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Marketing Information Systems and the Sales Order Process
planning, and most importantly, it can help make sure that follow-up activities are
accomplished.

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Source Line: SAP AG.

FIGURE 3-14 SAP ERP sales activity manager

While the CRM tools in the SAP ERP system, if employed properly, can help manage
customer relationships, firms embracing the CRM concept often employ a separate CRM
system that communicates with the ERP system. An advantage of this approach is that
the planning and analysis performed in the CRM system do not interfere with the
performance of the ERP system, which primarily processes large volumes of business
transactions.
Figure 3-15 shows how SAP CRM relates to the SAP ERP system as well as SAP’s
Business Warehouse (BW) and Advanced Planner and Optimizer (APO) modules. The SAP
CRM system communicates with the SAP ERP, BW, and APO systems in developing and
executing its plans, thereby allowing SAP CRM to not only facilitate a company’s
interactions with its customers, but to also enable the company to analyze the customer
data and best serve the customer.

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