Business software is sold in three-letter names, and the names are used as if everyone already knew them. Most people in a company know the two or three they work with and nod along at the rest.
This is the whole list in one place. Each system gets one sentence, in ordinary words. They are grouped by what a business is trying to do, because that is easier to remember than the alphabet.
01Customers and revenue
Most companies meet their customers through five or six separate tools. Sales has a list, marketing has another, support has a third, and finance has the only one that is right. The customer is one person; the company sees six.
- CRM (customer relationship management): A CRM is the one place a company keeps everything it knows about the people it sells to: who they are, what was said, what was offered and what happens next.
- CPQ (configure, price, quote): CPQ software turns a customer's requirement into a correct, priced, approved quote, without a specialist having to check every line.
- Marketing automation: Marketing automation sends the right message to the right person at the right moment, without someone pressing send each time.
- CDP (customer data platform): A customer data platform gathers what every system knows about a customer into one profile, and makes that profile available to all of them.
- DMP (data management platform): A data management platform organises audience data for advertising: who saw what, which groups they fall into, and where those groups can be reached.
- Help desk (customer service and help desk systems): A help desk is where every customer question is caught, given to someone, answered and remembered.
02Operations, supply and finance
Operations software is where a wrong number costs real money: stock that the screen says exists and the shelf says does not, an order promised from goods already sold, a payment made twice.
- ERP (enterprise resource planning): An ERP is the one system that records what a company owns, owes, buys, makes and sells, so every department works from the same numbers.
- SCM (supply chain management): Supply chain software plans and tracks everything between a supplier's dock and a customer's door.
- WMS (warehouse management system): A warehouse management system knows where every item in the building is, and tells people the best way to put it away, pick it and send it.
- OMS (order management system): An order management system takes every order from every channel and sees it through to delivery, and back again if it is returned.
- POS (point of sale): A point-of-sale system is the till: it rings up the sale, takes the payment, and tells the rest of the business what was just sold.
- Accounting (accounting and financial management systems): Financial management software records every amount that comes in and goes out, and turns the record into reports a business can be run on.
03People and work
A company's largest cost is its people, and most companies can say less about how that cost is spent than about what is in the warehouse. Who is on which project, who is overloaded, who is about to leave and what is waiting on IT are questions answered by asking around.
- HRMS / HCM (human resource management and human capital management): An HRMS is the system of record for everyone who works at a company: who they are, what they are paid, when they worked and how they are doing.
- ATS (applicant tracking system): An applicant tracking system follows every candidate for every job, from application to offer.
- Project & work management (project and work management systems): Work management software shows who is doing what, by when, and what is in the way.
- PSA (professional services automation): Professional services automation runs a business that sells its people's time: the projects, who is on them, the hours, the invoices and whether each engagement made money.
- ITSM (it service management): IT service management is how an IT team takes requests, fixes what breaks, changes systems safely and keeps track of what the company owns.
04Content, assets and product information
A company describes itself in hundreds of places: the website, the app, the catalogue, the marketplaces, the brochures, the distributor portals. Each was written at a different time by a different person, and they have drifted apart.
- CMS (content management system): A content management system lets the people who know what to say publish it themselves, without asking a developer.
- DAM (digital asset management): A digital asset management system is the one library for a company's images, video, design files and documents, where anyone can find the right version.
- PIM (product information management): A product information management system holds the definitive facts about everything a company sells, and sends them to every place the products are listed.
05Data, integration and automation
Most companies do not lack systems. They lack the connections between them. The same order is typed into three screens, a report takes a week because the data has to be gathered by hand, and two dashboards give two answers to one question.
- BI (business intelligence): Business intelligence turns what a company's systems record into charts and figures its people can read and act on.
- Data platforms (enterprise data platforms): A data platform is the place where data from every system in a company is collected, cleaned and kept ready for reporting, analysis and AI.
- Analytics & decision systems (data analytics and decision systems): Analytics explains what happened and estimates what will; a decision system puts that estimate in front of the person deciding, at the moment they decide.
- iPaaS (integration platform as a service): An integration platform is the switchboard between a company's systems: it carries data from each one to the others that need it.
- API & systems integration (api and systems integration): An API is the doorway through which one piece of software asks another for something; systems integration is building and connecting those doorways.
- BPA (business process automation): Business process automation hands the repetitive steps of office work to software, so people do the parts that need a person.
06AI, custom software and transformation
The first five families are systems with names. This one is what is left when the name runs out: the intelligence added across them, the application that exists nowhere else, the plan for what to change first, and the patient work of replacing an old estate without stopping the business.
- Enterprise AI (enterprise ai and intelligence): Enterprise AI is software that reads, searches, reasons and acts on a company's own data and documents, inside the company's own walls.
- Custom enterprise software (custom enterprise software development): Custom enterprise software is an application written for one company's way of working, which that company then owns.
- AI consulting (ai transformation and consulting): AI consulting answers three questions for a company: where would AI actually help, are we ready for it, and in what order should we do it?
- Digital transformation (enterprise digital transformation): Digital transformation is replacing paper, spreadsheets and worn-out systems with ones that work together, without stopping the business while you do it.
07How they fit together
The systems overlap at the edges, and vendors blur the names further. Three distinctions clear up most of the confusion.
- Systems of record and systems of work. An ERP, an HRMS and a ledger hold the official facts. A CRM, a help desk and a project tool are where people do their daily work on top of those facts.
- Systems for known people and for audiences. A CRM and a CDP hold customers you can name. A DMP holds audiences for advertising, largely without names.
- Systems and the plumbing between them. Integration platforms, APIs and data platforms are not something a user opens. They are what makes the other systems agree.
In short
- The acronyms describe about thirty kinds of system, which fall into six groups by purpose.
- Most companies need a handful, not all of them, and need those few to share the same records.
- The names overlap. Ask what a system stores and who uses it, and the label matters less.
Questions
What is the difference between CRM and ERP?
A CRM manages the company's dealings with customers: leads, conversations, deals. An ERP manages the company's own resources: money, stock, purchasing, production. Sales lives in the first; finance and operations live in the second; a well-run company connects them.
Does a small business need all of these systems?
No. A small business usually needs accounting, something to track customers, and perhaps stock or bookings. The others earn their place as volume and complexity grow.
Which system should a growing company add first?
The one covering the work that currently lives in spreadsheets and hurts most. For many that is a CRM or an order and stock system. The second system should be chosen for how well it joins the first.
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Read next
- Custom software or off-the-shelf: how to decide whether to build, buy or extendBuild or buy
- Custom CRM or off-the-shelf CRM: which does your sales team need?CRM
- When does a company need a custom ERP?ERP
- CDP vs CRM vs DMP: what each one stores, and which you needCustomer data
- CMS, DAM and PIM: what each one manages, and why a catalogue needs all threeContent and product data
- OMS, WMS, SCM and ERP: how one order moves through themOrders and stock