Assignment One: Question Three

Find two examples of what you consider to be an effective use of Internet marketing.

Individual Assignment: Question One

Evaluate and compare the features, functions, pricing, available editions, technology etc. of any two sources of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.

Based on your understanding of ERP, do you believe that a firm should implement enterprise resource planning software when it is a new company, or after it has had time to mature?

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system typically is a modular hardware and software units and "services" that communicate on a local area network. The modular design allows a business to add or reconfigure modules (perhaps from different vendors) while preserving data integrity in one shared database that may be centralized or distributed. Nowadays, ERP systems attempt to cover all core functions of an enterprise, regardless of the organization's business or charter. These systems can now be found in non-manufacturing businesses, non-profit organizations and governments.

Compare with SAP and OpenBravo

SAP is the world's largest software company – in business for more than 30 years. They has more than 89 000 total customers – 68,000 of which are small and midsize enterprises, and their customers in more than 50 countries and more than 4,500 channel partners worldwide

SAP software is affordable for small businesses and midsize companies, they can offer a complete portfolio of business management and business intelligence solutions designed to fit the way you do business and clients budget. They also offering the breadth and depth of functionality you need to run your business. SAP enabe to quick adoption with little training, they can scale and adapt as you grow your business.

SAP software solutions for small businesses and midsize companies, including SAP Business One, SAP Business ByDesign, and SAP Business All-in-One, provide the depth of information you need for complete visibility into business processes, helping you drive operational excellence, efficiency, smart decision making, and growth. Compare the software to find the best fit for your business needs.

SAP have a affordable payment plans to helps customer stay within budget. The payment plans that cover the total cost of your entire SAP solution – including software, hardware, maintenance, and services. That you can acquire your entire solution through one trusted source. Plus, a predictable payment schedule with no hidden costs makes it easier to plan your budget.

Use SAP Financing to Take Advantage of:

• All-incusive service – Bundle your SAP software, SAP BusinessObjects software, non-SAP software (on the SAP price list), services, maintenance, hardware – even the internal costs associated with your project – into a fixed monthly payment.
• Extended payment plan – Spread the cost of your entire SAP investment over a period of up to seven years, for improved return on investment.
• Affordability – Defer your initial payment until the project becomes operational (up to 12 months) – so you can start to realize benefits even before your payments begin.
• Flexible payment structure – Customize your payment plan in fixed or variable monthly payments to best meet your budget and cash-flow requirements.
• Expert advice – Get expert advice from SAP's financing partners, who can help you pick the best financing options for your company and streamline the approval and documentation process.

Openbravo is an award-winning developer of professional open source solutions for businesses, offering the industry's first real alternative to proprietary enterprise software. The company's web-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Point of Sale (PoS) solutions. Openbravo is for profit organization. Its business model is based on selling high-added value services to customers and partners installing, deploying and operating Openbravo solutions.

Openbravo ERP has been designed with broad business functionality to help businesses improve overall performance. It is based on a single, integrated database model covering all key application areas of a complete business management system, including seamless integration to Business Intelligence (BI) and Point of Sale (POS).

Transparent Pricing:

Easy to understand, no hidden fees, no haggling over price

Some of Openbravo ERP characteristics:

• Alerts - Notifications can be programmed to alert the user whenever a certain condition
• Linked items - Finding related invoices, contacts or any specific shipping receipt is very easy
• Dimensional Reporting - End users easily create customized report formats based on multiple fields and categories in order to extract critical integrated company data
• Compatibility and Sharing - Export a single file or a collection of files to Excel, CSV, or PDF directly from the application
• Email - With 1 click, open an email window to send information or attached files to your customers or suppliers directly from the ERP
• Keyboard navigation - On top of being a web-based application, Openbravo has been designed so that it can be fully operated from the keyboard, without using the mouse
• Modular - Easily create third-party modules or plugins; or browse the directory and select shared functionality created by other users to install.
• Easily configurable - it is easy to extend and configure to be a perfect fit for your requirements

Openbravo is easier to customize, and easier to use. Their QuickStart system let customer fast and easy to control. SAP have three packages to customers, they are SAP Business One, SAP Business ByDesign, and SAP Business All-in-One. Openbravo may easy for small company build up their business.

I think a firm should implement enterprise resource planning software when it is a new company. It can let a new business easy to growth up, easy to control their stock and optimize the orders. If they choose Openbravo ERP, the lower of the transaction costs lets new business faster to scale up their business.

Individual Assignment: Question Two

Read this recent job posting for a customer relationship manager (CRM) from JobsDB. Based on this job description, what would you say are the main responsibilites of a CRM manager ? Do any of these responsibilities involve in-depth or hands-on knowledge of information technology ?

CRM manager help an enterprise manage customer relationships in an organized way. For example, an enterprise might build a database about its customers that described relationships in sufficient detail so that management, salespeople, people providing service, and perhaps the customer directly could access information, match customer needs with product plans and offerings, remind customers of service requirements, know what other products a customer had purchased, and so forth.

CRM manager need to have a good comunication with the local and overseas consumer, to know their behavior, their needs, their interested in... CRM manager also need to keep closely contact with CRM Director and analytics team to understandand the consumer lifestyle, then analyze program effectiveness and utilize learning to improve future program planning process.

They also help an enterprise to enable its marketing departments to identify and target their best customers, manage marketing campaigns and generate quality leads for the sales team. They have to allowing the formation of individualized relationships with customers, with the aim of improving customer satisfaction and maximizing profits; identifying the most profitable customers and providing them the highest level of service.

CRM includes many aspects which relate directly to one another:

- Front office operations : Direct interaction with customers, e.g. face to face meetings, phone calls, e-mail, online services etc.
- Back office operations : Operations that ultimately affect the activities of the front office (e.g., billing, maintenance, planning, marketing, advertising, finance, manufacturing, etc.) - Business relationships : Interaction with other companies and partners, such as suppliers/vendors and retail outlets/distributors, industry networks (lobbying groups, trade associations). This external network supports front and back office activities. - Analysis : Key CRM data can be analyzed in order to plan target-marketing campaigns, conceive business strategies, and judge the success of CRM activities (e.g., market share, number and types of customers, revenue, profitability)

Using Web services to integrate CRM applications can benefit the organization in many ways. Overall, organizations using Web services for integration have the potential to become more efficient and responsive to market changes and competitive pressures. Web services can help an organization cost-effectively and efficiently integrate on-demand self-service applications and interactive voice response systems with the core CRM application. They enable organizations to exchange data and information seamlessly between self-service tools and modules and the CRM application without having to undergo a lengthy and complicated integration process.

Starting to my happy posting

Hi, welcome to Cherry's blog, My full name is Chow Po Ling Cherry (Student ID 10447416).