Joining the Mass Cloud Migration: How a CRM’s Strengths Balance an ERP’s Shortfalls

Cloud adoption has taken the manufacturing industry by storm. Before the pandemic erupted, companies had been slowly moving away from on-premises data storage for over a decade — but since its inception, this movement has been accelerated.

Today, a staggering 78% of manufacturing executives have either accelerated their cloud technology investment or fully migrated to the cloud. After all, cloud adoption enables businesses to achieve greater data security, expand existing operations painlessly, and save on hardware costs.

Nonetheless, migrating all of a company's data at once can be disruptive and overwhelming; a more practical roadmap to digitization involves investing in the cloud one system at a time. A good place to start is to invest in a cloud-based CRM system like Salesforce.

Some manufacturers may question the need to implement a modern CRM solution when an abundance of account information exists in their ERP. While an ERP is the heartbeat of their organization, it falls short when it comes to building relationships and driving operational efficiency — two of a CRM's towering strengths. This white paper explores these strengths and examines why an ERP was created to serve a different purpose.

Readers will also learn about:

• Why accounts within a CRM should reflect buying companies' business structures
• How a CRM fast-tracks customer service initiatives and delights customers
• How Salesforce can be used to measure the ROI of sales teams’ efforts