In a June, 2011 report "Innovative Technologies Will Drive Enterprise Applications and ERP to a Bight New Future", Forrester Research talked about seven technologies that will shape the evolution of ERP and enterprise applications:

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) Mobile Business process management (BPM) Usability Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) Social networks Elastic computing  According to the report, each technology will impact three key areas: Business process flexibility will be enabled, not restricted Cost of ownership will be more transparent and predictable Mobility and collaboration will accelerate process execution

Far too often, a company's financial reporting is limited to a set of financial statements and if more than the basic financial statements are provided in a financial reporting package, the supplementary data is often prepared manually in Word or Excel.

A good financial reporting package should ideally consist of a variety of financial statements as welll as meaningful supplementary data.  Some additional data elements that are meaningful to a business decision maker are:

• Top X customers
• Top X items
• Sales Trends
• Job Profitability
• Etc.

   Historically companies have prepared and presented formal financial statement monthly.  While this standard practice still has its place for formal reporting,  there is also a need for companies to give serious consideration to reporting much more frequently for informal internal reporting.  Up until now, the relatively infrequent monthly reporting was primarily due to the amount of time and effort it would take to prepare and distribute financial reports, often taking days or even weeks.

Today most business owners realize that they must embrace technology in the work place to remain competitive.  So the question is no longer whether to automate the business, but rather, what is the correct balance of manual and automated processes.

Like investments of other types,  the concept of diminishing returns applies here as well.  There is an optimal point at which additional investment yields additional complexity, maintenance, cost, etc, without a corresponding positive impact to the business's operations.
 One rule of thumb to employ is to think of a technology investment as a lever.  Like a well placed lever, the appropriate technology investment will enable a company to lift a disproportionately heavy load without increasing human capital.  As in the tale of David and Goliath, David was able to slay the giant with innovation.

So how does this philosophy translate into action?

When considering CRM applications, one important consideration is the level of integration available between the CRM application and your other line of business applications, particularly your ERP.

The level of integration is extremely important when considering user efficiencies, validity of data, and application maintenance.

When considering CRM applications, terms that you are likely to encounter are Integrated and , less frequently, Embedded.  What is the difference?