Automating repetitive CRM and ERP operations

Consider a company that receives orders through its website, by email, or through sales managers.

When a new order arrives, an employee opens the CRM, creates or finds the customer record, checks contact details, and adds a new deal. They then transfer the order information to the ERP: items, quantities, prices, payment method, delivery address, and other parameters.

Next, they check whether the goods are in stock or the service can be delivered. If everything is in order, the employee changes the deal status in the CRM, creates an order in the ERP, assigns a responsible person, and sends confirmation to the customer.

When payment arrives, they have to open the system again and change the status. They then create a task for the warehouse or service provider, notify the logistics coordinator, update the CRM comment, and sometimes move some information into another internal system.

After shipment, the process repeats: the ERP status changes, the CRM is updated, the customer receives a notification, and the manager gets the next task.

Each individual action takes little time. But with dozens or hundreds of orders, employees constantly switch between systems and repeat the same operations.

A typical sequence looks like this:

As a result, part of the working day goes into maintaining the information systems themselves rather than making decisions and working with customers.

The automated pipeline starts because a specific event has occurred, rather than because an employee has decided to open an application.

That event could be a new order, an incoming request, receipt of payment, a status change, creation of a customer, a deadline expiring, a database value changing, or data arriving through an API.

The CRM, ERP, or another system sends the event through an API, webhook, message queue, or periodic check. A python-script then receives the data and determines which actions need to be performed.

For example, when payment arrives, the system checks the order number and amount, finds the corresponding CRM deal, changes its status, and updates the ERP order at the same time.

The pipeline can then automatically create a warehouse task, set a deadline, assign a responsible person, and tell the customer that their order is being processed.

If the business process depends on additional conditions, these are checked automatically too. For example:

• if the amount > specified value → send for additional approval
• if the item is in stock → create a shipping task
• if the item is out of stock → notify the manager
• if the customer is new → create a CRM record
• if the customer already exists → link the order to the existing record

PostgreSQL can store reference data, the history of completed operations, matching rules, and a technical log. This lets the system know what has already been done, avoid duplicates, and recover correctly from a temporary error.

The CRM and ERP become parts of a single automated process rather than a collection of screens that employees must continually operate manually.

A person gets involved only when a decision, approval, or exception handling is required.

The employee sees the result of the completed sequence and intervenes only when an exception occurs.

A company processes customer orders through a CRM and ERP.

Previously, each time payment arrived, a manager performed several actions:

• Check the payment
• Change the CRM status
• Change the ERP status
• Create a warehouse task
• Add a comment
• Email the customer
• Notify the logistics coordinator

After automation, one event is enough:

• CRM updated
• ERP updated
• task created
• customer notified
• logistics coordinator notified

The time needed to complete this sequence is reduced to a few seconds.

This kind of automation is especially useful where employees constantly repeat the same actions:

• Creating customer records
• Changing deal statuses
• Automatically assigning responsible people
• Creating tasks for employees
• Transferring data from CRM → ERP
• Transferring data from ERP → CRM
• Checking required fields
• Sending emails after an event
• Telegram notifications
• Automatically closing tasks
• Creating orders
• Updating warehouse statuses
• Monitoring deadlines
• Escalating overdue tasks
• Creating documents in response to an event
• Synchronizing multiple systems

An automated system follows a simple logic:

But a real pipeline can be much longer:

What an employee previously handled as long sequences of actions can be performed by the system as a single automated process.

Automating operations is especially important where simply “clicking a few buttons automatically” is not enough.

The pipeline must understand what has happened and whether the action can be performed safely.

For example:

• the record already exists → do not create a duplicate
• the status has already changed → do not repeat the operation
• there is not enough data → send the exception to a person
• the ERP is temporarily unavailable → try again later
• the operation is complete → record the result in the log

Automation becomes controlled business logic rather than a collection of macros.