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Tazkarji, M.Y, & Stafford, T. (in press). Reasons for failures of CRM implementations. IEEE Transactions in
Computational Social Systems. DOI: 10.1109/TCSS.2020.2980856
1
Reasons for Failures of CRM Implementations
Mohamed Y. Tazkarji
Louisiana Tech University
Myt001@latech.edu
Tom Stafford
Louisiana Tech University
stafford@latech.edu
Abstract
Customer relationship management systems (CRM)
are enterprise systems that facilitate maintenance of
buyer-seller relationships with clients in consumer
and business marketing channels. These systems
permit firms to better tailor their offerings, to increase
market intelligence, and to achieve increased
competency in the markets where they operate.
Unfortunately, the ratio of CRM failures to CRM
successes exceeds 2 to 1; little is known about why
such an important customer support utility might be so
seemingly ineffective because there are few studies
that deal with CRM failures and the factors leading to
or preventing success. Utilizing a grounded theory
methodology, this paper spans the disciplines of
marketing and information systems in the process of
inducing the reasons for CRM failure and success.
Results indicate that implementation factors play a
significant role in CRM outcomes.
1.
Introduction
During the last few decades, customer
relationship management software (CRM) has been
relied on by many organizations for purposes of
managing marketing and sales activities. CRM adds
value to the customer orientation of firms with the
application of information technology to marketing
efforts [5,40]. This makes CRM a powerful tool for
organizational knowledge and data management
[10,15,39], in addition to providing practical day-to-
day guidance for managing customer interactions with
companies.
CRM helps companies build robust personal
relationships with their customers by organizing data
about them. As an aspect of CRM operation, customer
information is both collected and analyzed. This
information allows companies to offer their customers
tailor-made and customized offerings [19,30]. It helps
companies identify different customer preferences and
to target them accordingly, which is beneficial to
customers and organizations, alike [4,22].
Increasingly, firms are shifting their focus to the
customer, hence the rising importance of customer
relationship management systems [14].
The CRM literature has championed successful
relationship strategies which involve serving customer
needs by through customized solutions on a one-on-
one basis [27, 28,36], and the aspirational goal of these
effective applications of relational strategies based on
CRM implementations is increased corporate
profitability [5]. Yet, despite the optimistic
pronouncements about CRM capabilities in the
literature [16], when considering how many
implementations actually deliver the promised
benefits the sobering reality is that up to 70% of CRM
implementations fail [23]. Anecdotally, failure could
be attributed to companies not finding the promised
benefits of system use [1], to poor implementation and
change management perspectives [21,29], or even the
sheer complexity of CRM implementations [9].
Even so, with estimates of 70% [23] to 80% [25]
failure rates for implementation, having a firm
grounding in the reasons for such failures seems
important. The unexpectedly high failure rate is a
surprising statistic, and we are highly motivated to
understand its basis. A challenge in gaining such
understanding lies in the fact that there are no
integrated frameworks of CRM success to guide the
process of CRM implementation [10].
To that end, we undertake a grounded theory
exploration of the “failure factors” of the CRM
implementation process, beginning with the “surprise-
answering” logical approach of abduction [24,25] as
our starting point to surmise a likely explanation for
the unexpectedly low levels of success in CRM
implementations. Abducing our starting point in a
review of the literature that seeks to identify factors
that could contribute to failed implementations, we
then undertake the inductive grounded theory
approach to deriving meaning and understanding of
this important process [12,41].
For that reason, this paper seeks to determine the
individual-level reasons behind the failure of CRM
implementations; a grounded theory approach is used
to induce these potential failure causes. The study will
then investigate whether individual level practices by
company stakeholders are factors behind the success
or failure of CRM system implementations.
1.1. Research questions
Although many companies have shifted to a
customer-centric orientation, many fail in
implementing the CRM systems which can support
Tazkarji, M.Y, & Stafford, T. (in press). Reasons for failures of CRM implementations. IEEE Transactions in
Computational Social Systems. DOI: 10.1109/TCSS.2020.2980856
2
and facilitate such customer orientations [17]. To that
end, this paper leverages two research questions:
R1: What are the factors behind the high
percentage of CRM system implementation
failures?
