Fast Strategy of Knowledge Management (KM) in Customer
Relationship Management (CRM) of Knowledge Intensive
Business Services (KIBS)
Pugdee Manaves
ABSTRACT
The research attempts to develop a Fast Strategy by proposing a Taxonomy of the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in the Thai Industry. Customers are the best assets of the organization. As an increasing number of organizations realize the importance of becoming more customer-centric in today’s competitive economy, they must have deep knowledge about their customers, products, and services internally and externally. The enterprise executives must know the CSFs that will drive their CRM to help foster a customer-centric business strategy in order for them to grow their business. The CSFs will be derived from interviewing of 9 executives from 9 Small and Medium Enterprises SMEs, focusing on the Knowledge Intensive Services (KIBS) in Thailand, which have implemented CRM. The initial results will develop the proposed baseline CSFs Taxonomy. For this study, the initial results will be validated and seek for the contributions of the CSFs Taxonomy to the related management concepts, which includes Knowledge Management (KM), Strategic Leadership, and Strategic Management, and then the final CSFs Taxonomy is developed from the initial base CSFs Taxonomy with the results from the validation. Experts’ comments have been used as a major input for this particular validation process. The finding from the experiment shows that the taxonomy is demonstrated to be useful for the executives to improve their performance measurement systems, helps them build the companies’ Fast Strategy, and transfer knowledge and experience to newly promoted or second generation executives smoothly and most likely to speed up to the mature stage. In addition, the taxonomy contributes to the Knowledge Management (KM), Strategic Leadership, and Strategic Management. This proposed taxonomy has both potential benefits and limitations that will be addressed throughout the paper.
Keywords: Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Fast Strategy, Critical Success Factors (CSFs), Performance Management, and Business Performance.
บทคัดย่อ
การวิจัยครั้งนี้มีวัตถุประสงค์เพื่อพัฒนากลยุทธ์แบบรวดเร็ว โดยการเสนอตัวแบบการจัดหมวดหมู่
ของปัจจัยสําคัญของความสําเร็จ (Critical Success Factors, CSFs) ของการบริหารความสัมพันธ์ลูกค้า
(Customer Relationship Management, CRM) ของอุตสาหกรรมในประเทศไทย ทั้งนี้ ลูกค้า คือ สินทรัพย์
ที่สําคัญที่สุดขององค์การ ทําให้หลายองค์การมีความตระหนักถึงความสําคัญของลูกค้าเพิ่มมากขึ้นใน
สภาพการแข่งขันทางเศรษฐกิจปัจจุบัน ซึ่งจะต้องมีความรู้เชิงลึกเกี่ยวกับลูกค้า สินค้าและบริการทั้ง
ภายในและภายนอกองค์การ ผู้บริหารขององค์การจะต้องมีความรู้เรื่องปัจจัยสําคัญของความสําเร็จ
สําหรับการพัฒนาความสัมพันธ์ลูกค้า เพื่อสนับสนุนกลยุทธ์ธุรกิจแบบลูกค้าเป็นศูนย์กลางเพื่อการ
เจริญเติบโตทางธุรกิจ ปัจจัยสําคัญของความสําเร็จได้ถูกพัฒนาจากการสัมภาษณ์ผู้บริหารองค์การ
จํานวน 9
ท่าน จากองค์การธุรกิจขนาดกลางและขนาดเล็ก (Small and Medium Enterprises, SMES)
จํานวน 9 องค์การ ซึ่งดําเนินธุรกิจหลักด้านบริการแบบการใช้องค์ความรู้เป็นหลักในประเทศไทย ซึ่งได้มี
การดําเนินแผนงานด้านการบริหารความสัมพันธ์ลูกค้า ผลลัพธ์เบื้องต้นที่ได้มาจะถูกพัฒนาเป็นตัวแบบ
การจัดหมวดหมู่พื้นฐานของปัจจัยสําคัญของความสําเร็จ (The Proposed Baseline CSFs Taxonomy)
สําหรับการศึกษาครั้งนี้ ผลลัพธ์ที่ได้เบื้องต้นจะถูกยืนยันและหาประโยชน์ที่ได้รับกับองค์ความรู้ด้าน
การจัดการอื่นที่เกี่ยวข้อง ได้แก่ การจัดการองค์ความรู้ (Knowledge Management, KM) ผู้นําเชิงกลยุทธ์
(Strategic Leadership) และการจัดการเชิงกลยุทธ์ (Strategic Management) และนําผลการยืนยันมาปรับ
