Executive Summary

Many organisations today have discovered it is a mistake to think about Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems exclusively in technological terms. A customer focus without accurate information is similar to attempting to circumnavigate the planet without a map. 1 Investing in information technology without relevant questions or a plan for application can lead to the development of a very expensive toy that offers no return on investment. While the planning and implementation of the CRM projects are examined in this work, potential organisational problems and barriers in the attitude of involved employees are analyzed for each implementation phase. The foundation of an accurate CRM implementation is the adoption of a firm’s strategy that should be designed to optimize both profitability and customer satisfaction. To realize CRM, organisations must foster behaviours and implement processes and technologies which support coordinated customer interactions throughout all customer channels. In order to achieve this, organisations must develop the strategic and functional components of the CRM projects. The implementation of a CRM strategy is a series of small projects. These projects are all identified when the strategy is defined, and they normally fall into the categories: developing a strategy, implementing operational and analytical projects. If this is not done accurately and/or there is lack of management understanding and commitment, the organisation can be exposed to problems such as retention of employees or data quality problems. The organisation is thus not in a position to initiate the desired customer relationship and to increase revenues while at the same time reducing costs.

1 Zikmund, McLeaod, Gilbert (2003), p. 5

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Table of Contents

  Executive Summary  2

Table of  Contents  3

  List of abbreviations  4

  List of figures  5

1  Introduction  1

2  Background  1

2.1  Customer Relationship Management (CRM)  1

2.2  Objectives and Benefits of CRM  2

2.3  CRM Process  3

3  An Inherent Problem of Strategy Implementation  4

4  The Implementation Phases of CRM Systems  5

4.1  Strategic CRM versus Functional CRM  5

4.2  Developing a CRM Strategy  5

4.3  Operational CRM Projects  7

4.4  Analytical CRM Projects  8

4.5  Deploying Operational and Analytical Outputs  9

5  Conclusion  11

  Bibliography  12

  ITM Checklist 360 Analysis  13

  Declaration  14

List of abbreviations

  CRM Customer Relationship Management  

  IT Information Technology  

  SFA Sales Force Automation  

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List of figures

Figure 1: Potential Costs and Benefits of CRM Sytems

Figure 2: The CRM Process as a Hub of Applied Learning

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