R2: What are the factors that contribute to the
success of CRM system implementations?
We answer these research questions through
interpretive analysis by leveraging interviews with a
range of CRM application developers and marketers.
Grounded theory research utilizes a sequential data
collection process characterized as “theoretical
sampling” [12], in which initial data collection and
analysis informs further steps of data collection
(additional data collection episodes being
characterized as “slices of data’). This study represents
the initial “slice” of data in our ongoing study of CRM
success and failure factors, in the form of an
interpretive interaction with the knowledgeable
individuals at companies that make and market CRM
systems for client use. We asked our respondents to
help us understand the factors of CRM successes and
failures; the results were illuminating.
The paper proceeds as follows: first, we undertake
a review of the CRM literature to contextualize our
inquiry. Then, an abduced People, Process and
Technology model of implementation success and
failure factors is used to guide our methodological
approach to qualitative interactions with
knowledgeable key informants from industry. The
inductive results of those interpretive interviews are
discussed in our results section, followed by
implications for further theoretical development in the
conclusion of the paper.
2. Literature
CRM is an enterprise software application that
bundles customer support strategies and processes for
the goal of tracking and improving customer loyalty
and, subsequently, corporate profitability [3,27]. A
broader view of CRM portrays an enterprise-wide
initiative that belongs to all areas of an organization
and which is focused on the customer orientation of
the firm [2,4]. CRM comprises processes used by
organizations to manage consumer relationships,
which also include collecting, storing, and analyzing
data; CRM is often termed “data-driven marketing.”
To this end, CRM is not exclusively a marketing or an
IT software operation, but rather merges both by
linking front office (ex: sales, marketing, and customer
service) and back office (ex: finance, operations, and
human resources) functions with the company’s
customer “touchpoints” [8].
2.1. CRM-based value creation
Researchers have been anxious to identify the
mechanisms underpinning value creation in CRM
implementations [20]; this is likely owing to the very
real perception that successful CRM implementations
which create organizational value also lead to
increased profit margins [5,15]. The primary nexus of
such value creation resides in the organizational of
knowledge about the customer base [24], although the
literature is equivocal on the nature of support for the
assertion that CRM knowledge management
processes, alone, enhance organizational performance
[4,19]. Rather, the interaction of CRM systems with
other organizational capabilities or even factors of the
macro market seem to be the determining factors
leading to CRM-based value creation [20].
Companies adopt CRM, worldwide, not only to
manage customer relationships but to integrate
supplier relationships into operations, as well. In a
study of 300 large companies in Europe and the United
States, 65% of respondents were aware of CRM, 28%
percent were developing a CRM system, and 12% had
reached the stage where they were actually making
productive use of the using it [22]. CRM initiatives
have resulted in increased competitiveness through
rising revenues and lowered operational costs, and
when companies manage CRM systems effectively,
they boost customer satisfaction and retention rates
[19,31]. A basic model of CRM implementation taken
from a business process management perspective
would depend on the interaction of people who
implement and use the system, the usage process, and
the technology, itself [6], as shown in Figure 1.
This People/Process/Technology notion resonates
with similar findings in the IT literature, wherein the
business (i.e., the process), the technology and the
customers (i.e., the people) are formative [39], or with
a similar characterization of business, technology and
human resources as key capability factors [3,30].
These three primary factors – People, Process and
Technology – having an abductive consensus of their
likely efficacy in implementation should interact
optimally and be fully supportive of CRM
implementation for it to be successful.
Figure 1. Factors influencing success and
failure of CRM implementations
Adapted from Chen & Popovich (2003)
People
Technology
Process
Tazkarji, M.Y, & Stafford, T. (in press). Reasons for failures of CRM implementations. IEEE Transactions in
Computational Social Systems. DOI: 10.1109/TCSS.2020.2980856
3
In the implementation process, a CRM system
relies on interactions between various stakeholders to
succeed [5,24]. These interactions include interactions
between marketing, IT, sales, and HR departments,
and interactions between management and employees
to lower the potential resistance level to the
implementation. Since CRM requires buy-in from
different parts of the company and because its
operation reaches into many quarters of the firm, it has
been suggested that organizations should adopt a
holistic approach [11] and that implementations
should be initiated by a key executive such as the CEO
or COO.