ปรุงพัฒนาตัวแบบการจัดหมวดหมู่ปัจจัยสําคัญของความสําเร็จต่อไป ความคิดเห็นและข้อเสนอแนะ
ของผู้เชี่ยวชาญจะถูกนํามาใช้เป็นหลักในกระบวนการยืนยันผลการศึกษา จากผลการวิจัยพบว่า งานวิจัย
มีประโยชน์อย่างมากสําหรับผู้บริหาร ในการปรับปรุงระบบการวัดผลงานและช่วยให้องค์การสามารถ
สร้างกลยุทธ์แบบรวดเร็วและถ่ายทอดความรู้และประสบการณ์ให้กับผู้ได้รับการเลื่อนตําแหน่งใหม่
หรือผู้บริหารรุ่นที่สองให้สามารถดําเนินธุรกิจได้อย่างราบรื่น ซึ่งธุรกิจมักจะมีแนวโน้มเข้าสู่ช่วงคงที่
(Mature Stage) นอกจากนี้ ยังเป็นแนวทางในการจัดการองค์ความรู้ การพัฒนาผู้นําเชิงกลยุทธ์และการ
จัดการเชิงกลยุทธ์ อย่างไรก็ตาม ตัวแบบการจัดหมวดหมู่ปัจจัยสําคัญของความสําเร็จมีศักยภาพที่จะก่อ
ให้เกิดประโยชน์ และในขณะเดียวกันก็ยังมีข้อจํากัดหลายประการ ซึ่งมีรายละเอียดอยู่ในผลงานวิจัยนี้
IntroductionIn today’s uncertain, competitive and volatile business world, where is affected by technology and globalization, in order to survive in the competitive global economy, the organizations have to well manage knowledge to create competitive advantage. Over the last decade, organizations of all types and sizes have increasingly realized the importance of customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction can lead to customer loyalty, customer retention and business profits. It is widely understood that keeping existing customers is far less costly than winning new ones. Consequently, customer satisfaction has become one of the key operational goals of many organizations. Such organizations have invested heavily in improving performance in customer satisfaction.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a concept that enables an organization to provide specific services to each individual customer and, as a result, create customer intimacy. CRM may be used to create personalized one-to-one experience that will give the individual customer a sense of being cared for; thus opening up new marketing opportunities based on the preferences and history of the customer (Peppers, Rogers and Dorf, 1999).
CRM is not a new concept and has existed in some form in most organizations. The underlying premise of CRM, caring and responding to customers’ needs on a continual basis, has been around for several years. Organizations, of all sizes, have used a form of customer-oriented strategy to compete and survive in their respective customer segments. Before the establishment of large organizations and the deployment of various customers touch points such as multiple branches, call centers, and the Web, organizations were practicing customer relationship management based on the traditional one-on-one customer relationship. Managing traditional one-to-one customer relationship, on an individual basis, is
possible within a small organization. However, large organizations that have ventured geographically and provided numerous customers touch points (such as remote locations, call centers, Web access, sales and marketing representatives), have acknowledged that information systems can provide knowledge, fast response, fast answers, a unified face to the customer and a holistic view of the customer (Jutla et al., 2001). Most of today’s large organizations are organized along functional units spanning sales, customer support and service, marketing, finance, and accounting. As these large organizations undergo various organizational growth stages, coupled with the unprecedented advancements in technology, functional units have deployed best of breed systems that help address their current needs. These best of breed systems quickly became disparate systems that lacked common integration and created dispersed customer’s operational and historical data across the organizations.
