Customer Relationship Management Software Implementation in SMEs
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
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Authors
Date
2017
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Information and Service Management (ISM)
Language
en
Pages
76
Series
Abstract
Successful customer relationship management (CRM) software adoption has many significant benefits to a company. Among the benefits are possibility to target the most profitable customers, therefore maximizing company’s profitability, as well as efficient allocation of resources and superior customer service. However, many CRM implementations are unsuccessful. There are many reasons for that, among which can be inadequate planning or unreasonable expectations. Therefore, it is important to study the factors that affect the successfulness of CRM software implementation. Moreover, CRM software is recently, increasingly adopted by SMEs and is not only the privilege of large enterprises these days. The specific attributes of SMEs, such as being heavily centered around management, low in-house IT skills and scarcity of resources mean that the CRM implementation within SMEs need to be approached differently from CRM implementations in large enterprises. The objective of this thesis is to identify the critical success factors (CSF) of CRM software implementation in SMEs. It does so, by reviewing the current literature and combining a theoretical framework for a case study of a company that has recently implemented a CRM software. The CRM software adoption process is described in the thesis to have three separate phases: Decision to adopt, software selection and software implementation. After a company decides to adopt a CRM software, it needs to select the right software, to fulfill the needs of the company, and implement the software. This thesis is primarily focused on the software implementation phase of the process but software selection is very closely related to the software implementation, therefore software selection is also included to some extent in the thesis. Moreover, some of the identified critical success factors of CRM software implementation, presented in the thesis are directly or indirectly related to software selection. From the literature review, six critical success factors are identified. These factors are management support and involvement, system compatibility, involvement of end users, determination of requirements, solidifying working practices and external assistance. In this thesis, the implementation of CRM software is studied through a real business case. The case company has implemented a CRM software one and a half years ago, and the implementation has been successful to some extent but there are some aspects in the system that are not entirely used the way, they were originally intended to be used. The study tries to identify the reasons for this and gain insight on the principles of successful implementation of CRM software within SMEs. The case study highlights the importance of user training as a factor, critical to the success of CRM software implementation, therefore user training is added to the list of critical success factors of CRM software implementation in SMEs. Furthermore, user training is mentioned in the literature review as part of end user involvement but these two factors are independent of each other as end users can be involved in the implementation without adequate user training and vice versa.Description
Thesis advisor
Tuunainen, VirpiKeywords
CRM software, IT, implementation, SMEs, software selection, user training