Every company works individually according to its own specifications; it is also said that "every company ticks differently". For this reason, almost all companies accumulate countless Excel spreadsheets and other documents over time, which are often stored in different locations in different directories. Since ready-made ERP software usually only covers part of a company's requirements, the company has no choice but to collect data in this form. However, this way of working makes it difficult to keep track of all the data in the long term.
An overall solution can offer an individually customizable and expandable ERP system at this point. With the FileMaker platform, an outstandingly scalable database system is available for this purpose, which can also be used by non-IT professionals to make adjustments. With gFM-Business, we offer ERP software with CRM, Invoice and merchandise management, which can be adapted to individual requirements within the framework of open or customizing licenses.
Table of contents
Customer management with the CRM
A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system forms the area of Customer management from. In addition to addresses, contact persons, bank details and many other data, actions such as telephone calls or meetings can be recorded in a CRM, which can be saved in chronological order for the customer and called up as a resubmission. In order to be able to find customers, suppliers and interested parties at any time according to various criteria, a CRM offers a large number of individual selection fields. Documents and any number of files can also be saved for each customer. A good CRM offers the option of transferring addresses and appointments to other programs such as Microsoft Outlook or the Apple applications from macOS. Some CRM systems also offer the option of calculating and displaying routes between two locations. In a CRM system, all data associated with a contact, such as quotations, invoices, services or SEPA mandates, can be viewed and accessed. The gFM-Business ERP system contains an integrated CRM that includes all of the above functions and a customer-related statistics module as standard. A total of up to 35 fields and their input type can be freely defined for customers and addresses in gFM-Business.
In addition, the CRM can be extended with any functions in the open or customizing license. For example, it is easily possible to automatically make any data from the CRM available in other modules or to link data from other modules with customer data. Of course, the database can be extended in all data tables by any number of fields. Your own modules, such as an individual tracking system for repairs, can be linked directly to the CRM module. All versions of gFM-Business also allow the Access to data from gFM-Business from your own FileMaker databases.
Merchandise management with article, warehouse and inventory management
With merchandise management or the Merchandise management system is the sub-area of the flow of goods in a company. For its part, merchandise management usually consists of a Article management and invoicing to create quotations, invoices and other documents. To be able to use addresses from the CRM to create documents, for example, merchandise management is also connected to the CRM. Many merchandise management systems have interfaces to logistics service providers such as DHL or UPS and sometimes also to online store systems in order to automatically transfer orders from the online store to the billing system.
Ideally, item management in a merchandise management system contains a warehouse management function in which every goods receipt and goods issue as well as manual stock changes are recorded in a log. The article management of a merchandise management system often contains interfaces for importing or exporting articles from external files or online stores.
The integrated merchandise management of the gFM-Business ERP system contains all the functions mentioned above and can be expanded with additional functions as part of an open or customizing license. For example, we have developed an individual industry solution for a printing company on the basis of gFM-Business Professional, in which numerous product properties can influence the pricing in the billing document. For example, if the properties of several products in a document match, different scale prices are automatically used for all relevant products on the document. In the area of merchandise management, numerous and extensive customizations are possible in order to adapt the software to the individual business processes of a company in the best possible way.
Document management and correspondence
Another part of a company consists of correspondence with other companies or private individuals. This is why many ERP systems also include a module for creating and managing documents. The document management module is usually linked to the CRM so that documents can be assigned directly to the stored contacts.
The document management module included in gFM-Business can be used to send any letters, serial letters, faxes, e-mails and newsletters to contacts from the CRM. Additional software such as Microsoft Word is not required. The software supports the sending of graphic e-mails and newsletters by integrating the text to be sent into an HTML template. In addition, existing paper documents can be scanned and archived directly in the software with multilingual text recognition.
Individual adaptations and extensions can also be implemented in the document management module in the open or customizing license. In addition, all print layouts in all versions of gFM-Business can be fully edited and extended with FileMaker Pro.
Project management
Many companies use Project management-software to bundle various information and documents within a project. Practically every Agency software includes a module for project management. The gFM-Business ERP system supports the addition of any number of customers, contacts, services, employees, documents, quotations, orders, invoices, credit notes and purchase orders to a project. In addition, any number of project activities and files can be attached to a project.
Individual changes or extensions can also be implemented in the area of project management with the open or customizing license. This makes it easy to link any additional data to a project.
The ERP system: the sum of all modules.
An ERP system (Enterprise Resource Planning) is a software system that maps the majority of a company's business processes. An ERP system often consists of precisely these modules: CRM, merchandise management/invoicing, article and warehouse management, document management and often also project management. The aim of ERP software is to map as many of a company's processes as possible within a single software package in order to avoid duplicate data or the accumulation of loose documents. This is to ensure that all information can be used immediately wherever it is needed.
A CRM system such as gFM-Business already maps the majority of all processes that generally occur in a company. The software offers all the functions mentioned in this article as well as additional modules such as a Inventory management, logbook management and comprehensive company statistics. In addition, SEPA mandates and direct debits as well as account statements can be managed with online banking software and invoices can be posted to a posting list, which can be transferred to a tax consultant via DATEV export.
In larger companies or more complex environments, however, it is often necessary to expand the software with additional data or functions in order to achieve the best possible results in data management. For this purpose, we offer the gFM-Business ERP system as a customizing or open license, which is ideally suited for the implementation of individual extensions due to its FileMaker basis.
More information about the gFM-Business ERP software
By loading the video, you accept YouTube's privacy policy.
Learn more
ERP software customizable with Claris FileMaker Pro
The gFM-Business ERP software is customizable with Claris FileMaker Pro and has detailed documentation for customizing and extending the software. The custom and open licenses of gFM-Business include a developer module that further supports the customization and extension of the ERP software. In this way, both in-house developers and external FileMaker developers can customize and extend the ERP software to your individual requirements after a short training period.
Markus Schall has been developing individual databases, interfaces and business applications based on Claris FileMaker since 1994. He is a Claris partner, FMM Award winner 2011 and developer of the ERP software gFM-Business. He is also a book author and founder of the M. Schall Publishers.