Organization are also considering different customer acquisition and retention mechanism ranging from convenience of self-service, ubiquitous availability through multiple access methods, creating a sense of community about the product or service, and configurable products or services inno-vation based on customer knowledge. Based on customer knowledge, cross-selling and up-selling of goods and services, at all customer touch-points, have also become major business drivers. Companies need more information and it must be learned fast. Fast learning is competitive weapon No1 (English & Bogan, 1994). Fast strategy is the key of the strategy agility (Doz & Kosonen, 2008). Three key dimen-sions of strategic agility are as follows:
◦ Strategic sensitivity
◦ Collective commitment
Problem Statement
Small businesses play an important role in the economy of any country because of their flexibility and ability to innovate. In nearly every country, they play a significant role in providing employment opportunities and supporting large-scale manu-facturing firms (Gunaasekaran et al., 2000). Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are critical to almost every national and local economy because of their potential to grow larger (Duan and Kinman, 2000). Small businesses are increasingly recognized as the life blood of modern economics (Ghobadian and Gallear, 1996). The Office of Small and Medium Enterprises Promotion of Thailand (2004) reported that most of the SMEs are family firms. In 2004, Thailand had a total of 2,166,621 enterprises, of which 2,161,577 or 99.8 percent were SMEs. The Family Firm Institute of Boston (2004) estimated that around 90 percent of all U.S. companies are family owned. That means that there are approximately 14 million of such firms. Its predominantly small and medium com-panies, the majority have fewer than 20 employees. Also, the institute estimates that only about 30 percent of these small companies survive to the second generation of family members. Only 12 percent survive to the third generation, and 3 percent to the fourth generation and beyond. Most of the executives of the small and medium companies are entrepreneurs, who tend to be specialists in an activity such as marketing, production, or finance, so they usually do not make good general managers. While managerial skills can be developed through training and/or experience, the skill of sometimes saying “no” to family members wanting to enter the business may still be missing. U.S. Small Business Admission (1991) reported that there are four basic reasons why family firms fail to transfer the business from generation to generation successfully; including 1) Lack of viability of the business, 2) Lack of planning, 3) Little desire on the owner’s part to transfer the firm, and 4) Reluctance of offspring to join the firm. These factors, alone or in combination, make transferring a family business difficult, if not impossible. The primary cause for failure, however, is the lack of planning. With the right plans in place, the business, in most cases, will remain healthy. There are four plans that make up the transition process, which includes 1) Strategic plan, 2) Family strategic plan, 3) Succession plan, and 4) Estate plan.
In all Western countries, knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) are among the fastest growing sectors of economy. KIBS firms are expert companies that provide services to other companies and organizations. Typical KIBS industries are IT services, R&D services, technical consultancy, legal, financial and management consultancy and marketing communications. Besides their growth, KIBS have aroused interest as an essential part of the knowledge and innovation infrastructure of national and regional economies. By nature the knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) are consultative and usually highly customized. In these services it is common to end up in unique situations where the solutions must be highly based on customer needs. (Toivonen, 2004).
SMEs and KIBS generally have limited resources in terms of working, people, management skills, lack of efficient Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Knowledge Management (KM), and Strategic Planning, which causes them to have the difficulty to survive to the second generation of family members. Figure 1 provides the research scope.
Research Objective
The overall objective of this research is to identify the knowledge of the Organizations’ Critical Success Factors (CSFs) of the Customer Relationship Management (CRM). This research seeks into the CSFs that support Customer Relationship Manage-ment (CRM) initiatives in organizations in Thailand. The Critical Success Factor (CSF) methodology was developed by Rockart at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to help senior executives determine their managerial information needs (Rockart, 1979). According to Chu (1995), “Critical Success Factors are the limited number of areas in which satisfactory results will ensure successful performance and poor results will spell trouble for the organization”.
