n Examination of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Technology Adoption

This paper is aimed at analyzing the research publication of Richard et al. The principal contribution of this analysis is based on their literature “An Examination of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Technology Adoption and its Impact on Business to Business Customer Relationships”. Additionally, the literature is further centered on other preliminary writings within the context of Customer relationship management (CRM) and overview of other relevant ecommerce literatures; hence findings are presented and discussed in details in this report.

Precisely the objectives/goals of this report are focused on the scrutinizing the functionalities, adoption, correlation and merits of CRM technology and business to business customer relations.

It is generally agreed that companies have adopted the initiative of CRM technology to foster their day to day business transaction, hereby referred to as business to business (B2B) as well as their business to customer relation (B2C).

The framework of this study also focuses on the antecedents of CRM technology adoption, its performance, and the intensity of the technology adoption as well as its outcome.

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The term customer relationship is aimed at satisfaction, retention-ability and potential of a company to provide repurchases intent along with loyalty to the customers on the services obtainable.

However, Richard et al (2007) state that customer relation management technology adoption is considered as a possible antecedent to relationship strength and relationship performance, thus CRM technology is the improvement of the conception of absolute quality management, relationship encouragement, and customer care. Subsequently, researches have confirmed that technology factors such as dependability, functionality, data security and privacy influence customer relationship management performance (Wahab et al).

The analysis according to Richard et al (2007) CRM technology adoption and its impact on B2B customer relation further designated that customer communique and people characteristic are of significant importance in business, they also indicated that consumers are of the viewpoint that customer relationship management offers benefit to customers in terms of communication, satisfaction , quality and services, customer relationship management technology does not have any significant impact in maintaining and sustaining business to business customer relationship, the authors added that relationship performance is measured by means of customer satisfaction, customer retention, and loyalty (Akinolu 2006).

A number of researcher have analyzed the functionalities and rate of acceptance of CRM technology and, it was however deducted that companies who employ the use of CRM technology may discover improved performance and quality business relationship conversely the acceptance of the technology by any company is assumed to be in relation to habitual of IT(information technology) as part of operational routine, its easiness of use, usefulness and individual attitude toward the system, other factors that influence the acceptance of CRM it wide range of application in the area of ecommerce which include, access to data remotely, process automation, enterprise application integration (EAI) option to chose platform, enhanced productivity, enhanced customer service function, marketing automation, collaborative communication not to mention but a few (Ryding, 2010). CRM technology actually fits in the field of strategic business systems as it makes it possible to exchange data electronically via a process referred to as electronic data interchange (EDI) and its supply chain, enabling part of its transaction functionality assess to other business partner for efficient transaction e. g. allowing partners to view and update orders in its database.

Thus, the adoption of CRM technology gave birth to Business-to-Business (B2B) relationship. By integration of technology for instance, an existing company with a legacy technology and database intends to continue using it legacy technology while migrating to a new application that employ the internet, e-commerce, and other new technologies. The new technology allows enterprise to able expose its database as an internet network service and the clients can develop its own application interface based on web services illustration provided by the application designed. However, CRM incited the growth of both Business-to-Business and Business to customer according to (MURTAZA). Richard et al.

also state that “there is a major disparity amidst stand-alone customer sales application technology and an enterprise wide centralized customer database accessible by all authorized users. The integration aspect reflects how well the CRM technology is linked to other aspects of the business to provide a seamless customer experience” (2007). CMR integration process depends on the type of orientation/theory a company had or follow, researchers has classified this into several step some of which include: ? Firm Orientation (FO) referred to as the theoretical ability of firms that comprise the combination of market orientation and IT management orientation.

? Market Orientation (MO) is analyzed by many researchers and scholars as an adequate indicator of the level of market philosophy within a firm that guides the firm’s customer orientation, that level of market orientation may influence the functionality, acceptance and level of integration of the CRM solution and have may an impact on the uses of customer relationship management technology to maintain customer relationships. ? IT Management Orientation (TO): a company's information technology management orientation may also affect the implementation of IT solutions particularly the company's IT management complexity and information technology executives reflect on the technological orientation of the company and are expected to play an important function in the implementation, exploitation and adoption of CRM in the organization. ? Relationship Strength (RS): refers to the quality of relationship in business.

