We have to recognize that our customers view us as a supplier, so our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system overlaps their Supply Chain Management (SCM) systems. Our suppliers see us as their customer, so our SCM system overlaps their CRM systems. Given this broader perspective, CRM and SCM systems would benefit from being highly integrated and might mature in the future to actually be the same systems. CRM and SCM might then be considered two sides of the same coin rather than as separate enterprise systems.

What might it mean to an organization to have an enterprise system that would be used to manage both customers and suppliers rather than have those two types of relationships managed in different systems? What might be the major advantages or disadvantages of such an evolution?