Process-based CRM: A Pilot Study
Manel Mastouri, Salah Boumaiza

Abstract
A lot is written about Customer Resource Management (CRM) but little is found about its portability and compatibility. Only few of its components are transferable and when transferred the outcomes still remain unpredictable. The lack of standardization and portability seem to be the main factors behind its slow acceptance in the business community. By analogy to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) quality management standards, this article proposes a process-based approach for the CRM concept. CRM performance is studied in terms of its objectives, its inputs, its control mechanism, and its outputs. This pilot study shows that a process-based approach is acceptable in evaluating a CRM system. This CRM architecture, if adequately implemented, will ease CRM portability and compatibility. However, despite this assertion, our preliminary conclusions still show that among all studied variables, only CRM input is found to significantly affect CRM performance; the rest of the variables have been excluded by a stepwise regression model.

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