CRM Success Factors

Top Management Commitment and Support

CRM enactment is considered in the management involvement is considered one of the

top plans because of the success factors it has and also the factors that are preeminent has proven

the successful implementation of CRM. It is the broad strategy that requires a lot of support by

the top level organisational structure considering the execution of CRM scope (Wilson, Daniel

and McDonald, 2002). The main focus of the board is on backing the implementation of CRM

properly and also acquiring a large amount of financial effort on pushing these projects ahead.

Explain and Communicate CRM Strategy

The complete explanation of CRM strategy and working the strategy by the company’s

strategy would benefit the adaptation of various actors including the work ethics and the working

environment towards the customer-centric approach. The deficiency of a logical CRM strategy

or the complete absence in its plan can result in an absolute failure of CRM implementation.

Also, to raise the awareness of the staff a strategy is required to clear the purpose, execution and

welfare of CRM in a good manner. The attain the success in determining the goals of CRM, it is

necessary to develop an environment useful to give a boost to all the staff members so that they

learn from the novel ideas presented in front of them and information related to customer service

(Wilson, Daniel and McDonald, 2002). Rigidness in acquiring the new ways should be

minimised to get the best results possible.

Inter-Departmental Integration

From the bird's eye view, the CRM application consists of a wide influence organisation

wise. The perfect combination of the different departments working and the function of the

organisation with a framework will reinforce the flow of information. Although it is necessary
that all the areas should work in full collaboration, there are special areas of functioning that has

the most impact on the customer such as marketing, sales, and services (Wilson, Daniel and

McDonald, 2002). By getting these areas in complete and unified motion the benefits are huge.

Skilful Staff

Staff members play the most beneficial role in the success of the CRM project. There are

several points which should be taken into account to get all the best results possible for example

to resolve that issues arise of learning new ways to work, training lessons, change resistance,

inclination toward sharing information, and also the inspiring staff is important (Almotairi,

2008).

Key Information on Customers

To fulfil the needs of the customer, it is important to require and assess the quality and

quantity properly. To design the actual customised product all the necessary information is

needed.

Manage IT Structure

It is the misconception that CRM is used as the only technological solution that fails in

CRM projects. However, to acquire and manage the valuable data on customer IT acts as an

enabler (Almotairi, 2008). The crucial aspects of that come on the way of successful CRM

implementations are capabilities of data and software design including the motivating force o

internet.

Customer Involvement

The involvement of the customer either directly or indirectly in CRM designing is

considered an important factor in CRM designing. This type of participation helps the

organisation to assess the life cycle of the customer as well as helps in finding out the
problematic areas that can be resolved by CRM (Almotairi, 2008). Besides, the customer's

feedback is also important as well as the interaction with CRM systems could be enhanced with

their participation.

CRM Technology

The CRM system collects all the necessary data regarding customers through different

areas or the areas of interaction which includes the website of the company, phones, emails, and

social networking sites (Johnson, 2004). It also gives the relevant information regarding the

customer to help out the staff such as customer’s particular information, selling history,

purchasing preferences.

Components of CRM

Primarily CRM software integrates the entire necessary customer's information into a single

database to increase the accessibility and management by the business user.

 Marketing automation

With marketing automation and CRM tools, the marketing efforts can be enhanced at

different levels of life. For example, as the likelihood of getting the sales to come into the

system it will enter automatically via an e-mail or social media network with the aim of

shaping a complete customer from sales (Johnson, 2004).

 Salesforce automation

This tool is necessary for tracking the interaction of the customer and operate the

business of the sales that lead in attracting and obtaining new consumer.

 Contact centre automation

Its function is to minimise the monotonous aspects of a contact centre agent's job. In the

distribution of information and customer problem solving prerecorded audio is included

 in contact centre automation (Johnson, 2004). With the perfect combination of software

tools and agent's desktop tools can be helpful in handling customer's request to ease

consumer service technique.

 Geolocation technology or location-based services

Based on the availability of customer’s geographic location there is a technology related

to CRM system that can create geographic marketing campaigns it sometimes also

collects geographic information from GPS apps (Saini, Grewal and Johnson, 2010). It is a

networking tool that helps to find the likelihood of sales related to location.

 Workflow automation

It positively affects the business by reducing unnecessary workload, helping the

employees to work creatively and focus on high-level tasks.

 Lead management

CRM is also helpful in tracking sales leads enabling sales teams to receive, evaluate and

summarise the data for the essential leads.

 Human resource management

Tracking the details such as such as contact particulars, performance evaluation and

advantages related to the company is also an important aspect of CRM systems (Saini,

Grewal and Johnson, 2010). This helps in enabling the internal workforce.

 Analytics

The main focus of CRM analytics is to maximise the satisfactory rate of the customer by

creating the marketing campaign for the targeted population (Saini, Grewal and Johnson,

2010).

