COSTUMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT AND THE SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES: A STUDY OF MULTIPLE CASES IN PORTUGUESE ENTERPRISES

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) emerges as a response to organizations that choose to adopt strategies of relationship marketing so as to offer customers a more personalized experience. The need for significant investments in the purchase of technological systems and to adapt the internal procedures causes the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to remain in a more traditional posture, unlike the large enterprises. However, increased competition, globalization of markets, technological development and the ephemerality of customer preferences have led many SMEs to rethink their business. This article seeks to answer the question "how CRM is adopted in the SMEs, for the purpose of analyzing the critical success factors relevant to the adoption of CRM in the SMEs?" Therefore case studies were made of three Portuguese enterprises. Interviews were conducted and secondary documents were analyzed to collect data. As the main contribution, an analysis was made of those critical success factors for the adoption of CRM which should be considered most important by the SMEs. In conclusion it was found that the enterprises studied during the project of CRM implementation had attributed greater importance to the following critical success factors, integration of information and data, efficient human resource management and support of top management. Furthermore, because of limited resources, it is important for these enterprises to plan the process of CRM in advance to ensure that the best choices in terms of technology are made.