The short answer
A CRM (customer relationship management) system handles everything before the deal: leads, contacts, conversations, quotes and the sales pipeline. An ERP (enterprise resource planning) system handles everything after it: orders, stock, purchasing, invoices, accounting and often payroll. Service companies usually need a CRM first. Companies that sell physical goods usually need an ERP first, and many already have one without calling it that.
For most small companies the real question is not which one to buy. It is how to connect the two, so a won deal becomes an order and an invoice without anyone typing it again. Here is how to work out where you stand, in five steps.
What is the difference between CRM and ERP?
Think of a company as front office and back office. The CRM is the front office: it remembers every customer and every promise. The ERP is the back office: it knows what was ordered, what is in stock, what was invoiced and what was paid.
Check what you already have
In Latvia, the ERP is often the accounting program. Tildes Jumis, which Visma says is used by more than 10,000 Latvian small and medium-sized companies, and Visma Horizon, common in larger companies, already hold your customers, invoices and often your stock. If you have one of them, you have most of an ERP.
The CRM is more often missing. Eurostat data for 2025 shows 17% of Latvian companies with ten or more employees using CRM software, against 29% across the EU, and 14% among companies with 10 to 49 people. ERP use was 32% in Latvia and 46% in the EU. In practice, sales in many Latvian companies live in email, Excel and someone's memory.
Find where work actually gets stuck
Do not start from the software categories. Start from the symptom.
Symptom → what it points to.
Most companies we map have a problem in the middle column of that list: the data exists, but in two places that do not talk. Leads fall through the cracks and stock numbers never match are the two we see most often.
Which one should come first?
Service businesses (agencies, consultancies, construction, real estate) live and die by the pipeline. Start with a CRM and keep the accounting program as the back office.
Wholesalers, distributors, shops and manufacturers live by orders and stock. Get the ERP right first, then add a CRM, or use the CRM features many ERPs include.
One suite or two specialised tools? All-in-one systems such as Odoo, Microsoft Dynamics or Directo avoid the integration but force one way of working. Two specialised tools (for example Pipedrive or HubSpot for sales, Jumis or Horizon for accounting) are each better at their job and need a connection. For a 10 to 50 person company the second route is usually cheaper and easier to change later, as long as the connection is built properly.
Connect them, so nobody types an order twice
A good CRM–ERP connection does three things. It decides which system owns the customer record, so a new VAT number is entered once. It turns a won deal into an order or a draft invoice in the ERP. And it sends the invoice and payment status back to the CRM, so the salesperson knows whether the customer has paid before calling them.
There is a deadline that makes this timely. Structured e-invoices between all Latvian companies become mandatory from 1 January 2028. Invoices will have to come out of your systems as structured data anyway, so connecting sales and accounting now saves doing the work twice.
This kind of connection is what we build in automations and integrations, usually live within two to four weeks.
Checklist: CRM, ERP or the connection?
Write down where your customer list lives today. If it is in more than one place, decide which system will own it.
Count how many times a won deal is typed by hand before it is invoiced. More than once means you need a connection, not another system.
Ask your accounting software provider whether it has an API or a data import. That decides how the connection can be built.
List the three questions salespeople ask finance every week (“has it been paid?”, “was it delivered?”). Those answers should appear in the CRM by themselves.
Check how your invoicing will produce e-invoices by 2028.