 AI in CRM
 To automate repetitive tasks technologies of Artificial intelligence, such as Salesforce

Einstein, the platform is made especially for CRM it can also asses customer's buying

pattern to predict its behaviour (Saini, Grewal and Johnson, 2010).

Evolution of CRM

The development of CRM happened around the 1950's and then starts to develop day by

day afterwards until the 1970's. Initially in the 1980’s sales reps launched into Database

Marketing, marking a significant shift from direct marketing. In the late 1980’s the substructure

of CRM which is laid today (Chen and Popovich, 2003). The first contact management software

and basic software system which we see now taking shape with Act & Goldmine that manage

one or the other functionalities of Sales and Marketing. The first mobile CRM - Siebel Sales

Handheld by Siebel was launched in the late 1990’s. Due to lack of adequate devices the

adoption of CRM was considered poor (Chen and Popovich, 2003).

The first marketing automation software was started Eloqua and Salesforce.com initiated

the first Software as a Service (SaaS) CRM in 1999. Paul Greenberg’s (CRM at the Speed of

Light) the book that suggested a more comprehensive CRM organisation in the early 2000’s that

improves business relationships (Chen and Popovich, 2003). CRM being synonymous to open-

Source & Cloud-based CRM trends in the last decades. The onset of the hashtag age was in the

2000s, in which the Social CRM was dominating the way. The business was shifted to the

interaction of the client’s relationship.

It is satisfactory to say that the future of CRM looks quite optimistic, as a cloud-

solutions are gaining traction and becoming essential to businesses as well as based and (SaaS)

CRM (Chen and Popovich, 2003). There are three main focal areas of CRM which are as

follows: sales, marketing, and service, as well as providing mobility.

 CRM Models

The IDIC Model

Peppers with his partner Rogers have developed the IDIC model in 2004. According to

this representation, three areas need to be followed to build the direct contact and perfect

relationship with the customer:

 Identifying the company's status and understand their requirements fully.

 Differentiating the customers by knowing which customer will benefit the company

most and which will prove useful in the future.

 Interacting is the best way to show the customer that the company understands their

requirements fully and to ensure their connection with other resourceful brands.

 Customising the offer to meet the expectation of the customer.

The Quality Competitiveness Index Model (QCI)

They are involved in the management of the customers by assisting blue chip companies.

It is the customer management model which is described above. In the centre there lies

the retention and acquisition of the customer (Kumar, Motwani, Douglas and Das, 1999). This
model also allows people are executing strategies and utilising scientific knowledge to carry out

those performances.

CRM Value Chain Model

By following this model, a business can follow and make their CRM strategies. The

range of SME's had developed this model which is as follows: telecoms, IT, software,

manufacturing, retail, media, construction, financial services. The aim of this model was the

implementation of general business and practical requirements of the company.

According to Buttle (2004), the primary focus of this model was to ensure that the

company has long-term beneficial relationships with its customer that is strategically significant

to the company. There are different types of strategically significant customer (SSC) which are

as follows: The valued lifetime customer that is the most important SSC and that can make the

base of the relationship stronger.

  The next type of customers also called the benchmarks or that our customers that other

ones copy.

 The other group in the line of SSC’s is the customer’s inspiration. These are the ones

finding new ways to execute an idea to attract attention and reduce the cost altogether.

 The last ones are those that take care of the high volume of fixed cost thus making the

other small customers profitable these are also called cost magnets.

According to John Stevenson (2007), CVC includes four stages which are:

 The first stage is to make the hierarchy of all the customers to see which one is more

profitable.

 Customer’s intimacy follows the second stage.

 Value Proposition Definition relates to the third stage.

The Five Forces Model of Payne

Payne (2005) has developed this comprehensive model this model consists of some of the

important processes in CRM such as the strategy formation process, the value creation, the

multiple area configuration processes, the assessment techniques to make sure about the

performance and the managing the information is the last process. It can be integrated into

operational Customer Relationship Management CRM, analytical CRM, strategic CRM.

 CRM in the Hospitality Industry

There are multiple internal and external departments in the hospitality segment.

Departments like logistics, housekeeping, entertainment, culinary and wellness offerings to

transport, events and customer engagement all are given the utmost level of attention. Here CRM

can assist in an important manner by keeping a check on every department and record the daily

task flow (Chetioui, Abbar and Benabbou, 2017). To increase the efficiency of its work it can

also be usefully collaborated with the social media to capture data and gauge consumer sentiment

towards the brand (Chetioui, Abbar and Benabbou, 2017). To synchronised its activity all the all

the data can be synced with the departments to help them acquire this purpose.