Research Methodology
In this research, there were several tasks under-taken. Before the discussion of the details in each step takes place, it is important that the background of the nine companies under study be introduced. The companies provide knowledge intensive services in engineering design, repair and maintenance, accounting, human resource development and manage-ment services with approximately 100-150 employees. The ages of 9 executive were in 40-55 years old. Their educational background was in engineering, accounting, operations, human resource development, and sales vand marketing management. Their expertise and experience were in the areas of sales, marketing, finance, engineering design, repair and maintenance, operations and accounting management.
The study has been conducted in three phases. These are 1) Exploratory and case screening 2) Experiment and a proposed baseline Critical Success Factors (CSFs) of the Customer Relationship Manage-ment (CRM) and 3) Validation and contribution.
Phase 1, Exploratory and case screening are to interview the 9 executives from 9 SMEs/KIBS companies to explore the nature of their businesses, personal information, working experience, educational background, and current Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems.
Phase 2, Experiment: there are two steps in this phase including 1) taking the information in Phase 1 and identify the CSFs of the CRM, and 2) Developing the proposed baseline CSFs Taxonomy. Transition during changes at the top-
or high-level management
Final CSFs Taxonomy analysis on: (1) Comparisons of the relevance of the Customer Relationship Management (CRM), (2) Analysis on CSFs, and (3) To ensure the CSFs of the
selected organizations are the appropriate for them to monitor their CRM performance
Validation work on: (1) Participating executives’ opinions on the relevance and suitability, (2) Executives’ opinions on the predictability,
and (3) Experts’ opinions on the usefulness.
Final CSFs Taxonomy development by using the results of executives’ opinions on the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) relevance, and the importance of the CSFs Specific customer relationship management (CRM) facing top management’s decision-making
“Baseline” Critical Success Factors (CSFs)
(Set of CSFs should be used to help monitor and evaluate the Customer
Relationship Management (CRM) performance level)
Figure 1: Research Scope Knowledge within the context
of the experience of top management
A specific set of CSFs
Phase 3, Validation takes the baseline CSFs Taxonomy developed in Phase 2 and validates its benefits. In other words, it is the validation of the CSFs Taxonomy and the potential contributions of the CSFs Taxonomy to the related management concepts. These include Knowledge Management
(KM), Strategic leadership, and Strategic Manage-ment, and then the final CSFs is developed from the initial baseline CSFs Taxonomy with the results from the validation. Experts’ comments have been used as a major input for this particular validation process. Figure 2 illustrates the research methodology.
Research Results and Discussion
The summary from the interviews, and validation the followings can be demonstrated. The initial work involved the identification of CSFs. To develop a group format CSFs, the Input/ output (I/O) Analysis, or the breakdown of an organization into 5 com-ponents—upstream, inputs, processes, outputs, and downstream, was to be made. The next step was to categorize the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) into the 4 focused areas. The top management, 9 executives, from these 9 companies were informed about the
objectives of this research and agreed to provide inputs of CSFs based on their previous experience and current customer relationship management (CRM) programs have been implementing at their organiza-tions. Subsequently, common or general CSFs would be derived. A total of 60 CSFs were initially identified and later categorized into four focused are as — 9 CSFs for each strategy CSFs, people CSFs, process CSFs, and technology CSFs respectively.
The initial Taxonomy of the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) of CRM of baseline development is shown in table 1.