Since CRM normally involves business process
change and the introduction of new information
technology, effective leadership is considered to be
important. From that perspective, good change
management is essential [13,29]. It is also clear
through the literature on CRM that in order for CRM
to be a success it needs a collective effort from the
company, employees, IT, and customers. So, there are
certain factors that largely affect the success/failure of
a CRM implementation.
2.2. CRM failure factors
Success in CRM implementation appears to be tied
to organizational factors [12]. These factors, poorly
managed, become prominent failure points, which is a
point in strong favor of a good implementation and
change management process [9,13,29]. Companies are
often not good at strategic planning in support of
critical implementations such as CRM [7], which can
lead to unexpected failures. Failure, of course, can
provide leaning experience that subsequently can
contribute to success [25]; this is an intuitive notion,
but it is offered by researchers as evidentiary support
for the assertion that stronger theoretical models of
CRM implementation success should be developed.
There are indications that organizational factors are
the key antecedents to implementation success [7]. Of
these, it is clear that some combination of
implementations processes, factors of the technology,
itself, and the people tasked with implementing it are
critical considerations [3,6,30,40].
Even so, it must be noted that these factors
determine organizational implementation capabilities.
This considers the strictly internal notion of what
aspects of a company, its IT and IT support staff
contribute to installation of the system in question. In
point of fact, long term success relies equally upon
external factors related to the customers being served
by a CRM system and their reaction to the
implemented system [5,15,20,24,39].
It is for that reason that our study is specifically
delimited to the perspective contributory to
implementation failure; a perspective that extends to
consider successful that which blocks successful usage
for purpose would naturally consider customer
reactions, external satisfaction rates with external
interactions, and customer-side outcomes arising from
CRM interaction [24,25]. This study forms a starting
point to consider the success or failure of the initial
implementation.
3. Methodology
This is a grounded theory study of the factors
contributing the CRM success and failure. It begins the
with process of abduction, which is a logical technique
useful for “explaining surprise” [24], in one sense, or
the devising of a theory to explain an unusual
collection of facts [33], in another. In the context of
this study, each definition is useful, because we seek
to understand why a systems implementation that
would on its face be expected to be quite successful,
is, instead, more frequently unsuccessful. We seek to
abduce, in that sense, the reasons behind the
unexpectedly high failure rate of CRM
implementation. We engage in the initial phases of
grounded theory development by recruiting CRM
system developers and vendors for insights about the
role that CRM systems play in business and,
particularly, with their clients and system users.
3.1. Interviews
In order to begin the process of developing a
theoretical perspective of the factors affecting CRM
failures, qualitative depth interviews were used to
collect data from a group of CRM system vendors.
After interviewing representatives of three different
CRM system vendors, interview data was then
transcribed and coded for subsequent theoretical
analysis. In the parlance of grounded theory research,
this step was an initial “slice” of data, useful for
forming initial theoretical concepts through the
interview coding process, in which provisional
findings can then be subject to further exploration, via
additional data collection (i.e., further “slices” of data)
and through continued introspection via the classic
“constant comparative process” of recursive review of
transcripts, coding and conclusions that is unique to
grounded theory work [41].
As perspectives of potential emergent theory are
induced in the coding process, the constant
comparative process often leads to new points of
inquiry in order to more fully answer questions that
arise in coding and analysis. Hence, researchers
typically consider data in hand in the context of what
is learned from it, and plan additional data collection
based on discerned points of departure in a process
Tazkarji, M.Y, & Stafford, T. (in press). Reasons for failures of CRM implementations. IEEE Transactions in
Computational Social Systems. DOI: 10.1109/TCSS.2020.2980856
4
known as “theoretical sampling” [12,41]. In the
analysis reported here, the initial “slice of data” in our
grounded theory study is analyzed and reported.
