International Journal of Information Technology & Computer Science ( IJITCS ) (ISSN No : 2091-1610 )
Volume 6 : Issue on November / December , 2012
IDENTIFYING THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN KEY DEVELOPMENT STAGES AND CRITICAL
SUCCESS FACTORS FOR CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT
Ahmed Sanad
Department of informatics, Faculty of Technology,
De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
mail: p08040336@myemail.dmu.ac.uk
Christine Fidler
Department of informatics, Faculty of Technology,
De Montfort University, Leicester, UK,
Email: cf@dmu.ac.uk
Neil McBride
Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility,
Faculty of Technology, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK,
Email: nkm@dmu.ac.uk
Abstract
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) becomes essential solution for organisation looking for
increasing, retaining and satisfying their customers. Many organisations change their business process from
being product-centric to being customer-centric. By the end of 2012, it is predicted that companies will be
spending more than $13 billion on CRM packages. A survey conducted by Gartner (2012) for Chief Executive
Officers (CEOs) revealed that CEOs quoted CRM as their most significant area of investment to improve their
business over the next five years. However, studies have found that it is only a minority of CRM projects that
achieve success. It is argued that one of the reasons for this is the inappropriate assessment of Critical Success
Factors (CSFs) during the development life cycle of CRM implementation. In a project, CSFs need to be applied
in certain stages during life cycle of the project to achieve the purpose of adopting them. Therefore, the aim of
this research is to determine the relationships between the identified CSFs associated with CRM implementation
and the key development stages of CRM implementation, which revealed the important of these relationships for
the success of the implementation. The research involves fieldwork based on one particular national context; the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).
Keywords-Component ; CRM, critical success factors, successful CRM implementations, key development
stages of CRM project Word Count: 2267
1. Introduction
Customer Relationships Management (CRM) is defined as “A comprehensive strategy and process of
acquiring, retaining, and partnering with selective customers to create superior value for the company and the
customer. It involves the integration of marketing, sales, customer service, and the supply-chain functions of the
organisation to achieve greater efficiencies and effectiveness in delivering customer value” [20]. A successful
CRM implementation can help in growing, retaining, satisfying customers of organisations [17].
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International Journal of Information Technology & Computer Science ( IJITCS ) (ISSN No : 2091-1610 )
Volume 6 : Issue on November / December , 2012
Worldwide revenues for CRM solution reached $12 billion in 2011, and are expected to grow more than
$ 13 billion by the end of 2012, signifying the growth in demand for CRM solutions [9]. According to a survey
about technology priorities performed by Gartner Group [10] for 2,335 Chief information Officers (CIO)
participants, CRM was ranked at number 8 in 2012 instead of 18 ranked in 2011. Another survey conducted 2012
by Gartner [11] for Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) revealed that CEOs quoted CRM as their most significant
area of investment to improve their business over the next five years. On the other hand, studies have found that it
is only a minority of CRM projects that achieve success [13, 8, 19, 12, 23, and 22]. It is argued that one of the
reasons for this is the inappropriate assessment of Critical Success Factors (CSFs) during the development life
cycle of CRM implementation [1, 23, and 22]. CSFs are “hierarchical and can be identified at various levels in an
organisation or a project” [22]. Reference [12] stated that issues and challenges differ during project
implementation phases and thus it is necessary for a company to know what they should focus on during different
phases of the project. In a project, CSFs need to be applied in certain stages during life cycle of the project to
achieve the purpose of adopting them. This paper reports on research that has been undertaken to determine the
relationships between the identified CSFs associated with CRM implementations and the key development stages
of CRM implementation. The research involves fieldwork based on one particular national context; the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia (KSA).
2. Critical Success Factors history and definition
In 1961, Daniel was the first who discussed and applied the concept of CSFs but little attention was paid
to the concept at that time. A decade later, the concept was utlised by reference [21] in determining the critical
information needs of top executives. Reference [21] defined CSFs as “the limited number of areas in which
results, if they are satisfactory, will ensure successful competitive performance for the organisation”. CSFs need
to be paid a high level of attention by people to obtain a successful performance in their areas [16].
There are many ways to distinguish CSFs; these include benchmark analysis, best practice analysis
senior experts, independent consultants [24]. In all these cases, CSFs are extracted from individual’s professional
work experiences.
