1.1 Introduction
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is described as an approach to managing a company's engagement with current and potential customers through creating a trustworthy partnership (Bhardwaj et al., 2021). The term CRM will refer to the technologies, principles and practices that have been used by firms and organizations to analyze and manage their customer interactions with the data throughout the lifecycle of the customers. The main objectives of CRM are to improve business relationships with customers, assisting in customer retention that will lead to increase sales and profit. CRM has turn out to be one of exhortation for many organizations. CRM main role and purpose is to help organizations review productivity on dealings like repeat purchases, dollars spent, and long life (Khodakarami et al., 2014).
As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Limitation of the study and Definition of technical terms.
1.2 Background of Study
In recent years, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has become widely accepted as an important management discipline. Bain and Company’s global survey ranked CRM as one of the top ten tools used by managers (Rigby and Bilodeau, 2005). A number of surveys identify the importance of organisational culture in CRM implementations. Consultants CGEY (CapGemini, 2002) studied an international sample of life-science companies that were implementing CRM. Their results reveal that organisational culture is one of the reasons for poor CRM acceptance.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system came into existence when companies were intent on developing stronger bonds with their customer. According to [Kenbrell, (2002)], CRM is the process of managing detailed information about individual customers and carefully managing all customer touch point to maximize customer loyalty. It is impossible to state precisely what Customer Relationship Management (CRM) means to everyone. The term has been applied to almost every element to business that even remotely interacts with a customer. In its infancy, by Kosh (2004), CRM systems were a series of mainframe or server based applications specific to sales, marketing and support business functions.
The applications were lightweight by today’s standards and did little more than capture and file critical data. But as cultural boundaries within organizations weakened individual freedoms of information gave way to sophisticated applications that could open business functions. By doing so, these applications created the vision of a single view of the customer. For the first time, organizations could track and analyze shifting customer needs, link marketing campaigns to sales results, and monitor sales activities for improved forecasting accuracy and manufacturing demands.
In the 1990s, companies began to improve on customer relationship management by making it more of a two – way street, instead of simply gathering data for their own use, they began giving back to their customers not only in terms of the obvious goal of improved customer service, but in incentives, gifts and other perks for customer loyalty. This was the beginning of the now familiar frequent flyer programs, booms point on credit cards and a host of other resources that are based on CRM tracking of customer activity and spending pattern. CRM was now being used as a way to increase sales passively as well as through active improvement of customer services.
Mack et al. (2005) highlight the importance of communicating and valuing changes in organization culture through rewards, thereby ensuring that all employees understand the importance of adopting customer-centric behaviours as they strive to develop stronger customer relationships. Campbell (2003) studied CRM implementations at five Canadian financial services firms. The findings indicate that the rewards structure is a key success factor in the development of deeper customer knowledge. Companies may need to restructure performance- based rewards to motivate customer-focused behaviours, such as single point-of-contact resolution of customer complaints.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an information industry term for methodologies, software, and usually internet capabilities that help an enterprise manage customer relations in an organized way. The CRM developer should identify one important priority that requires investment in computer and/or human resources. The developer then proposes a specific initiative that addresses this priority. The resource should meaningfully address the issues and opportunities facing the organization for instance, billing system that only processes individual invoices may not be relevant in a world of complication payment options. Successful CRM performance has been linked to an organization’s ability to identify and respond to potential barriers within organisational culture. People’s resistance to working with newly created processes and to using the CRM software may lead to implementation failures (Crosby, 2002; Kavanagh, 2003).
Reinartz and Chugh (2003) interviewed senior managers of 15 large companies involved in strategic CRM projects. The results of this study demonstrate that giving employees control over customer service and ensuring job security for employees contribute to CRM success. From these previous studies, it seems clear that an organisational culture that puts more importance on customer-focused behaviours, information sharing, cross-functional teams, performance-based rewards, supportive relationships, adaptive and responsive attitudes to change, and a higher degree of risk-taking and innovation, is more likely to be associated with successful CRM system implementations.
1.3 Statement of Problem
Investigation revealed that the major problem that leads this research is poor communication approach of the company to old and new customers which did not make provision for dynamic online business. They include:
- Poor product and services;
- Poor marketing strategy; and
- Difficulties in promotion and advertisement.
The effect of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) on customer satisfaction has been on for a long period of time (Zainurrafiqi et al., 2012). There have been diverse operational variables to measure Customer Relationship Management (CRM) from lack of trust to partnerships, empowerment etc. Contemporary Customer Relationship Management (CRM) problems have evolved from just customer attitudinal study or mentality to the perception of services offered by businesses in relation to Customer Relationship Management (CRM).
1.4 Aim and Objectives of the Study
The aim of the study is to design and implement an Online Customer Relationship Management System. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows to develop an application software that will:
- Save time and efforts for the member of staff currently performing the task of customer details keeping, accounting and marketing manually;
- Ensure proper management of customer details record;
- Ensure increasing customer records are taken care of using the Microsoft access database for its customer records;
- Boost sales and advertisement by sending mail shots during exhibitions and sales;
- Create a user friendly system given enjoyment and entertainments to the users of the system; and
- Provide better service to customers, staff of the organization and anyone else affected by the new system developed.
1.5 Significance of Study
This research would be useful in communication system with the following relevance it possesses.
- The proposed system will help saves time.
- It will be efficient, modern and reliable.
- It is very fast, accurate and security conscious.
This study will be of immense benefit to other researchers who intend to know more on this study and can also be used by non-researchers to build more on their research work. This study contributes to knowledge and could serve as a guide for other study.
1.6 Scope of Study
The scope of the research is focused on the Design and Implementation of Customer Relationship Management System.
1.7 Limitations of the Study
During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:
- Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
- Establishment Policies: Establishment policies posed a serious limitation as most staffs are not ready to release information needed for this project work. There were lots of information needed from the staffs of this institution to enhance the study which took them time to release or they did not release at all for security purposes, hence the scope was reduced.
- Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
- Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
- Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet).
1.8 Definition of Terms
Customer Relationship Management (CRM): It is a concept that explains the various technologies, processes, strategies and people involved in maintaining a relational framework for the customer over a specified duration.
Customer Satisfaction (CS): This relates to the measure in which customer’s expectation of a business product is realized or surpassed.