Further interviews will arise from this analysis as we
continue to engage in theoretical sampling, in line with
orthodox grounded theory procedure [41].
3.2. Coding
Interviews were coded at three increasing levels
of theoretical abstraction. This coding process begins
with very specific initial “open” codes which are based
on the substantive verbalizations from our respondents
[41], and these are then extending to thematic
categorizations of open codes in “selectively” coded
groups of meaning [12]. Selective codes are then
arranged in accordance with the relationships between
various groupings in accordance with final stage
“theoretical” codes of substantive cause-and-effect
meaning [41], which gives us an inductive theoretical
structure from which we can generalize theoretical
outcomes from our qualitative inquiry [43].
In our application of the open coding approach,
we specifically leveraged the richness to be found in
verbatim sentiments of the respondents using “in vivo”
coding methods as the open coding nodes [37]; in this
approach, we created initial “open” nodes of meaning
out of each significant utterance of respondents. As
such, we used the interview respondents’ own words
for the first level of coding. In the process of this, we
also produced what are known as “reflective memos”
in keeping with normal practice [37]. These memos
speculated on potential emerging themes arising from
the in vivo nodes we were initially coding, such that
we could prepare for thematic groupings of in vivo
codes in the next “selective” stage of coding.
3.3 Theoretical matrices of meaning
Selective nodes of meaning, representing
thematic groupings of open coded nodes, were
considered for theoretical implications of cause and
effect to be coded at the final, “theoretical” level of
coding [41]. These are represented below in tabular
format.
From this coding process, we undertook a
constant comparison of subject statements to the coded
discerned nodes of meaning through the analysis, and
subsequent reorganization of coding as insights
emerged [12]. We then memorialized the coding
structure in theoretical matrices of meaning [43]. The
theoretical matrices were produced to demonstrate the
organization of our inductive coding process; they take
the form of hierarchically structured tables of coded
nodes ranging from open, to selective, to theoretical
nodes, demonstrative of the evolution of theoretical
meaning in inductive fashion from the interview
transcript analysis process.
4. Results
Our analysis was oriented toward an abduced
starting point found in the literature [32,33], in which
we identified a potential framework (e.g.,
People/Process/Technology) which might account for
the unexpectedly high levels of reported CRM
implementation failures encountered in our survey of
the literature. Our abductive process suggested that
theoretical insights might be characterized by aspects
of the people in the process, the implementation
process, itself, and specific aspects of the technology
[3,6,30]. This guided our coding and analysis process
toward our initial round of theoretical generalizations
from the first “slice” of data in our investigation.
4.1. The impact of people on the process of
implementation
As indicated in Table 1, we discerned through our
interviews and the staged coding process that the
impact of people in the success or failure of CRM
implementations largely arrayed into aspects of
implementation resistance, the motivations of
technology users related to implementation, and the
commitment of managers to the implementation
process.
Table 1. Theoretical matrix of meaning:
People
Managerial Commitment
- The system has a lot of functionalities and it needs more
time and training and B2B implementation is slower than
that of B2C due to training on various functions of the
CRM.
- Having different departments coordinating is a challenge
for implementation
- Bureaucracy also complicates implementation and has to
be dealt with prior to implementation.
Resistance
- In B2B, you get more resistance since there is more of a
need to know how to use more elements of the system
(due to longer sales cycles and more information and
details collected and analyzed).
- On dealing with potential user resistance, the biggest
thing is to extenuate on what is going to be the core
problem and start from there.
- On motivation to enter useful and accurate data, the key is
to have a proper incentive structure for individuals and to
show them how the system helps them be more
productive and successful.
- On sales people resistance, we do not face that much of
resistance since expertise not the contact list is what gives
sales people their edge over other sales people.
