Identify the Critical Success Factors of CRM Implementation : A study on Chinese Commercial Bank

Abstract: The demand from the customer and pressure from the competitive market drive most of the Chinese commercial banks either on their way to implement the CRM systems or they are positively looking for the opportunity to integrate the CRM as an indispensable part of their business strategy in the next few years to come. Customer Relationship Management originated and prevailed among western companies, it has already spread in many East Asian countries, such as: Japan, Korean and China. In order to improve the existing CRM implementation process and enhance the success rate of the CRM implementation, we present the most important Critical Successful Factors for the CRM implementation through literature reviews, the chosen CSFs were based on previous studies in the CRM implementation field, focus on the identification of CRM projects, whether they have achieved success or subject to obscure deficiency. Subsequently, the literature study will provide us a group of CSFs which considered to be a comprehensive summarization of those most important factors for CRM implementation projects in western financial institutions. In order to better understand the current situation in China, we conduct two in-depth interviews with the experts in relevant domains, the questions of the interviews were designed to assess the CRM implementation in Chinese commercial banks, the problems and challenges, the feasibility of those CSFs in Chinese unique culture, and the practical experiences in implementing the CRM will be discussed. The result of the interviews supported the feasibility of those CSFs in implementing CRM in general, however, the CSFs and their importance in implementing CRM in China are varied due to the cultural issues and industry differences. This requires adaptable changes to be made to the CSFs group in order to use it more effectively under the Chinese environment. This thesis is addressing the subject of implementing CRM in China. As for this subject, it lacks sufficient theoretical and empirical researches, in addition, We conclude our research with dedicate effort by analyzing the empirical data from the interviews and proposed a guideline to emphasize the importance of the CSFs for the CRM implementation in Chinese banks and also increase the knowledge about the current CRM in Chinese commercial Banks, thus can help to increase the CRM implementation success rates in future.