Customer Relationship Management

Customer relationship management is one of the most important IT management practices to emerge in the past few years. CRM is the front end of the supply chain and entails the integration of all customer contact points such as phone calls, email, fax, face-to-face, and internet to provide product and service information, to process orders, to collect payments, to deliver products, and to service customers before, during and after the sale. Check out the leaders in CRM ASP software at Seibel.com and Convergys.com.

The group may begin by briefly explaining CMR concept, presenting statistics on the dollars spent on CMR, industry leaders, and arguments why retaining and upselling to current customers is more profitable than attracting new customers.

Ideally, your presentation should include one or two case studies of organizations that have adopted CRM and how it affected the organization.

If you do a case study, provide the Company Background by including:

• Size of company in terms of sales and profits
• Major products the company sells
• General characteristics of their customers
• Organizational chart--who does the CIO report to?
• How many people work for the IT organization?
• What is the annual IT budget?

The CRM project case should include:

• Project scope, time and budget estimate
• Actual project delivery date and budget
• Use of outside consultants
• Changes in business processes (does the customer notice a difference?)
• How data collected with CRM is analyzed and used
• Degree of success and failure of the project
• Lessons learned by the company

It would be great if we could actually see the CRM system--what do the screens look like, who uses the information captured?

The group should end the presentation on best practices for ensuring successful CRM projects. Are there practices unique to CRM or are best practices the same as other large IT-enabled projects?

Other potential ideas for the presentation:

• A brief overview or demonstration of CRM software (10 minutes or less)
• Lists of companies adopting CRM
• Issues with outsourcing CRM

If you have other creative ideas, please feel free to discuss them with me.

Some helpful readings:

Goodhue, D., Wixom, B., and Watson, H., "Realizing Business Benefits Through CRM: Hitting the Right Target in the Right Way," MIS Quarterly Executive, Vol. 1, 2, June 2002, pp. 79-94.

Swift, R., "Executive Response: CRM is Changing Our Eras, " MIS Quarterly Executive, Vol. 1, 2, June 2002, pp. 95-96.