An operations management perspective on adopting customer-relations management (CRM) software

Abstract

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are made up of software that chiefly support individual functional areas (e.g., operations management practices and policies), but seeks to share information to support organisation-wide integration goals. In this paper we examine the influences of operations management (OM) customer focus policies and practices, as well as software vendor capabilities in supporting OM, on ERP reasons for adoption of software and vendor selection of customer relations management (CRM) systems. An empirical study utilising structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to determine if an OM customer focus affects the adoption of CRM. The results show that collaboration between OM and marketing managers in the acquisition of CRM software improves business performance and supports the prior research that advocates the need for closer integration of these two functional areas. The results also show that OM reasons for adoption of CRM can have a moderating effect on business performance as well.

Keywords:

• supply chain management
• enterprise resource planning (ERP)
• customer relations management software (CRP)
• empirical study
• operations management