A CRM adoption model for Malaysian telecommunication and financial companies

Abstract

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) plays an important role in managing organization functions and processes in order to create a long-term relationship among customers and stockholders. A study of its adoption is essential to understand the factors influencing management’s decision in adopting it. This research studied the organizational characteristics, technology characteristics and environmental factors on telecommunication and finance companies that have both low and high intention to adopt CRM. A survey on the respondents from MSC companies and a large CRM provider in Malaysia was conducted. This was followed by an interview with the latter. Multiple regression method was used to calculate and to analyze the correlations between the independent variables and their intention to adopt CRM. Research shows that a set of organizational characteristics has the most influence on adoption, followed by a set of environmental factors which is significant only for companies that have lower intention to adopt CRM. Technology characteristics however, are not relevant to Malaysian companies.