Table 1: The Baseline or Initial Taxonomy of the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) from interview with 9 Executives
Focused Areas Subjects
1. Strategy CSF 01. Strategic Vision and Mission
CSF 02. Business Strategy CSF 03. Operational Strategy
CSF 04. Strategic Goals and Objectives CSF 05. Strategic Management Process CSF 06. Degree of Customer Segmentation CSF 07. Customer Buying Trend Analysis CSF 08. Resource Allocation
CSF 09. Performance Management System
Figure 2: Research Methodology
Phase 1 Exploratory and
case selection
Phase 2 Experiment
Conduct interview with 9 executives from 9 SMEs/KIBS companies
Phase 3 Validation
Identify the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) of the Customer Relationship Management
(CRM), and then develop the proposed baseline CSFs Taxonomy
Validation of the relevance, the usefulness,
and success predictability of the CSFs Taxonomy with 9
executives, and then develop the final CSFs
Taxonomy
Validation of benefits by the experts’ comments, via interview and open ended questionnaire Explore the nature of
the businesses, personal information, working experience, educational background, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Conduct the interview to the 9 executives from 9 SMEs/KIBS companies
Focused Areas Subjects
2. People CSF 10. Corporate Culture
CSF 11. Leadership Involvement and Support CSF 12. Human Resource Development
CSF 13. Performance Appraisal and Reward Systems CSF 14. CRM Training Program
CSF 15. Employee Retention CSF 16. Employee Motivation CSF 17. Staff Alignment CSF 18. Teamwork
3. Process CSF 19. Operational Management Process
CSF 20. Customer Management Process CSF 21. Innovation Management Process
CSF 22. Regulatory and Social Management Process CSF 23. Marketing Management Process
CSF 24. Sales Management Process CSF 25. Call Center Process
CSF 26. Finance and Accounting Management Process CSF 27. Problem Solving Process
4. Technology CSF 28. Data Warehouse Technology
CSF 29. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems CSF 30. Electronic CRM or eCRM
CSF 31. Customer Support and Service (CSS) CSF 32. Sales Force Automation (SFA)
CSF 33. Enterprise Marketing Automation (EMA) CSF 34. CRM Software
CSF 35. E-Commerce CSF 36. Internet/Intranet
Validation of the proposed final baseline taxonomy
In this phase, the proposed baseline taxonomy is validated by the interview of 9 executives from 9 companies on their acceptability of the proposed baseline taxonomy to their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. The initial results were perceived to be relevant and suitable by the same group of 9 executives.
With respect to an attempt to verify and accept the proposed taxonomy, the initial results were perceived to be relevant and suitable by the same group of nine executives when the follow-up discus-sion was conducted. The proposed baseline taxonomy was thought to be useful as a guideline to improve information requirements, and as objective evidence for transferring experience to new managers. From a scale of 1- 5, the score averages were in the range of 4.11 to 4.56. The corresponding standard deviation values were between 0.33 and 0.53. This reflected high consistency. For the second verification task, the group of nine invited experts generally considered the proposed taxonomy to be useful in enhancing the knowledge management effort as well as benefiting the issues relating to strategic management (e.g., a
strategy map for planning). Within the context of its integration ability into knowledge and strategic leadership management activities, the proposed baseline taxonomy received overall scores in the range of 4.11 to 4.78 for a scale of 1-5, with the corresponding standard deviation values of 0.33 to 0.53— implying high consistency among their opinions and evaluation.
Finally, the third task is to validate the monitored CSFs to ensure the CSFs of CRM of the 9 companies are appropriated CSFs for them to monitor their CRM performance. For this verification task, there are two key external implications selected: (1) customer satisfaction index (2) years of top ten customers’ retention. The main reason to select these two key external impacts is because if the nine companies have the proper monitored CSFs proportions, they should manage their CRM performance competitively, and achieve the results better than the average industry’s performance, and should be able to satisfy their customers, and retain these loyal sustainable customers. The more successful the companies satisfied their customers, the longer years of customer retention periods
Table 2: Top ten customers’ retention periods
Table 3: Results of the customer satisfaction index versus industry average
Table 2 indicates that the average top ten customers’ retention periods are 13 years, 15 years, 13 years , 13 years , 13 years , 13 years , 13 years , 13 years and 13 years for company#1, company#2, company#3, company#4, company#5, company#6 company#7, company#8, and company#9, respectively. Table 3 shows that all nine companies’ customer satisfaction index is higher than the industries’ customer satisfac-tion index. These results demonstrate that the three companies achieve CRM performance better than their competitors, and the industries, which reflects that their monitored CSFs proportion of each focused area is proven to be acceptable and applicable. In conclu-sion, these CSFs proportions may be suitable for these particular types of business, size, or industries, the companies operate in different size or different industries may have to adapt the CSFs proportion which is most suitable for them.
