CRM focuses on customer relationships, SCM on supply-chain flows, and DSS on decisions supported by analysis. They are all enterprise systems, but their users, data, and outputs differ. Read the acronym in the context of the business function it serves.
Core words
The diagram groups enterprise systems by customer, operations, decision, product, and organization functions.
| English term | Meaning and use |
|---|---|
CRM | Customer Relationship Management: practices and systems for organizing customer information and interactions. |
BYOD(Bring your own device) | A policy or work arrangement in which employees use personally owned devices for organizational tasks. |
ASP (Application Service Provider) | A company that hosts and provides application software to customers over a network; distinct from Microsoft's Classic ASP. |
Crowd Sourcing | Obtaining ideas, work, or contributions from a distributed group of people, often through an online platform. |
ISP (Information Strategy Planning) | Planning how information systems and processes support business strategy; distinct from Internet Service Provider. |
SCM | Supply Chain Management: coordinating sourcing, production, movement, and delivery of goods or services. |
Words to distinguish together
| English term | Meaning and use |
|---|---|
SIS | Strategic Information System: an information system designed to support competitive or strategic advantage. |
POS | Point of Sale: systems that record and process transactions when goods or services are sold. |
DSS | Decision Support System: analytical tools and data helping people make semi-structured or unstructured decisions. |
EIS | Executive Information System: a system presenting selected information to senior managers for strategic oversight. |
PDM | Product Data Management: organizing product design and related data, often including versions and engineering changes. |
CKO | Chief Knowledge Officer: an executive role responsible for organizational knowledge-sharing strategy and practice. |
Words encountered in code and operations
| English term | Meaning and use |
|---|---|
CPM | Corporate Performance Management: planning, measuring, analyzing, and forecasting organizational performance. |
Groupware | Software supporting collaboration among a group, such as shared documents, messaging, or scheduling. |
BPM | Business Process Management: modeling, executing, measuring, and improving workflows across people and systems. |
ERM | Enterprise Risk Management: identifying, assessing, and managing risks across an organization. |
PLM | Product Lifecycle Management: coordinating product information and processes across conception, design, manufacture, service, and retirement. |
Clearing house | An intermediary service that reconciles, settles, or exchanges information or obligations between parties or systems. |
Reading these terms in context
A point-of-sale event may feed a CRM or supply-chain system, but POS itself records transactions at sale time. A decision-support system analyzes data; an executive information system summarizes information for strategic review. Product data management concentrates on product data, whereas lifecycle management covers a wider span of product work.
POS records a sale; CRM uses customer information; SCM plans supply; DSS helps analyze a decision.
Key takeaways
The shared word “system” does not make these acronyms interchangeable. Match each term to its principal work: relationships, supply, planning, decisions, product information, risk, or workflow. Also distinguish ASP meaning Application Service Provider here from Classic ASP server scripting.