). Speaking of the movie theatre, we also had a loyalty program called the Regal Crown Club Card, which is also a separate cluster under CRM.
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): which supports internal business processes and is the backbone of business processes. ERP systems, when they are successfully implemented, are very efficient, save money, and provide enterprise agility and decision support. However, they are also extremely risky and costly and failure can ruin a business.
• Supply Chain Management (SCM): which basically helps a company get the right products to the right place, at the right time, in the proper quantity at an acceptable cost. We also learned about SCM in Marketing because if this system is successfully implemented, it can help enhance relationships with customers, suppliers and distributors, which is extremely important in maintaining good business relationships.
• The other four types of cross-functional systems are: Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), Transaction Processing Systems (TPS), and Enterprise Collaboration Systems (ECS).