CRM in the digital age: implementation of CRM in three contemporary B2B firms
| Published date | 09 March 2015 |
| Pages | 2-19 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JSIT-06-2014-0044 |
| Date | 09 March 2015 |
| Author | Heini Sisko Maarit Lipiäinen |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information systems |
CRM in the digital age:
implementation of CRM in three
contemporary B2B rms
Heini Sisko Maarit Lipiäinen
School of Business and Economics, University of Jyväskylä,
Jyväskylä, Finland
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this study was to contribute to the current discussion on digitization in
companies’ marketing from a customer relationship management (CRM) perspective by examining the
role and objectives of CRM and the exploitation of social media to serve the objectives of CRM in
contemporary business-to-business (B2B) companies.
Design/methodology/approach – The data are collected through semi-structured themed
interviews with key marketing/sales managers from three B2B rms.
Findings – CRM seems to be moving closer to the company’s core activity and becoming everybody’s
business to a greater extent than ever before, but its main goal, to enhance customer relationships, will
not necessarily change. Understanding the customer is vital and requires different functions to
cooperate closely to ensure the rm has the best possible understanding of its customers. Public social
media tools played almost no part in CRM, but closed social media systems might have potential in the
future.
Research limitations/implications – The chosen research approach limits the generalization of
the results.
Practical implications – It seems likely that rms will benet from a collaborative working style
over the traditional silo approaches. For B2B rms, public social media does not seems to be the most
suitable source to serve CRM but private social media channels might have potential in the future.
Originality/value – The lack of empirical examination of the change from company ecosystem to
customer ecosystem from a CRM perspective, and the lack of research on social media for CRM in the
B2B context, determines the purpose of this study. Furthermore, digitization is a rather new and
unstructured phenomenon and many companies are still considering how to reconcile to it.
Keywords CRM, B2B, Social media, Digital media, Industrial marketing, Social CRM
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Digitization has challenged marketing in the past decade and is the latest in the names
of social media. The power has shifted from the hands of marketers to customers, which
has important consequences for rms, products and brands (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2010;
Muntinga et al., 2011). Today, customers are social customers, who are consciously
connected to the people and companies around them and require transparency and
authenticity from those companies and people (Greenberg, 2010). The empowerment of
the customer has naturally generated new challenges for customer relationship
management (CRM). As Saarijärvi et al. (2013, p. 152) concluded, “CRM must adapt to a
business environment where new forms of exchange are emerging and where traditional
customer and rm roles quickly become out-dated and are recreated”.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
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JSIT
17,1
2
Received 23 June 2014
Revised 17 November 2014
Accepted 29 November 2014
Journalof Systems and
InformationTechnology
Vol.17 No. 1, 2015
pp.2-19
©Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1328-7265
DOI 10.1108/JSIT-06-2014-0044
The demarcation lines between internal and external company environments have
become blurred and the customer has been included in the value creation processes.
Serving customers has been called the “new marketing” (Kietzmann et al., 2011) and in
essence, the customer has become more central to the company – closer to company’s
core. Companies are seeking new ways to get closer to customers (IBM, 2010). The
evolution has prompted the development of a new strategic approach, “social CRM”
(Greenberg, 2010), to better capture the dynamic change from company ecosystem to
customer ecosystem. Social CRM represents a new strategy, taking CRM one step closer
to CRM as a strategic function, an overall company philosophy, softer outcomes,
emotional metrics and also an awareness of stakeholders other than just the customer,
and highlighting engagement as the main goal of CRM instead of just managing
customers (Greenberg, 2010). Generally, in CRM literature, engagement has been
welcomed as having the potential to offer a new perspective on CRM (Baird and
Parasnis, 2011;Greenberg, 2010;Verhoef et al., 2010). The core of this approach is to
engage the customer in a collaborative conversation and to understand the customer on
a more meaningful level (Greenberg, 2010).
In addition to new approaches that the digitization of the communication landscape
requires from companies’ marketing functions, technological development has offered
new opportunities to manage and facilitate communication. Computer-mediated
exchange and shared electronic resources have enormous potential to encourage
participation in practice (Beirne and Cromack, 2009) and, hence, offer new opportunities
to support CRM. Increasing interest in customer engagement has paralleled the
continued evolution of the Internet and new digital technologies like social media (Wirtz
et al., 2010). The rise of social media is even claimed to bring a new technological
paradigm in sales research (Andzulis et al., 2012). Social media has made it possible to
build and maintain relationships (Pagani and Mirabello, 2011), and create value
interactively through digital channels (Booth and Matic, 2011;Brasel, 2012;Sashi, 2012).
Social media can be seen as a tool offering companies real opportunities to get closer to
customers (Baird and Parasnis, 2011), and engage them (Greenberg, 2010), and through
that, access relationship performance outcomes (Trainor et al., 2014). In a recent study of
social media and CRM, Trainor et al. (2014) found that investment in social media could
bring relationship management benets, but the use of social media alone does not have
a direct effect on relationship performance; the usage of social media tools can develop
capabilities that allow rms to better serve their customers. It is not about the
technology, but how it is harnessed in practice.
In general, research on social media is limited and focused largely on the
business-to-customer (B2C) domain (Michaelidou et al., 2011), although it has been
suggested that social media is also important for business-to-business (B2B) companies
(Järvinen et al., 2012;Kho, 2008;Michaelidou et al., 2011;Sharma, 2002). A survey
conducted in the UK among B2B small and medium enterprises, reported that a quarter
of them were using social networking sites to achieve their marketing objectives and the
most important goal for social networking sites was attracting new customers and
cultivating customer relationships (Michaelidou et al., 2011), which suggests the
Internet and social media are important tools to build relationships, even in the B2B
context (Kho, 2008;Michaelidou et al., 2011;Sharma, 2002). The increased interaction
between buyers and sellers that has evolved recently has particularly captured the
interest of managers seeking to better understand and serve their buyers through new
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CRM in the
digital age
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