Title: Critical issues in CRM adoption and implementation

Authors: Jane Chang, David C. Yen, Dale Young, Cheng-Yuan Ku

Addresses: Department of Decision Sciences and MIS, Richard T. Farmer School of Business, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056, USA. Department of Decision Sciences and MIS, Richard T. Farmer School of Business, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056, USA. Department of Information Systems and Communications, J. Whitney Bunting School of Business, Georgia College and State University, Milledgeville, Georgia 31061 USA. Department of Information Management, National Chung Cheng University, Ming-Hsiung, Chia-Yi 621, Taiwan, ROC

Abstract: Customer relationship management (CRM) is a fast growing category of application software. CRM is gaining interest because of its focus on the customer and thus its potential for increasing revenue. It enhances the ability of a firm to compete and to retain key customers. Furthermore, given the rapid growth of e-business applications and the increasing need to sell to and support customers through the web, CRM provides a focal point for all customer-facing activities. This review of CRM product capabilities and key CRM vendors identifies three distinct categories of CRM vendors and finds that they are attempting to offer a rich or full set of CRM features and are rapidly integrating web access into their products. The study proposes a model to aid in the selection of CRM products and the evaluation of CRM vendors.

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management (CRM); sales force automation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTM.2002.001633

International Journal of Services Technology and Management, 2002 Vol.3 No.3, pp.311-324

Published online: 24 Jul 2003 *

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