Related Literature on Crm Essay

According to Gartner Inc., the provider of research and analysis on the global information technology industry, the estimated size of the CRM software market in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa was approximately $2.3 billion in total software revenue in 2006. The forecast indicated that the market will have an annual growth rate of 11.3%, which will result in revenue of approximately $3.9 billion by 2011. Companies based all over the world are developing their own approaches to the CRM business strategy in order to increase their efficiency and effectiveness in operations. With the wide spread of CRM, problems and issues examined in this study are apparently not unique to the U.S. Heinrich (2005) examined the role of CRM in the development of the relationship CRM in Russia and US Journal of Technology Research Page 4between the customer and the company in the context of goal implementation. He addressed the process goals of CRM involved in the development of the relationship including building trust, the transaction, and the conversion to a social relationship. He found little relationship between the collection of data and the success of the salesperson and identified 10 relationship motive categories of customers including: gratitude oriented, prestige oriented, collective oriented, experience oriented, and security oriented. CRM, in his view, is a tool not as an end but the means to the end. Nairn (2002) says the origins of CRM can be traced back to the July issue of the 21st volume of the Journal Marketing where â€Å"segmentation† was first mentioned in 1956. Put literally CRM is the practice of managing relationships differently within different customer segments; with the advent of information technology and the application of statistical research methods, the ability to segment customers has become accessible to virtually any organization; as a result the CRM industry grew exponentially from the mid to late 1990s. Vendor hype would have the market believe that CRM technology applications are a panacea for all things related to the customer, yet the market is replete with CRM technology implementation failures resulting in billions of wasted investment dollars, all in search of a CRM nirvana that never eventuated. Starkey & Woodcock (2002) state that contributors to CRM failure include managerial short-term focus, failure to see change through, ignoring the basics of what defines good CRM and business performance, making CRM too complicated, CRM existing functional and departmental silos, customer management techniques and practices not widespread and poor implementation of customer management projects to name just a few. Enterprise web identity If you work within a larger organization, always make your relationship to the larger enterprise a clear and meaningful part of your site design. If your institution has an identity program or a web template system, use it. Adopting the design standards of the larger enterprise can save you a lot of time and money. Institutions notorious for poor governance—universities, government agencies, large nonprofit agencies—also often have chaotic web sites. Large companies sometimes have the same problems, but the standards and norms of corporate identity programs are well established in the business world, and most corporate sites start with the expectation that everyone will share a common look and feel and user interface and that each discrete corporate site will project a clear relationship to the parent enterprise.