Investigating CRM from an organisational perspective: identifying the factors conceptualising the model

For an organisation to undertake a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) implementation program it needs to consider a multitude of issues. Some authors have hinted at viewing CRM within a wider perspective. The aim of this paper is to discuss the domain of CRM from an organisation's point of view. However, CRM needs to be identified as the whole organisation, including its internal and external environments. Undertaking CRM in any organisation needs to be preceded by a sequence of stages. An organization needs to develop a roadmap outlining the path to become CRM centric. Therefore an organisation should address, or at least consider, a list of those factors at every stage of CRM, in order to let the implementation program to be effective. The main focus of research in CRM has been customer centric. This paper, being the first stage of much wider research, will focus on the organisation and the internal environment. This paper will identify three information systems (IS) and information technology (IT) streams in organisations that are integral parts of CRM. These need to achieve a level of synergy for successful CRM. To understand these three streams (front-end systems, back-end systems, and data-handling technologies) in a CRM project is too great in magnitude at this early stage of the research. This paper begins to draw together the tenuous links between the three streams of information systems (IS) and information technology (IT) systems to generate a two-stage conceptual model of CRM from an organisational perspective. Stage-one describes the descendants in each information system and technology stream, stage-two conceptualises the model of the whole organisation. 2 Introduction. The purpose of this paper is to form a conceptual framework of CRM from an organisation perspective. CRM means different things to different people (Winer, 2001). The dominant view in the literature comes from the sales and marketing perspective. This perspective states that CRM is making the organisation customer centric, using new techniques and technologies, and making the customer an integral part of the organisation. The sales and marketing literature suggests that CRM is about getting to know your clients better through the use of technology. This is not in dispute in this paper. This paper instead suggests that very few authors are looking at CRM from the organisational perspective, its technology, processes and people. Looking at the literature analysis undertaken by Romano (2001), and Romano and Fjermestad (2002), researchers have focused primarily …