Research Limitations
There are several limitations on the proposed baseline taxonomy. First of all, this taxonomy is based on the experiments with only 9 companies. Their size is considered to be medium with high competition. They can also be considered as knowledge intensive services (KIBS) firms. The background of top managers or executives who volunteered for this study may influence the research findings. They assume the roles of both top managers and major
shareholders. Their educational background and experience in the areas of professionals of sales, marketing, finance, engineering accounting, and operation management may also influences the results.
The firms that operate in different environments may not be able to adapt the research results entirely, in both the circumstances and their corresponding sets of CFSs. The manufacturing firms may rely on other CSFs such as the product quality factors. The firms with considerable high control over the market (i.e., the supply side) may not need to pay a lot of attention on CSFs of CRM. The large firms with a clearer separation between shareholders and managing directors may prefer a different set of CSFs. Definitely, the administrators for public agencies cannot simply adopt the taxonomy in its entire form. Finally, this study has not verified the important priority ranking of CSFs embedded in each focused areas.
Conclusion
The taxonomy is proved to be very useful for the executives as a baseline or a guideline to help monitor the CRM performance levels of the firm. The initial reaction and feedback from the executives who had participated in this study were generally positive. The reason is that this taxonomy is based on their actual requests; therefore, it represents the transfer of their experience into firm’s records.
Companies Average years of being customers
(#) Company#1 Company#2 Company#3 Company#4 Company#5 Company#6 Company#7 Company#8 Company#9 13 15 13 14 17 15 14 16 14
Companies Customer satisfaction index (%)
Industry Average customer satisfaction
index (%)
Customer satisfaction index above industry average (%)
Company#1 88% 80% 8% Company#2 85% 80% 5% Company#3 90% 85% 5% Company#4 91% 83% 8% Company#5 90% 80% 10% Company#6 89% 80% 9% Company#7 94% 80% 14% Company#8 87% 80% 7% Company#9 92% 80% 12%
Newly- promoted or hired executives can use this guideline as a basis for the information needed to help make quality decisions. This proposed taxonomy should not be as an absolute rule but integrated into a management process as a complimentary component to help newly- hired or –promoted executives adjust themselves into their new responsibility (under extremely complex environment), and create a manage-ment tool for quality decisions. In addition, this taxonomy may be used to demonstrate the capability and maturity of an organization. Finally, there will be additional research work in the areas of limitations discussed previously. This is necessary to help verify the usefulness of the proposed baseline taxonomy.
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Dr. Pugdee Manaves is an international management consultant, business leader, and global educator who helps managers to think strategically, develop winning plans, and successfully turn ideas into results. He earned his B.Eng in Engineering from Chulalongkorn University, MSc. in Management from University of London, UK., Ph.D. in International Relations from American University, U.S.A., D.Eng. in Engineering from Kasetsart University in the collaborative program with Case Western Reserve University, U.S.A., and his Postdoctoral degree from University of Vaasa, Finland. His working experiences as a CEO of Castrol Chemicals, Thailand, recorded to achieve corporate strategic goals with excellent results. He is currently a deputy managing director of Bangkok Aviation Fuel Services Plc, providing the aviation fuel services for Bangkok and Provincial airports in Thailand. He also serves academic works as a faculty of Stamford International University, Thailand, and a visiting professor of University of Vaasa, Finland.
