Voids in the Current CRM Literature: Academic Literature Review and Classification (2000-2005) Kristel Paulissen Hasselt University - Belgium kristel.paulissen@uhasselt.be Koen Milis European University College Brussels – Belgium MIKOEN@ehsal.be Malaika Brengman Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Belgium malaika.brengman@vub.ac.be Jerry Fjermestad New Jersey Institute of Technology Fjermestad@adm.njit.edu Nicholas C. Romano, Jr., Oklahoma State University nicholas.romano@okstate.edu Abstract The status of the CRM literature is investigated for the period of 2000 to 2005, in order to provide an overview of academic research on the subject and to identify gaps in the current literature. To provide as complete picture of CRM as possible, the Information Systems (IS) as well as the Marketing literature was systematically reviewed. From both disciplines the top journals and a number of international conferences were analyzed. Selected publications were reviewed in a structured way and categorized according to the different phases in the CRM lifecycle: adoption, acquisition, implementation, use & maintenance, evolution and retirement. It appears that less attention has been devoted to implementation issues and to the evolution and retirement phases. Furthermore, a difference in attention was found between the IS and Marketing literature: while researchers of the latter focused mainly on the adoption and use phases, IS researchers’ attention was more evenly distributed over the lifecycle. 1. Introduction Although Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a recent concept, its tenets have been around for some time [15]. However, researchers seem to have a difficulty in defining CRM and in mapping out how to implement it. The main problem is that CRM means different things to different people [21, 19]. A number see it as a combination of business processes and technology that aims to understand a company’s customers from the perspective of who they are, what they do, and what they are like. To some, CRM integrates marketing, sales, and service functions through business process automation, technology solutions and information resources in order to optimize each customer contact. Others opt to take an information technology (IT) perspective and focus on the fact that IT is the ‘glue’ that holds together and enables the whole to be operationalized. The current paper adopts the following point of view: “CRM is a process that utilizes technology as an enabler to capture, analyze and disseminate current and prospective customer data to identify customer needs more precisely and develop insightful relationships” [4]. In today’s global and fiercely competitive market, maintaining good customer relationships is crucial for companies seeking growth and profit [20]. Worldwide IT-based CRM applications totalled $11.2 billion in 2002 and is expected to reach $20.6 billion by 2007 (Forrester.com). However, implementing a CRM system is a major task, and reaping the benefits of it does not appear to be easy. The performance impacts of CRM applications to date have been mixed [4, 2]. Only about 35% of all CRM applications have been estimated to be a success [5]. Even though the situation is improving, 55% of all CRM applications fail according to Gartner Inc. [22]. Because of the high investments involved and the high failure rate, research on CRM systems is called for. Romano and Fjermestad [16] have investigated the status and maturity of Electronic Commerce Customer Relationship Management (ECCRM) by means of an exhaustive literature review of 369 articles, from the first published article in 1984 up to conference papers presented in 2001 and 2002. They found that more conference proceedings articles had been published with regard to the subject than journal articles, which in their opinion could be considered a sign of relative immaturity. They also revealed a lack of CRM theory and conceptual model development. More recently, however, they were able to identify several papers addressing more theoretical IS-CRM issues and found Proceedings of the 40th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2007 1 © 1530-1605/07 $20.00 2007 IEEE Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'07) 0-7695-2755-8/07 $20.00 © 2007