As pressure amounts on various high end restaurants to improve the quality of various services offered,they are left grappling with the decision of whether to or not to include ERP in it system to meet this demand.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software are two very essential software that can greatly help meet this demand if they rely and complement each other. They can be used by a restaurant to maximize profits and at the same time reduce the running costs while meeting customer needs and demands.

ERP helps the restaurant management to know what is happening between it various levels of employees, manage the different services offered by the restaurant and also keep track of the raw materials but it will not show the sales projections or show the issues raised and use the data collected for the benefit of the customer as CRM does. In short CRM keeps track of customer issues while ERP helps the restaurant management to optimally run the restaurant.

ERP

Having an ERP software in a restaurant business will help it to account for all of it’s raw materials as well as enable it to know what is happening with different food offered at the restaurant. It will also help it to account for the expenses and incomes at the restaurant, set a standard for what is served and give the restaurant management an opportunity to keep its business growing.

Multiple restaurants can be managed using this same software which offers a wide range of flexibility. It also enable different departments of the restaurant to communicate. Availing all this information to the management helps it to come up with decisions that will greatly improve the restaurant.

CRM

CRM on the other hand will keep the restaurant information in one place enabling the different levels of employees and even customers to quickly access it. Time is money and quickly accessing this information means that the restaurant will be saving tones of it. It also means that the sales staff will do a lot more with the easily accessed information since they will be able to access it even from their phones.

This will in turn enable the management to make an almost accurate sales projection.It is therefore essential for a restaurant to adopt and integrate both the above systems as the long term and immediate benefits are tremendous . Using the integrated system will ensure that the sales representatives uses the CRM to attract customers and keep looking for new business opportunities while the ERP will allow the management to keep track of inventories and help it to overcome the various challenges that come it’s way.But the above contrast means that very serious information gaps will result if the system is not integrated.

A small restaurant or a restaurant which has just begun may need to use CRM first to attract and create loyal customers and also expand before it becomes necessary for it to integrate ERP into it’s system of operation.I would advise however that a restaurant should look into it’s capabilities and priorities before deciding to adopt such a system. There are various software available that can meet every restaurants need.