The need to execute business transactions effectively and efficiently led to the development of ERP and CRM systems. These execution systems are now evolving to incorporate decision models. However, you should view with caution the development of decision models that require one side of the equation to remain unchanged. ECM decision models help you make supply and marketing decisions simultaneously to maximize profits. In other words, constrained models developed within CRM or ERP systems will not, when combined, yield decisions that globally optimize the enterprise, whereas ECM decision models will.
Speed is another advantage.
Successful product development links the needs of customers with the delivery and supply of products and services that meet those needs. Thus, the new strategic function for corporate product development becomes inventing and developing new capabilities. Just as scientists use carefully controlled experiments to explain phenomena, so can you. Statistical analysis can do the job of isolating and quantifying the effects that marketing decisions have on sales, provided that the values of all determining factors for each transaction are captured in the data store. Far more often, however, companies view transactions as costs rather than experiments, and thus have limited, incomplete transaction data.