Employee Relationship Management (ERM) systems also use the same foundation of CRM, yet the focus of these specific types of systems are on employees instead of customers. Many businesses that rely on indirect channels of distribution for a significant proportion of their revenue rely on PRM systems to manage their channels through automated applications often delivered in security-protected portals or websites. Included in these portals are applications for managing sales lead generation programs, reimbursement of advertising that distribution channel partners have paid for, and applications that give distribution channel partners the ability to track their orders and also place new sales orders. As the book points out, Levi's Jeans relies on indirect channels for the majority of their revenue, and as is common in the apparel industry, the company also provides support for advertising expenses on the part of their distribution channel partners. All of these tasks and processes are handled through the PRM online portals.

ECM systems are also often managed through Web-enabled portals so Human Resources managers can better serve employees and manage their benefits. Within these Web portals employee objectives, performance appraisals, employee-based compensation and employee training schedules and results are all tracked.

Just as with CRM systems, PRM and ECM systems also rely on an extensive level of integration between systems that may have been operating independently and isolated in the past. The greater the level of integration between systems with distribution channel partners in the case of PRM systems, or employees in the case of ECM systems, the greater the effectiveness of these systems. Being more responsive and informed in serving channel partners and assisting employees is possible when these two types of systems are launched and maintained well.

Unit Four writing assignment: What is project management? List and describe the project management activities and variables addressed by project management.

Project management is comprised of ten specific activities that form the foundation of the project plans used for attaining project objectives. There are five specific variables that project management must balance objectives against to ensure project success as well.
In automating the project management process, software companies have taken the ten specific activities of discussed here to form the foundation of their applications. These ten specific activities are commonly implemented both in manually-based and automated project management projects as well. The activities include planning the work and defining the objectives, assessing risks, estimating resources required to accomplish the work, organizing the work, acquiring human and material resources, assigning tasks, directing activities, controlling project execution, reporting progress, and analyzing the results. Many software applications provide a variety of graphical interfaces for portraying progress to project goals relative to these ten activities including support Gantt and PERT charts for example. In addition to these ten activities projects must contend with scope, time, cost, quality and risk variability in the pursuit of project objectives.

In conclusion, project management as a discipline has progressed rapidly due to the use of enterprise-wide applications that automate the ten activities that form the foundation of its methodology or approach to getting objectives accomplished. The use of advanced constraint-based modeling in software applications takes into account the five variables of scope, time, cost, quality and risk variability, providing project managers with trade-offs between these variables necessary for project goals to be accomplished.