Key Success Factors for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Projects within SMEs

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has emerged as a must-have capability for the modern firm irrespective of size and sector. The importance of CRM can be attributed to the need for today’s businesses to be customer-centric or customer-focused. As a business strategy, CRM seeks to develop and improve relationships with targeted customers to optimize customer value, competitiveness, and corporate profitability. While CRM has a truly strong business case, approximately 70% of CRM implementation projects do not create the intended business value. With this in mind, this work has reviewed relevant literature and explored 8 CSFs that can guide SMEs wishing to successfully implement CRM projects. The 8 CSFs cover the people, technologies, and processes – the core elements of a CRM strategy. In particular, the 8 CSFs include senior leadership sponsorship, customer-oriented CRM strategy, effective change management, customer data quality and availability, human resource management, the right CRM technology, CRM implementation methodology, and systems integration. Future studies may consider ranking the significance of the 8 CSFs based on the findings of an empirical research.