A systemic perspective of a customer relationship management solution for business

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is not a new topic, but the advent of technologybased CRM solutions has enabled companies to deal better on an individual level andmore efficiently with their large customer base. Seeing the benefits of this competitiveadvantage many companies have implemented a CRM solution but with the result thatmany of them have failed to be successful. The problem is that these companies often donot know why they were not successful and other companies will make the same mistakesif these failures are not recognized.There is a great deal of literature and research analysing this phenomenon but they all focusmainly on detailed CRM issues and how they could be performed better. They do nottake into account that CRM is a complex topic and that many reasons for failure interactwith each other. Based on the need of many companies to implement CRM, the goal of thisresearch is to provide a CRM insight perspective and a strategy to implement CRM moresuccessfully.In contrast to existing CRM research, this study investigates twenty-one reasons for CRMfailure in three knowledge areas and explains why each one could threaten the success of aCRM implementation. The first area determines the danger of every risk based on the likelihoodof appearance and its potential to fail the complete CRM solution. The second areaidentifies when these risks are most likely to appear for the first time during a CRM projectlife cycle. The third area examines all relationships between the twenty-one CRM risks andhow they influence each other.It is concluded that every CRM implementation approach will fail to be successful whenproblems are only addressed once they become visible. It is not possible to solve everyCRM problem at the moment it appears. Many issues during the implementation of CRMhave to be met before they become a problem because they influence each other and leadto barriers that could result in a complete CRM failure.Based on this perception and the research findings, which included 106 of the top 500companies worldwide, this study develops a CRM strategy framework including a systemicCRM perspective for businesses.