Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools are primarily leveraged by sales and marketing teams to manage interactions that enhance customer satisfaction, loyalty, and sales. This type of platform is more common for companies with heavy direct-sales initiatives and a high-touch customer base. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems optimize business processes across internal departments like finance, human resources, manufacturing, and supply chain. ERP systems also offer distinct advantages for operations, inventory, and complex financials. The primary difference lies in the transactional nature of ERP processes that are not supported in a CRM-only environment.

For further contrast, while both business applications use relational databases to store and analyze data, integrations diverge in accordance with their specific functions. CRM integrations are geared towards sales with connections to marketing platforms, sales tools and customer service channels. ERP systems connect more broadly with financial institutions, e-commerce, business-intelligence tools, supply-chain systems and a host of others. 

NetSuite offers the best of both worlds with a single solution CRM and ERP in one. For more information, watch this video  or schedule time to talk with Rapid Cloud Partners at https://calendly.com/rapidcloudpartners/introductory-call.