Intra- and inter-organizational effects of a CRM system implementation

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the intra- and inter-organizational effects of introducing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system in a firm. Today, CRM appears to be a "buzzword" in the academic literature and it can be analysed under different and sometimes divergent perspectives. We define CRM as a technical device interacting with people who input data and information inside an IT system to obtain processed information in order to handle customer relationships. Empirically, we explore the implementation of a CRM system in an Italian company. Our findings suggest that the installation of a CRM system is not a linear process because of the problems that surface when the technology is embedded within an organization. We identify two main issues users face in employing the CRM system: 1) loss of independence, 2) the feeling of being controlled, with an accompanying mistrust of data inputs from other users in the same host organization.