The customer experience is becoming a significant part of today’s buying cycle and on-going vendor/customer relationship. In fact, some experts predict that by 2020, customer experience will play an even bigger role in the buying decision than product or price. Customer experience management is becoming big business and CEM platforms are sprouting to execute, measure, and monitor CEM initiatives. What does this have to do with your ERP?
Companies that win big will not be those that implement a CEM system because it’s the “thing to do,” but those that internalize CEM. Many companies that are internalizing CEM today are using tools and information they already have to get started. A recent IDC study, “Get Customers Inspired: How Modern ERP Can Support Greater Customer Experience” states that “The research indicates that an improved customer experience can be gained through investments in modern, fully integrated, flexible and easy to use ERP systems.”
The IDC study listed five top enablers to improving the customer experience:
- Adapt IT to better serve customers
- Improve visibility of information
- Speed up the decision-making process
- Analyze past customer interactions
- Simplify and/or automate processes
All of these improvements can be accomplished through your Cloud ERP system with some customer-centric thinking.
Implementing ERP systems encourage users to take a hard look at operational processes. Plus, some of today’s Cloud ERPs have customer and vendor platforms. As a result, integrated ERP systems can streamline and enhance visibiltity into those processes. Further, ERPs are frequently integrated into CRMs and other applications that help to create a value-added customer experience.
One of the top benefits of an ERP system is providing information for fact-based decisions. Modern Cloud ERPs such as Acumatica provide fast and easy reporting and analysis functionality that reduce the time it take to make and execute decisions. And Cloud-based ERP also enables anywhere, anytime access which means that decisions don’t need to cease because an analyst or decision maker is not in the office, further reducing decision cycle time. This is turn leads to more customer-centric product offerings, faster time to market, better order fulfillment, more on-time deliveries due to better inventory management, better customer service, and an array of aftermarket products and services.
A superior customer experience will drive brand loyalty and differentiate you from your competitors. If your ERP does not enable you to enhance and improve your customer experience, call us at NexVue (now Net at Work) to find out how we can help you implement an ERP solution that does.
For more information about how an enterprise resource management system can help your business call NexVue (now Net at Work) at 203.327.0800 or email us at info@nexvue.com or simply click here for a Contact Us form.
Click here to see a short video about Acumatica Cloud-based ERP.
By Sandi Richards Forman, NexVue (now Net at Work) Information Systems, www.nexvue.com