The transformative business growth strategies can only be made with all the collaborative

department records. With fresh CRM perspective, the understanding for every department is

enhanced such as vendor management and supply chain for culinary. Customer feedback can be
improved and enhanced by using predictive analysis that also streamlines daily tasks and

generates a clear and methodical picture of predictive areas with good business potential. Not

only CRM is necessary or customer's satisfaction and business growth, but it is also essential for

employee feedback and training (Chetioui, Abbar and Benabbou, 2017). With careful captured

across departments, a performance chart is made to record and analyse every employee's

performance this is utilised to motivate the talent and nurture its growth, thus building employee

loyalty and appreciation.

Not only the external customers and in-house employees can benefit the company but

also, the vendors and other stakeholders to have an important role in the functioning of the

organisation (Law, Fong, Chan and Fong, 2018). With the help of CRM and data analysis, the

brand value of the organisation is enhanced to many folds. The most benefitted area was

Hospitality, one of the key service industries, that is increasing day by day with the evolution of

CRM.

Methodology

The framework of this experimentation is quantitative as well as pictorial. There is the

method which is used to analyse record and explain the information among measurable

variables; this research method is called a quantitative research method. There are many

important aspects of quantitative research method, for instance, it is used to analyse and prove

theories by, using reliability and validity in standardising the content and it discovers the

importance of the variables for another research and relates variables posed by questions or

hypothesis. To the hypothesis, various studies are done, and the most important instrument or

tool to check it is the questionnaire as the main instrument used in the data collection process.
The questionnaire must be standardised to collect the precise amount of data in a short interval of

time.

The research was basically on making a framework of the questionnaire on people who

are the customers of the five-star hotels, and with this hypothesis, questionnaires are made to

determine the validity and reliability of this subject. As the idea of a mail survey is not very

common and not use very often in our country because it is not considered a practical way of

collecting data in our area, so the questionnaire was given by the experimenter himself in order

to check whether most of the sample complete the task and also explain the important subject,

except getting the outcome quickly.

Population Sampling

The targeted population will be the customers of the five-star hotels. There are

approximately 500 customers to carry out this research.

Data Collection Procedure

The two main types of collecting data are required to carry out certain research and to

prove the hypothesis which is primary data collection and secondary data collection; both types

of collections are used in researches these researches are: 

 Secondary data includes both qualitative and quantitative measure this data can be made

useful by using plenty of information from the sources that are easily available to us in

illustrative and in an analytical way as well. In this experiment the data used from various

resources such as journals the books, newspapers and magazines and internet sites. The

main advantage of collecting secondary data is that it is much cheaper as we can collect a

lot of data by just browsing the internet or previously done experiments can be very
 beneficial regarding collecting data and save a lot of time while gathering all the

information because we don't have to work from scratch.

 To collect the primary data from the given sample a questionnaire is used.

Questionnaire Design

A questionnaire is made by using previous studies with various references and bookish

knowledge that which deals with the topic under study. The questionnaire consists of two main

steps. The first step includes in gathering all the information regarding the topic under study and

the second's step is to assemble all the questionnaire related to the topic. The first half of

questions is related to the viewpoint towards CRM. The second set of questions is related to the

viewing image.

References

Almotairi, M. (2008, May). CRM success factors taxonomy. In a European and Mediterranean

conference on information systems (pp. 25-26).

Buttle, F. (2001). The CRM value chain. Marketing Business, 96(February), 52-55.

Chen, I. J., & Popovich, K. (2003). Understanding customer relationship management (CRM)

People, process and technology. Business process management journal, 9(5), 672-688.

Chetioui, Y., Abbar, H., & Benabbou, Z. (2017). The Impact of CRM dimensions on Customer

Retention in the Hospitality Industry: Evidence from the Moroccan Hotel sector. Journal

of Research in Marketing, 8(1), 652-660.

Johnson, J. (2004). Making CRM technology work. Manager, 22.

Kumar, A., Motwani, J., Douglas, C., & Das, N. (1999). A quality competitiveness index for

benchmarking. Benchmarking: An International Journal, 6(1), 12-21.

Law, R., Fong, D. K. C., Chan, I. C. C., & Fong, L. H. N. (2018). A systematic review of

hospitality CRM research. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality

Management, 30(3), 1686-1704.

Payne, A., Ballantyne, D., & Christopher, M. (2005). A stakeholder approach to relationship

marketing strategy: The development and use of the “six markets” model. European

Journal of Marketing, 39(7/8), 855-871.

Peppers, D., & Rogers, M. (2016). Managing customer experience and relationships: A strategic

framework. John Wiley & Sons.

Saini, A., Grewal, R., & Johnson, J. L. (2010). Putting market-facing technology to work:

Organizational drivers of CRM performance. Marketing Letters, 21(4), 365-383.

Wilson, H., Daniel, E., & McDonald, M. (2002). Factors for success in customer relationship

management (CRM) systems. Journal of marketing management, 18(1-2), 193-219.