The critical success factors of customer relationship management (CRM) technological initiatives

Customers are any organizations' best assets. As an increasing number of organizations realize the importance of becoming more customer-centric in today's competitive economy, they are also discovering that they must deliver knowledge about their customers, products, and services internally (i.e across multiple organizational functions) and externally (i.e at all customer touch points). Therefore, enterprise executives are interested in knowing the Critical Success Factors that will drive their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technological initiatives. CRM technological initiatives help foster a customer-centric business strategy, the diffusion of knowledge, a unified face to all customers, and a holistic view of customers. There is no empirical research, to our knowledge, that delves into an understanding of the Critical Success Factors behind CRM technological initiatives. Nor has it been demonstrated that different profiles of Critical Success Factors exist for specific CRM technological initiatives such as Customer Support and Service (CSS), Sales Force Automation (SFA), and Enterprise Marketing Automation (EMA). This thesis compiles the Critical Success Factors of CRM technological initiatives using empirical data from 101 organizations across Canada. The Partial Least Squares (PLS) Structural Equation Modeling method was used to analyze the collected data. A comparison between 57 adopters of CRM technology and 44 non-adopters of CRM technology indicates that the levels of strategic perceived benefits, top management support, and knowledge management capabilities differ between these two independent groups. The core finding of this study reveals that technological readiness, alone, does not lead to successful CRM technological initiatives. Possessing knowledge management capabilities emerges as the most significant critical success factor of CRM technological initiatives and is strongly related to technological readiness. Top management support is significant for all CRM technological initiatives with the exception of the SFA CRM Infrastructure.