A factor can be known as critical due to its frequent connection to a successful outcome [15]. In terms of
CRM implementation, CSFs can be seen as those activities that need to be dealt with to assure a successful
implementation.
3. Research Strategy
Empirical research had been done to identify the relationships between the identified CSFs associated
with CRM implementations and the key development stages of CRM implementation. The national context for
this work was the KSA, as it is a country that has several CRM implementations with private sector organisations
which were readily accessible to the researchers. It was also interesting to investigate a developing country and its
use of CRM, given the western origins of such software and the limited existing CRM research in a developing
country context.
A research strategy that integrated case study and grounded theory was selected for this research. Six
organisations, which were known to have implemented CRM systems and where the viewpoints of CRM
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International Journal of Information Technology & Computer Science ( IJITCS ) (ISSN No : 2091-1610 )
Volume 6 : Issue on November / December , 2012
implementation aspects could be gained from different stakeholders, were selected as potential case studies to
represent a variety of private sectors of KSA (i.e. banking, telecom, automotive and transportation). Collecting
data from various stakeholders, both internal and external to the case study organisations, was vital to helping the
researcher in understand the situation in depth and to achieve the main aim of the research.
Three employees per organisation, each representing a different project stockholders group (i.e. the
project management team, the business staff and the IT staff) were initially selected, using purposeful sampling to
participate in individual, semi-structure interviews. In addition, 20 customers of the six organisations,
representing different ages, sex, marital status, parents for children and educational level were initially selected
for interviews.
In accordance with Grounded theory as qualitative data analysis method, theoretical sampling had to be
applied by continuing to interview more people in order to achieve data saturation. Only when data saturation is
reached can the principal questions of this research be deemed to have been answered.
The unit of analysis in each case was the organisation. The main sources were the perceptions and
viewpoints of the participants that have a relationship within the organisation such as employees and customers.
In order to identify the relationship between the CSF of CRM and the key development stages, the
researcher applied most of the CRM CSFs that identified in the literature [1, 8, 2, 6, 17, 7 and 24]. These CSFs
(cf. Table 1.0) examined by applying an ‘ending question’ as related to the work of reference [3] which showed
the lessons learnt by organisations after applying CRM application. The researcher asked direct questions to
participants of the organisations such as: ‘When do you think is the right stage to generate the project plan?’ or
‘What if things went along fine; when do you think the right stage would be for setting business priorities?’
Such questions were used across the representatives of different stakeholders groups within the different
participants in different organisations. The majority of the answers were consistent; however, there were a few
differing opinions which led the researcher to ask more people and take the most frequent answers.
4.
Research Discussion and Findings
The main aim of this research is to ascertain the connection between the identified CSFs of CRM and the key
development stages. The researcher has identified that each CSF needs to be executed in certain stages as shown
in Table 1.0; otherwise, it could impact negatively on the success of CRM implementation. For instance, end user
training and awareness factor need to start in the design phase in order to have the needed time for preparation
and implementation of this factor. The delay for this factor may have an impact on the readiness of the end user
when the CRM system in the production environment. The key development stages of CRM implementation, and
what CSFs require highlighting in each stage are explained in the following sections:
a. The Planning Stage
The Planning stage is to provide overall picture that include all the aspects that needed for the CRM
implementation [2]. At this stage, twelve CSFs should be considered and observed carefully. The organisation
should develop a customer-centric strategy that leads them to focus on customers rather than products and on this
basis the CRM strategy should be built to identify how the CRM project will be implemented. The CRM vision
should be created as a result of both customer-centric and CRM strategies. Customers' awareness, segmentation
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International Journal of Information Technology & Computer Science ( IJITCS ) (ISSN No : 2091-1610 )
Volume 6 : Issue on November / December , 2012
and involvement factors should be considered during the beginning of the planning stages. Sponsoring the
project by the business should start earlier to develop a clear business case for convincing the top management to
allocate the required budget, resources and support. CRM measurement factors should also be created clearly to
be used as an indicator for measuring the success of the implementation.
b. The Defining Stage
The Defining stage is used to define the project scope, high level business requirements team, resources
and CRM measurements [18]. Under business sponsorship, CRM measurements, customer involvement and
customer segmentation will be finalised at this stage to form the basis for business needs and priorities. Selecting
the best CRM solution that can meet the majority of the business requirements, with involvement and help of an
external consultant, is a major factor during this stage. Preparing a complete Request For Proposal (RFP) for
issuing to the different systems integrators, with the ultimate aim of awarding the best systems integrator from
vendor expert input, is deemed important for selecting the right integrator able to deliver on time and on budget.
