| The customer relationship management (CRM) and | | | | make getting the right information out of them slightly |
| business intelligence can sometimes conflict because | | | | awkward, especially if you've had to bolt a |
| your CRM tool has your customer activity from a | | | | management information system onto the side of your |
| sales perspective, and your data warehouse has you | | | | ERP solution. |
| customer activity from an operational perspective in it, | | | | You need to then decide whether you put that data in |
| so these two systems double up the information | | | | your ERP system so it then becomes your data |
| required to do their respected jobs, this means the | | | | warehouse to give you an enterprise view, or do you |
| CRM system will have prospects and sales and | | | | take your ERP data and put it in a data warehouse |
| marketing data in it that usually will not end up in your | | | | along side your other pots of data and make that your |
| data warehouse (because it isn't interested in the | | | | enterprise view? This is something you'll need to |
| mailing lists you procure, and the vast amount of data | | | | address as part of your IT strategy. |
| that you're marketing to), it's more interested in what | | | | More organisations are using software as a service to |
| the business is doing with operational information. | | | | implement their core systems, this is where by you use |
| At the same time, to run a successful marketing | | | | an online service provider to host your solution for you |
| campaign, you need transactional history of your | | | | and access it through the web, this does mean your |
| customers to ensure your campaigns are correctly | | | | data is no longer inside your organisation and as it's |
| targeted and this sophisticated data analysis and | | | | held externally, you have less access to it. |
| history transactions is usually in the data warehouse. | | | | If you think you need enterprise wide business |
| The challenge this brings is ensuring the data between | | | | intelligence that includes that data, you need to factor in |
| these two systems is managed in a way that means | | | | getting a data feed back into that organisation and into |
| the activities that come back into the data warehouse | | | | your systems, you then need somewhere to store |
| can measure what comes in the operational systems. | | | | and analyse it. You also need to consider what kind of |
| This way you always know what money you're | | | | business intelligence those solutions provide to see |
| making from your marketing activities and you can | | | | how you're going to progress with your business |
| send these customer data sets back to your CRM | | | | intelligence solutions if your going to use your software |
| system. | | | | as a service. |
| If you've implanted an enterprise resource planning | | | | For many years business intelligence vendors were |
| (ERP) solution, you've already gone a long way to | | | | fighting with the Office products like Excel, but now |
| integrating your systems, unfortunately, just because | | | | they're recognised as being just as integral to business |
| you've got an ERP solution doesn't mean you don't | | | | intelligence as any other piece of software or solution. |
| also need a data warehouse. | | | | Everybody uses it all the time, the finance department |
| ERP solutions are package solutions, and this means | | | | love it and as Microsoft gets the technology and the |
| that it's a 'one solution fits many' and therefore they | | | | visualisation capability within Excel improving it will |
| need to be configured and tweaked to ensure they | | | | probably be used even more. |
| match your businesses individual needs and this can | | | | |