Explaining Organisational Investments in CRM Point Solutions

This paper asks why organisations invest in non-integrated CRM point solutions when many of the benefits of enterprise systems are claimed to be due to integration of processes and information. This paper identifies six factors that explain why organisations invest in CRM point solutions: reduced risk; lower cost; quick benefits realization; low integration ability, low interdependence of business units, and high business-unit differentiation. The evidence suggests that when interdependence between parts of an organization is low, possibly due to one unit producing a clearly differentiated product, the attractions of lower risk, lower cost, and/or faster access to the benefits are likely to induce organizations to adopt CRM point solutions. The contribution of this study is that it recognizes that, and explains why, it is not always optimal for organizations to adopt integrated CRM solutions.