

Foley, “ERP for Small Business: The Time is Ripe,” Inc., October 1, 2007, accessed October 10, 2011, /1/erp-for-small-business -the-time-is-ripe. There are more than thirty vendors in the field, and they are looking to small and midsize businesses as their primary growth market. Small businesses have many vendor choices for ERP systems.

The objective is to provide information quickly and efficiently to those who need it. More details about SCM are presented in Chapter 12 “People and Organization”.Įnterprise resource planning (ERP), as mentioned in Chapter 1 “Foundations for Small Business”, is about integrating all departments and functions across a company (sales, marketing, human resources, finance, accounting, production, engineering, etc.) into a single computer system that can serve the particular needs of each department. Thomas Wailgum and Ben Worthen, “Supply Chain Management Definition and Solutions,” CIO, November 20, 2008, accessed October 10, 2011, SCM applications are now available for small businesses. SCM is about efficiently and effectively improving the way that a company finds those raw components and then delivers the product or the service to the customer. The management of this network is known as supply chain management (SCM). “What Is CRM?,”, February 19, 2010, accessed October 10, 2011, CRM applications are available for even the smallest businesses.Įvery small business has a supply chain, the network of vendors that provide the raw components that are needed to make a product or deliver a service.

The goal is to reduce costs and increase profitability while providing customer satisfaction. It is a company-wide strategy that brings together information from all data sources within an organization (and sometimes from external data sources) to give one holistic view of each customer in real time. West, “Business Intelligence: The Crystal Ball of Champions,” Small Business, April 11, 2006, accessed October 10, 2011, -Intelligence-The-Crystal-Ball-of-Champions.htm.Īs defined in Chapter 2 “Your Business Idea: The Quest for Value”, customer relationship management (CRM) refers to “…a customer service approach that focuses on building long-term and sustainable customer relationships that add value for the customer and the company.” Efraim Turban et al., Electronic Commerce: A Managerial Perspective (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2008), 759. BI has been described as “the crystal ball of the 21st century.” Lena L. When conducted online, BI is efficient and quick, helping companies to identify noteworthy trends and make better decisions faster. Business intelligence is about the activities that a small business may undertake to collect, store, access, and analyze information about its market or competition to help with decision making.