Tazkarji, M.Y, & Stafford, T. (in press). Reasons for failures of CRM implementations. IEEE Transactions in
Computational Social Systems. DOI: 10.1109/TCSS.2020.2980856
5
User Motivations
- Early stage implementation issues include not wanting to
learn using new tools or not wanting to do additional
weight.
- If you implement and staff are still using other software,
then it’s pointless thus it’s better to either measure IT by
it or gives them a step up and extra benefits.
- It is very common that people want to integrate
everything and automate all processes, but you want to
have 1 main source of information or it will be a mess.
- The first challenge is to make it something that people
want to pay attention to enter data and other people will
look at it
- When considering a CRM implementation, companies
consider Ease of implementation and familiarizing the
team, Functionality (CRM should have a mobile
response, Cost (less relevant for bigger corporations and
more relevant for SMEs).
- When seeking implementation support, customers seek
experience and the ability to understand their situation
and provide solution.
If one was to concentrate on “failure factors,” the
dimension of resistance would be most indicative,
followed by the related notion of motivation. A telling
point was found in the observation that
implementation resistance (and, one presumes,
potential failure) resides in user needs related to
understanding system functionality:
…there is more of a need to know how to use
more elements of the system…
… the biggest thing is to extenuate on what
is going to be the core problem…
Such satisfaction of user needs for understanding
CRM system functionality is, naturally, an aspect that
is the clear provenance of managerial training. Hence,
…the system has a lot of functionalities and
it needs more time and training…
However, it cannot be overlooked when
considering personnel issues that the motivational
structure of users is related to how they are incented
for system use [39]:
…the key is to have a proper incentive
structure for individuals and to show them
how the system helps them be more
productive and successful…
Lastly, among the “people” dimension is the
consideration of managers leading implementations.
The issues of coordination of implementation
activities along with the inherent challenges of leading
complex technological installations in the presence of
organizational complexity are noteworthy:
…Having different departments
coordinating is a challenge for
implementation…
…Bureaucracy also complicates
implementation and has to be dealt with
prior to implementation…
4.2. The impact of the implementation process
In our analysis of the interviews, it was clear that
functional aspects of system design, in their absence,
clearly contribute to implementation difficulties. A
system that easily facilitated the prototypical CRM
work of organizing and managing customer
relationships was clearly preferred to system designs
that made it difficult for users to easily engage in the
customer relationship management process via the
application. And, as shown in the theoretical matrix of
CRM Process issues, in Table 2, the way in which
software developers interact with client users of the
system impacts the ways in which the eventual system
usage process is either facilitated or hindered. We
discovered that, as might be expected from the broader
literature on CRM implementation issues, the
advisability of system integration between the CRM
and broader organizational systems [21,25,38]
remains a matter for concern among our respondents.
Table 2. Theoretical matrix of meaning:
Process
Development Issues
- The presales engineers will do the coding and
implementation.
- In terms of making tech people in the client side more
customer-centric, we are trying to take out a lot of busy
work (unneeded extra work due to having to fill reports
and sketch notes) by centralizing data and making it
possible to spend more time on having personalized
conversations and allocating more time for client
communication.
- There are many integration scenarios when installing the
CRM, and ideally data (accounting info, warranty info,
sales info…etc.) is pulled from the ERP as information
and its pushed thru CRM to end users to make use of the
data
- We are trying to standardize everything and have
guidelines ready for implementation no matter the size of
the company.
Training
- In terms of training front line staff, we should make it
easy for them to navigate the data for them to support the
client and have all data on hand, and make info available
and easy to access for them.
- The implementation teams will help, educate, and work
with the clients primarily on the team management side
versus a larger concentration on payment side or market
side in retail or ecommerce clients.
