CRM packaged software: a study of organisational experiences

Customer relationship management (CRM) packaged software has become a key contributor to attempts at aligning business and IT strategies in recent years. Throughout the 1990s there was, in many organisations' strategies, a shift from the need to manage transactions and toward relationship management. Where enterprise resource planning packages dominated the management of transactions era, CRM packages lead in regard to relationships. At present, balanced views of CRM packages are scantly presented, instead relying on vendor rhetoric. This paper uses case study research to analyse some of the issues associated with CRM packages. These issues include the limitations of CRM packages, the need for a relationship orientation and the problems of a dominant management perspective of CRM. It is suggested that these issues could be more readily accommodated by organisational detachment from beliefs in IT as utopia, consideration of prior IS theory and practice and a more informed approach to CRM package selection.