The steps of Finnish medium sized SAP / EPR USERS towards an implementation of a CRM system

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2006 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: 1.0, Helia University of Business and Applied Sciences , course: Double degree program in Finnland, language: English, abstract: CRM has aroused much interest in various business fields during the last decade and is of high importance in today's businesses. Similarly has increased the demand for CRM system by many companies around the world. As our sponsors can not recognize this trend in Finland, the objective of the study was consequently to explore the weak demand of the CRM system on the Finnish market. Accordingly, the purpose was to provide a better insight in the until now unexplored Finnish CRM market and in particular in an interesting segment of our sponsor SAP, the existing customer base of companies with an ERP system. The aim was to examine medium sized ERP operating companies concerning their readiness for a CRM implementation. The conceptual framework is based on literature and various articles of avowed authors in the field of CRM and was divided according to the research questions. Overall this study is based on two parts, the theoretical part which strives to give the necessary background and an empirical part which applies to the findings and analysis of our research. Our research methodology was a quantitative one, as we used a self completion questionnaire to conduct our survey. The research was carried out in form of an online survey and was sent to 78 companies. As CRM is a strategic issue, we chose respondents from the upper management level, mostly managing directors. Only these persons were able to give qualitative and valid answers about the current situation in these companies. The findings showed that the respondents are aware of the topic CRM and that it is constituted as an important issue for these companies. All of the respondents see usefulness in the functions and the support of their business with a CRM system. Finally only 10 percent of all participants are not planning to implement any CRM system, while 55 percent have already and 35 percent will implement a CRM system in the future. The conclusion of the report showed that an obvious trend can be recognized in theses companies towards an implementation of a CRM system. More specific, 90 percent of the respondents are or will be ready in the next one to three years to take the final step, an implementation of a CRM system. As a recommendation to our sponsor we suggest to use the by us developed research path for further research, in order to get a total overview about the market. [...]