Customer relationship management systems for the SME’s – is this a perfect marriage made in the cloud?
Authors
Gupta, Praful
Issue Date
2014
Degree
MBA in Business Management
Publisher
Dublin Business School
Rights holder
Rights
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Abstract
The purpose of this research is to identify the key evaluation criteria to be considered by the Small and Medium Enterprises before the selection of CRM deployment model and secondly, to build a practical guide for clear understanding which CRM deployment model will suits better for Small businesses in future considering those critical criteria. A review of the literature concerning CRM in-house / cloud CRM study found the area to be a topic of major concern for decision makers in small organizations because of the budget and risk constraints and Cloud CRM is comparatively a new innovation under study. Moreover there is no existing research which identify the key criteria for CRM model selection and describe which CRM model is better on those criteria. The research also focuses on identifying if subscription pricing model is better than ownership model for the small and medium organizations. The research also discusses the different concepts such as Customer Relationship Management, CRM in the cloud and cloud computing, especially in relation to SMEs, in order to have a great insight that gives the opportunity to successfully research this topic. The deductive research uses quantitative approaches for data collection and analysis. The evaluation criteria for CRM systems at general level were proposed via a researcher through intensive literature review. In primary research, the general criteria were refined via collecting data from CRM in house / Cloud CRM experts and users in SMEs by structured questionnaires by that researcher analyze the key criteria for selecting CRM deployment model. This research provides valuable insight for managers in SMEs when selecting CRM delivery model for their companies. Furthermore, the academicians who are interested in cloud computing or CRM could adapt it further to different cases. Author keywords: Customer relationship management, cloud computing, SME’s, cloud CRM, in–house CRM