It is the degree at which relationship strength symbolizes trust as well as commitment and this has been discovered to vary between organizations. Business marketers and information technology researchers have effortless try to measure relationship strength by concentrating on the components of trust, commitment, conflict, social bonds, communications quality, customer satisfaction and information flow, relevantly, trust, commitment and communications quality appear to be robust and consistent measures of relationship strength and are examined in the under listed bullets. ? Trust from numerous studies and literature depicts the fundamental requirement for a successful business relationship and it enhances the development of a quality business relationship.

? Commitment is considered by several researchers as a common variable that necessitates the creation and maintenance of business relationship, hence the study of commitment involves two major domains as shown below: ? Affective commitment replicates the passion and aspiration to continue a relationship because of a psychosomatic connection or bond. ? Conversely, calculative commitment is based purely on a cost benefit analysis and it is different from the relationship context. This type of commitment manifests itself in the perceived need to maintain the relationship, due to the calculated investment or termination costs of leaving the relationship.

? Communication Quality (CQ); communication has variously been defined as formal or informal exchange of meaningful and timely information that provide a mutual sense of understanding. CQ focuses on the efficiency and quality of information exchange rather than the amount of communication, researcher however considered communication effectiveness and quality as important factors in relationship functionality, development and performance. Thus, the adoption CRM technology potentially affects communication quality and enhance business relation ? The third area of relationship strength that was considered by Richard et al is Relationship Performance (RP). The RP measure consists of satisfaction, loyalty and retention of customer.

Customer retention reflects relationship performance through the willingness to maintain or invest in the relationship and is also considered an outcome of affective commitment (Richard 2007). Deductions from research and analysis literatures from various background depicts that CRM technology as RM enabler, customer relationship management technology on the other hand has be proven to be cost effective, time saving, efficient, enhances customer relationship and hypothesize to optimistically influence organization’s adoption of the technology, the magnitude of adoption of CRM technology is considered to have positive impact of relationship strength and relationship performance.

According to Murtaza, CRM technology may not only have an encouraging impact on industry to customer relationships or business to business, but it may also have a negative effect on such relationships if coordination features of CRM , development life cycle which involves research, system analysis, planning, design, implementation, documentation, maintenance and adaptation are not carefully considered. Nevertheless, statistical analysis of qualitative data of Richard et al. signifies that companies with CRM technology most importantly do consider the technology potentially benefiting to both business-to-business and business to customer relationships performance (2005). One of the companies’ managers that participated in the study carried out by Richard et al. stated that “CRM technology helps building relationships because you can really easily grasp a bigger understanding of an organization by looking at what else has been happening in the past and what else is happening across your business”.

In other perception, users finds CRM technology benefiting in the provision of information repository aiding the capturing of customers information and storing of data hereby enhancing customers service and business efficiency. Finally the resultant of adoption of CRM technology in organizations depict that CRM technology enhance Business to Business and Business to Customers’ relationship, and further encourage the development of relationships with existing customers and creation of new customer. However the technology facilitates basic customer service functions, and has changed the features of customer service, but many organizations now offer human contact as the ultimate form of customer service, such as “live chat” option or phone contact when people have a problem with an Internet-based service.

Conclusively, the potentials of CRM technology is considered by both customer and companies as marketing tool as well as sale support tools that enable customer’s knowledge management and an advanced process for managing customer data collection, storage and retrieval as communications facilitator. Yet, some researchers point out that CRM technology might not in reality enhance the creation or maintenance of customer relationships, the disparities in the opinion is undoubtedly stipulated because of the vast adoption of the CRM technology and the motivating proportion in the CRM functionality its impact in customer relations, and relationship constructs further merit the investigation.

The study provides some evidence that CRM technology adoption in companies regardless of its size ensure positive effect business-to-business relationships. However, measuring CRM technology adoption provides the ability to determine whether more intense CRM adoption leads to better customer relationships and improved economic performance (Ryding 2010). Reference List Body, L. 2004. The Impact of Customer Relationship Management. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication . Fang Wu, V. M. 2008. An analysis of e-business adoption and its impact on business performance. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science , 425-447. JAMES E. RICHARD, P. C. 2007.

An Examination of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Technology Adoption and its Impact on Business-to-Business Customer Relationships. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence , 927 — 945. MURTAZA, M. B. 2005 . EFFECTIVE CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT THROUGH WEB SERVICES. The Journal of Computer Information Systems,1-13 . Ryding, D. 2010. The impact of new technologies on customer satisfaction and business to business customer relationships: Evidence from the soft drinks industry. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services , 224-228. Akinolu, W. C. 2006. Customer Services and Quality of Services. Broadstreet management Journal, 234-274.