Tazkarji, M.Y, & Stafford, T. (in press). Reasons for failures of CRM implementations. IEEE Transactions in
Computational Social Systems. DOI: 10.1109/TCSS.2020.2980856
6
In a clearly-expressed preference for client
responsiveness, CRM system developers wished to
streamline the process of preparing software for clients
to use with their customers, and to have the ability to
easily interact with the future system users and
understand their functionality needs more fully. This
was typically expressed in the notion that it was their
job to design a usage process that took unnecessary
steps out of the implementation process, with an eye
toward its success:
… we are trying to take out a lot of busy
work (unneeded extra work due to having to
fill reports and sketch notes) by centralizing
data and making it possible to spend more
time on having personalized conversations
and allocating more time for client
communication…
Further, in recognizing that commercially
developed CRM systems will be adopted by a varying
range of client companies for their subsequent use in
managing customer relationships in their
marketplaces, the developer perspective trended
toward the need to have uniformly useful systems for
their eventual client implementations:
…we are trying to standardize everything
and have guidelines ready for
implementation no matter the size of the
company…
And, it cannot be overlooked that the willingness
and ability of CRM system suppliers to train forward
into their client markets was a key factor supporting or
inhibiting implementation success, depending on its
provision:
…the implementation teams will help,
educate, and work with the clients primarily
on the team management side versus a
larger concentration on payment side or
market side in retail or ecommerce clients…
4.3. The impact of system features and
functions
As shown in the theoretical matrix of system
features (displayed in Table 3), much of what was
considered essential to preventing failure resided in
ensuring fit with subsequent organizational contexts.
Table 3. Theoretical matrix of meaning:
System
Organization Fit with System
- Bureaucracy complicates implementation and has to be dealt
with prior to implementation.
- Having different departments coordinating is a challenge for
implementation
- If it’s a small client, they will send an onsite engineer to help
them set it up and integrate
- Implementation is tougher since the setting is different (you
have POS and more touch points) in addition to a different
faster sales cycle. Thus the need of CRM increases.
- In the B2B implementation, the major difference is the
features.
- Reasons for CRM failed implementation are:
o Lack of executive support
o Lack of budget
o Having high expectations (like when people want to
automate everything and integrate all solutions).
- The culture impacts the implementation and the bigger the
company the harder it is.
- The system has a lot of functionalities and it needs more time
and training and B2B implementation is slower than that of
B2C due to training on various functions of the CRM.
Organizational Context of System Use
- If customers have 2 systems and data isn’t synchronized, it
causes problems.
- On the fit between CRM with the corporate system, clients
spend big money installing and implementing their ERP and
they get entrenched in it and they become very reluctant to
make the transition and resist adopting CRM.
It is often the case that clients acquiring a CRM
system for implementation will already have existing
systems with which the CRM will have to effectively
integrate. This is a matter of organizational context. It
is clear that CRM systems generally will exist in a
technological ecosystem that is idiosyncratic to a
given adopting firm, and the better a CRM developer
can provide for this likelihood, the more likely this
factor will not become a failure factor in the
implementation process:
…on the fit between CRM with the corporate
system, clients spend big money installing
and implementing their ERP and they get
entrenched in it and they become very
reluctant to make the transition and resist
adopting CRM…
…if customers have 2 systems and data isn’t
synchronized, it causes problems…
A notable aspect of factors which enhance or
inhibit implementation of CRM systems has to do with
system-to-organization fit. Certainly, organizational
requirements in the implementation process will scale
up or down depending on the size of the adopting
client. Some clients might require dedicated assistance
to implement, while others may be fully functional
Tazkarji, M.Y, & Stafford, T. (in press). Reasons for failures of CRM implementations. IEEE Transactions in
Computational Social Systems. DOI: 10.1109/TCSS.2020.2980856
7
with their own corporate expertise on systems
implementations:
…the culture impacts the implementation
and the bigger the company the harder it
is…
…if it’s a small client, they will send an onsite
engineer to help them set it up…
…having different departments coordinating
is a challenge for implementation…
Hence, the clear implications regarding
implementation failure reside in the consideration of
1) how the CRM system fits with the acquiring
organization, and 2) whether the acquiring
organization has a need to integrate the CRM system
they are implementing with other enterprise level
applications that it might interface with.
