Glossary
Central software that brings a company's operations (sales, purchasing, inventory, production, accounting) together around a single database to eliminate re-entry and give a unified view.
An ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system is a company's central nervous system: one application, one database, in which a customer order triggers an inventory reservation, production planning, purchasing of missing components and invoicing. Every department sees the same information at the same time.
In an SMB without an ERP, information travels through emails, Excel files and Access databases. The same customer exists in three systems, spelled three ways. The ERP replaces those silos with a continuous flow and cuts re-entry errors, the leading cause of delays.
A standard cloud ERP (Odoo, NetSuite, Dynamics 365 Business Central) is rented per user per month and suits common processes. An open-source ERP installs for free but has to be configured and hosted by you. A custom or hybrid ERP builds the modules that set the company apart and connects the rest to existing tools, such as accounting.
For a Quebec SMB of 20 to 100 employees, an implementation usually lands between $50,000 and $300,000 in the first year, including licences, configuration, data migration and training. Recurring costs (subscriptions, maintenance) follow. The real comparison is the five-year total cost of ownership, not the licence price.
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A CRM manages the customer relationship before the sale: leads, quotes, follow-ups. The ERP takes over afterwards: order, production, delivery, invoicing. Many ERPs include a basic CRM module.
There is no headcount threshold. The signal is operational: when the same data is entered twice, when nobody knows exactly what is in stock, when month-end takes a week.
From 3 to 12 months depending on scope. A phased approach that delivers the most painful module first lowers the risk and lets you adjust the rest along the way.
