Customer Relationship Management (CRM) : A multiple case study: analysing the critical factors of CRM implementation

Abstract: Nowadays a company’s focus has shifted from a product-centric view to a more customer-centric view. Customers play a major role for doing business with companies. That leads to the purpose of this research, which is to identify critical factors of CRM implementation and to gain a deeper understanding of how companies deal with those critical factors. This was done with the help of a qualitative method, where six case companies were taken under the research. These six case companies are operating in different industries (1) laundry system industry, (2) printing industry and (3) heavy industry. In addition, the aim of this thesis was to find out how CRM implementation is influenced by critical factors in terms of CRM process and CRM system, interaction of sales force, information / communication flow and organizational structure / culture. The main points which influence the critical factors of CRM implementation were (1) customer-focused, (2) create trust, (3) sharing information and knowledge and (4) decision-making. To overcome these points at first companies need to be customer-focused their sales force need to be able to create trust with customers. Also it is important that companies have a well-implemented information / communication flow to optimise the decision-making process. Within the research more points for how an international organization can manage these critical factors are described. The collected data was analysed with the help of the theoretical framework. The conclusion could be drawn that, a well implemented CRM would help companies to build a better customer relationship and to be able to know as much about customers as possible.