Managing the implementation of customer relationship management from an interfunctional perspective

Abstract: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has received an increasing amount of interest among scholars and practitioner in recent years. While some companies have received immense benefits from their investments, other companies have seen no bottom line improvements. One often-cited reason for high failure rates has been the cross-functional nature of CRM implementation. Two functions frequently involved in CRM implementation are marketing and information technology (IT). Consequently, this thesis combines the two fields of interfunctional relations and CRM, and the research problem addressed is: How do interfunctional relations between the marketing department and the IT department affect the implementation of CRM? A cross-sectional mail survey was undertaken, resulting in data from 415 IT and marketing managers of large Swedish companies. Half of the companies had implemented CRM systems. Overall, the marketing and IT departments seem to have good relationships and provide a uniform view of their perceptions of CRM and their interfunctional relations. The main finding was that companies utilizing CRM have higher levels of interfunctional integration and also higher perceptions of performance. Results also indicate that perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and managers' involvement in CRM implementation did not appear to have any effect upon performance. Finally, findings from this study show the importance of interdepartmental collaboration as a facilitator, both for performance and perceived usefulness of the CRM system.