5. Discussion
The objective of this research is to analyze the
reasons behind the high failure rate of CRM
implementations. We believe that our results are a step
in the right direction by contributing to a better
understanding of CRM implementation issues and
factors leading to CRM failure. Based on the first
“slice of data” in our grounded theory process
(performed with vendors), we noticed that
implementation issues were the main concerns of
respondents. Thus, our findings from the first stage of
qualitative analysis logically induce an answer to our
first research question. The three main factors behind
CRM failure (or success) reside in the three main
components of CRM systems (People, Process, and
Technology). As for the second research question, we
can see that numerous factors can act to prevent
successful implementation of CRM systems. These
factors are: 1) level of managerial commitment, 2)
employee resistance, 3) user motivations, 4)
development Issues, 5) training issues, 6)
organizational fit, and 7) organizational context.
5.1. Future Research
Although our findings align to a great extent with
a large portion of the previous literature on CRM
success, we aim to further investigate the reasons that
lead to these factors through a second and a third round
of interviews with an expanded base of respondents.
While our second round of interviews will concentrate
on academic experts’ views, our third “slice of data”
will investigate system buyer and client perceptions.
We believe that soliciting data from these three groups
using a grounded theory approach would allow us to
further reveal the reasons behind CRM failures, and to
clarify the reasons leading to such failures. This
process will also give way for us to investigate
whether failure factors vary among different groups,
which should shed light on perspectives regarding
usability and supply chain contexts. We suspect that
this context of application may be one major factor
behind the persistence of CRM failures.
5.2. Limitations
The first limitation of our research is that it
concentrates on the CRM implementation phase,
alone, while other phases might also contribute to
CRM failures. Yet, our first round of interview
findings confirm our concerns reflected in the research
questions which revolve around the notion that
software implementation plays a key part in the
success or failure of CRM. None the less, studying
other phases of the CRM life cycle makes an
interesting subject for future research.
The second limitation is that since we are doing
qualitative data collection, the number of interviewees
is necessarily limited owing to the time-consuming,
open-end nature of qualitative interviews. This will
make it hard to verify the results objectively against
the respondents’ scenarios. The limited number of
respondents also puts us at a risk of basing our
conclusions on the subjectivity of the interviewed
population. This limits our study since different
conclusions may be drawn from the different
collections of data. This is a limitation of all qualitative
research and is the reason why qualitative generality is
limited to theoretical generalizations, only, and not to
external populations [43].
Finally, one last limitation is that our data does not
yet arise from both IT and sales/marketing staff
members in the same company, aiding in the
understanding of internal inconsistencies noted in
previous studies. This opens the door for future
research to investigate the effect of factors of “non-
integration” and “non-collaboration” between IT and
sales/marketing functions on CRM implementation
success and failure.
6. Conclusion
Our study aims to uncover factors affecting the
high failure rate of CRM software. We started our
investigation by asking two research questions. The
first round of interviews supplied us with answers that
will be further tested and investigated with a second
and third round of data collection. Using a grounded
theory process will allow us to further probe our
Tazkarji, M.Y, & Stafford, T. (in press). Reasons for failures of CRM implementations. IEEE Transactions in
Computational Social Systems. DOI: 10.1109/TCSS.2020.2980856
8
tentative findings here in order to uncover factors that
may have been overlooked by previous research.
While the main categories affecting CRM
implementation failures align with the findings of
previous research, the subcategories induced in our
analysis unveil a deeper view and help identify
potential failure factors that may have not been
examined before. We believe that our findings provide
a good base for expanding to a second round of data
collection, to be conducted with CRM and Information
Systems’ success topic experts. It would be interesting
to see if their views align with those of CRM system
vendors and those of CRM users. Misalignment may
present a factor that was neglected by the previous
literature on CRM success and failure.
Thus far, this study has found that there are many
factors contributing to the failure of CRM
implementations. While factors coded under the
“People” and the “Technology” categories are
complicated and require organizational collaboration,
factors coded under the “Process” category (regarding
management and vendor efforts), are more
manageable since they can be addressed prior to CRM
implementation. Thus, our findings supply both
researchers and practitioners with detailed
descriptions of factors that ought to be dealt with in
order to avoid CRM failure.
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