The former is enabling changes in energy supply, transmission, distribution, and whole- sale marketing processes, while the latter is changing the retail marketing process for energy.
Retail energy is just one of many industries in which such changes are imminent.
These interdependencies, along with realtime changes in financial and physical supply markets, geophysical distribution networks, and customer decisions, create tremendous opportunities for optimizing the enterprise. This narrowly focused process is precisely what obscures the view of the full breadth and depth of the total market. Unlike ERP and CRM, which concentrate on separate portions of the enterprise-optimization problem, an ECM system enables simultaneous decisions for both sides of the market. For example, in response to physical or financial supply market price changes, managers can reevaluate the current product, pricing, targeting, sales deployment, and supply configurations in light of these price changes and adjust all parameters simultaneously to capitalize on competitive opportunities. The need to execute business transactions effectively and efficiently led to the development of ERP and CRM systems.