A Review of the Issues Associated with Customer Relationship Management Systems

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) standard package software has become a key contributor to attempts at aligning business and IT strategies in recent years. The past decade has witnessed a shift from the need to manage transactions to that of the need to manage relationships. Where Enterprise Resource Planning software dominated the management of transactions era, CRM software leads in regard to relationships. At present, a balanced view of CRM software is scantly presented instead relying on vendor rhetoric. This paper aims to make a contribution to this neglected area by presenting an analysis of some of the key issues associated with CRM systems. Three issues emerge: the limitations of CRM standard software, the need for a holistic view of CRM projects and the problems of a dominant management perspective of CRM projects. It is argued that these issues could be more readily accommodated by organisational detachment from beliefs in IT as utopia, consideration of prior IS theory and practice and a more informed approach to CRM software selection. The paper also raises research questions in relation to CRM systems, IT maturity, standard software trends and the role of the IS function.