An Approach to Deriving Business Value of Customer Relationship Management Model in an Enterprise System

IntroductionInformation systems have business value when they enable more efficient business processes and improve managerial decision making. As organizations flatten and push decision making to lower levels, information systems make significant contributions to the overall quality of decision making to the entire firm. Companies are investing heavily in information systems which consist of technologies and applications designed to help users make better business decisions.Information systems, in particular maybe model driven or data driven depending on whether they support operational level or managerial level decisions. Business value of a information system depends on how much the system contributes to the revenue enhancement and [or] cost reduction. Research ObjectiveAn attempt is made in this paper to critically evaluate the business value of the information systems to manage customer relationship, henceforth called customer relationship management system (CRMS).Many companies are turning to CRMS to maximize benefits from their customer assets. CRMS is both a business and technology discipline for managing customer relationships to optimize revenue, profitability, customer satisfaction and customer retention. Methodology The study makes use of the CRM model of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. Reports generated at different levels i.e. operational level, middle (managerial) level etc. are studied and critically evaluated. The business value is estimated by using appropriate CRM evaluation method. Potential contribution to literatureThis study is a critical evaluation of an ERP package with respect to CRM module. This will give users of an ERP package an idea of how to optimally use the CRM module in an ERP package. This will also help the vendors to better position the CRM module in their ERP package. Finally, the business value aspect will focus on the ability of a module in a ERP package to contribute to share-holders wealth which is one of the objective of any company in today's competitive business environment