Conceptual Foundations of Customer Relationship Management Systems - with Special Consideration of the Financial Services Sector

Customer relationship management systems are introduced in many (especially service) companies to support relationship marketing. The frequently observed failure of such projects is attributed to a lack of or incorrect alignment in the analysis phase, i.e. specification of the strategies and processes to be implemented, which has become an accepted and perfected component of the implementation process for other types of business software. Despite the fact that customer relationship management strategies and processes have been presented, they continue to be transaction-oriented rather than relationship-oriented in many cases. In this article, the problems involved are analyzed based on examples from the financial services sector, and relationshiporiented strategies and processes are outlined. The analysis is based on the findings of a two-year collaboration project with six medium and large-sized retail banks.