In addition, data quality should start earlier as it needs time to reach an acceptable level of quality. Early end user
involvement and assigning a qualified and skilful project team is also deemed important during this stage as it
could help to build better communications and collaboration between project stakeholders. Defining the scope of
the integration that was needed with other systems is also considered important at this stage. The needed support
and resources are essential for the whole project period.
c. The Discovery Stage
The Discovery stage is a step down below the defining stage where there is a need for in-depth collection of
detailed business requirements [18]. Similar factors that were held in this stage would be continued in the
discovery stage with three additional factors. These three factors pertain to generating the project plan, preparing
the organisation for the needed changes for CRM implementation and splitting the implementation in phases.
d. The Design Stage
The Design stage includes detailed specifications which represent the business requirements as well as a base
for the construction stage [2 and 18]. At this stage, there is the execution of end user training and awareness and
assigning of the CRM champion to help to increase the buy-in for the project. Reducing the customisation of the
application should start at this stage via designing the application to meet the best practice. Other factors from
previous stages would be continued to be held such as data quality and organisational changes as shown in Table
1.0.
e.
The Construction Stage
The Construction stage is used to construct what has been designed during the design stage [2 and18]. During
this stage, similar factors of design will continue to take place with vendor experts’ involvement as an additional
factor for reviewing and auditing integrator work.
f. The Validation Stage
The Validation stage is the stage before the deployment stage whereby the CRM application sponsor needs to
test and validate the whole application before it goes live into the production environment [18]. More business
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International Journal of Information Technology & Computer Science ( IJITCS ) (ISSN No : 2091-1610 )
Volume 6 : Issue on November / December , 2012
driven and CRM awareness factors will continue to be executed in the validation stage such as end user
involvement and CRM awareness for business users and customer factors as presented in Table 1.0.
g. The Deployment Stage
The Deployment stage is the stage when the application moves from the testing to the production environment
([2 and 18]. At this stage, similar factors for validation are needed with the addition of CRM measurement factor
to measure the success of CRM implementation.
Validation
Deployment
Construction
Design
Discover
Concepts
Define
Seq
Planning
Table 1.0: CSFs of CRM and Key Development Stages.
1.
Data Quality
2.
End User Involvement
3.
Customers' Awareness
4.
End User Training & Awareness
5.
CRM Champions
6.
CRM Vision
7.
Building a business case
8.
Business Sponsorship
9.
Set Business Priorities
10.
Business Needs
11.
Team Qualifications and Skills
12.
Collaboration
13.
Integration
14.
Project Plan
15.
Minimise customisation
16.
Phased Approach
17.
CRM Success Measurement
18.
Customers' Segmentation
19.
Customers' Involvement
20.
Organisational Change
21.
CRM Strategy
22.
Developing Customer-Centric Strategy
23.
Budget
24.
Supports
25.
Resources
26.
Software Selection
27.
Vendor Experts
28.
External Consultant
29.
Systems Integrator Selection
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International Journal of Information Technology & Computer Science ( IJITCS ) (ISSN No : 2091-1610 )
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5.
30.
Data Privacy
31.
Customer Culture
32.
Policies & Procedures
Conclusion
In this study we have identified the relationships between the identified CSFs associated with CRM
implementation and the key development stages of CRM implementation from empirical study, which revealed
the important of these relationships for the success of the implementation. However, this a step forward to close
the gap more successful CRM implementations; and applicable for generalising beyond the KSA context.
For further work, two areas can be suggested for investigation. Firstly, interpretations of CSFs will be
different from individual to individual of CRM implementation. Thus, prioritise different CSFs, measure them
differently and monitor them differently.
Secondly, CSFs can be influenced by cause-effect networks. These complex networks will engage
interactions at various levels; and they will work in a dynamic mode in which both CSFs and their interactions
evolve over time.
Hence the rate of CRM implementation failures is high, we would suggest exploring the complex
interrelationships between CSFs in a project implementation to which result in emergent effects which
themselves influence the failure or success of a CRM.
6.
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