Field Site and Unit of Analysis

The first longitudinal research was conducted at a multinational producer of cigarettes during the implementation and use of a CRM system in one of its European countries. The “company” (the name of the company cannot be disclosed) was chosen for two reasons. Firstly, it was about to deploy a new CRM system at a local site in Europe when the researcher initially made contact, therefore giving the researcher the possibility of following the post- adoption usage phases from the ‘go-live’ of the system until about two years afterwards. This long period of study was definitively one of the main assets of this case. Data gathering was facilitated as the project was still “fresh in the minds” of the stakeholders and users. Secondly, the company’s management was willing to provide the researcher with access to all needed resources (e.g. local and HQ staff for interviews, data and documents such as project meeting minutes, system logs, company presentations and system’s change requests). This access to information was definitively another key asset. The company’s top management was willing to cooperate and learn from this research, therefore facilitating access to numerous sources of information. The selected site was in Romania, where the company implemented one of the modules of the Siebel CRM system, namely its Territory Management System (TMS). The TMS objective was to support the planning, execution and tracking of the company’s promotional and merchandising activities at reseller and customer sites. The activities supported by the TMS consisted of segmenting and prioritizing sales outlets, setting objectives for outlets in terms of assortment, space, promotion and merchandising management, planning field visits for the trade marketing associates (TMAs), and executing and reporting outlet visits. The TMS was implemented within the marketing department to support its field activities. It was mainly used by operational planners as a planning tool for territory management, weekly route definition and set up, objective and activity

planning and analysis of field activities, and by TMAs as a field marketing support tool for tracking their field activities and collecting outlet data (e.g. level of product inventories, number and types of merchandising tools available, level of contractual compliance of outlets). The CRM solution deployment occurred in April 2008, and was part of a worldwide roll-out. The unit of analysis was the Siebel user community in the marketing department and all subsequent analysis was based on the individual users within this department. This marketing department was divided into two sub-units: operations (mostly field people), and development and planning staff (planners). Each sub-unit was headed by a director. In total, these units represented a population of more than 100 users composed of three main user types: directors and their support staff (24 users), field staff (83 users), and operational and strategy planners (three users). Four main Siebel functionalities were used: sales, marketing, answers (ad hoc query tool) and analytics (business intelligence platform).

The researcher was not able to select a second case study within another subsidiary of the company, and had to select a second site based on the following criteria: similar CRM functionalities and user population, full access to information, project in a start-up phase, and similar industry sector.

The second research site met the first three criteria. Unfortunately, it was impossible to find a company within a similar industry sector. The researcher conducted this second case study at a Swiss higher educational institution delivering business bachelor and master programs. This research involved a company at the other side of the spectrum in terms of sector (manufacturing versus service), and management style (hierarchical versus laissez-faire approach). However, polar types may also be of interest (Pettigrew, 1990). The study spanned 13 months from September 2010 to October 2011. The school had recently acquired more than 60 Salesforce.com user licenses and was about to deploy an SFA and campaign management system to support its sales and marketing activities. This implementation was the second attempt to introduce a CRM system after an initial trial failed three years previously. This new initiative was sponsored by the recently appointed director of operations. However, the scope and the selected CRM system were different. Almost all sales and marketing departments were now involved, and the new tool was Salesforce.com, replacing the Microsoft CRM solution previously introduced in a

single department (Communications). The activities supported by Salesforce.com consisted of storing and managing contact information (i.e. students, alumni, recruiters, donors, and conference speakers), tracking marketing and student recruitment activities (e.g. interviews, meetings and fund raising activities), planning, executing and analyzing marketing campaigns (e.g. to prepare class reunions), and finally planning and tracking campus visits of prospective students. The last activity covered by the new CRM tool was tracking student visits to the infirmary or psychologists. This CRM system was implemented in the following departments: recruitment and admissions, fund raising, marketing and communications, medical staff, internship, and research team. The unit of analysis was the Salesforce.com user community working in the above departments. Together, about 60 school staff members were registered as users in the Salesforce.com application, and out of those 60 users the researcher selected a subset of 12, representing two key users in each department. In most departments, a manager and one of his/her staff were selected in order to get input from different hierarchical levels, similar to the initial case study. In addition to key users and their managers (all managers were CRM system users), the researcher regularly interviewed project team members (project manager and support coordinator) and the business sponsor. The selection of interviewees purposely reflected a diverse set of stakeholders, from the fundraising director’s assistant up to the business sponsor, who was also a member of the executive committee.

The third case study was conducted at a Geneva based real estate agency selling luxury properties in prestigious locations in Switzerland and abroad. The researcher followed a six-member team during six months, from December 2012 to May 2013. This team was composed of five sales representatives and a CRM coordinator responsible for user support, competitive information gathering and e-marketing campaigns. The company’s sales director introduced Salesforce.com at the end of November 2012 in order to standardize the tracking of her team’s sales activities (leads, opportunities, customer follow-ups, and forecasts), improve sales and marketing efficiency and provide her and her team with increased visibility on sales efforts. This new CRM system replaced an ageing client database specifically designed for the real-estate sector but lacking advanced sales and marketing functionalities such as sales forecasts

and campaign emailing. This third implementation site shared similar characteristics with the previous two case studies in terms of deployed CRM functionalities (sales and marketing), access to information (full access to users, project documents and system log data), and start date of the analysis (just after deployment). Like for the educational institution, the researcher was able to interview people on a monthly basis in order to precisely map usage phases, user progression as well as factors influencing usage and their evolution along the various usage phases. Although the industry (real estate) and the size (six persons) were quite different from the previous case studies, the objectives of all three CRM initiatives were quite similar: process standardization, increased sales and marketing efficiency, improved customer data quality and performance tracking.