ERP, BPO and CRM

[rookie1010]

hello,

i was trying to figure out what enterprise resource planning, business process outsourcing was, and how it was connected to vendor management.

to my understanding, enterprise resource planning is outsourcing of a part of the business to a vendor, and BPO is the complete outsourcing of functionality to vendors. and management of the vendor is of course vendor management and the flip side is customer relationship management (CRM)

or am i off the mark?

 

[rchiu]

You are kinda off the mark. ERP is a general term for software that manages company activities, like accounting, HR, warehousing, inventory, sales...etc. BPO is outsourcing the business function to outside parties. Vendor management has many facet to it, like negotiating terms, determining purchase volume, and managing vendor relationship...etc. There are functions in ERP to manage vendors, most accounts payable modules in ERP package comes with functions to do things from vendor maintenance to vendor purchase analysis to terms maintenance and payable aging analysis.

I guess if you do BPO, the party you outsource the process to becomes one of your vendor. You can also outsource AP to outside parties, so outside parties receive and pay your company's bill. That will affect how the company manages vendor relationship with such process. So in that sense, it depends on which vendor you are talking about with BPO.

 

[rookie1010]

thanks for the reply, it makes a lot more sense now.

what is an AP?

 

[Aquaman]

AP.......... Accounts Payable?

Cheers,
Aquaman

 

[Whitecloak]

ERP is software/processes that takes care of manufacturing, logistics & distribution, finance etc
CRM is software/processes that takes care of marketing, sales & support
BPO is outsourcing non-core business processes

 

[rookie1010]

thanks for summarising it brilliantly.

so because of BPO we have ERP and CRM.
and BPO is limited to only non-core business processes, e.g. if Cingular outsource it's IP Multimedia Subsystem design and development to a 3rd party that is not considered to be BPO.

i guess at some point when say cingular were to move to a different sector then IMS outsourcing could be considered to be a BPO?
and vendor management can be considered to be a BPO process depending upon if the process is core or non core, correct?