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The choice of  single‑  vendor solutions or a more fragmented 

choice

Figure 9.23 highlights the key issues in deciding on and designing a system to support CRM. 

Think about the ideal situation; it would be:

● 

A single  customer-  facing and  employee-  facing application that supports all the communi-

cations channels.

● 

A single integrated database such that any employee has total visibility about a customer –  

they can access all visit, sales and support histories.

● 

From a single vendor for ease of implementation and support.

Now think about the reality in organisations you are familiar with: in all probability the 

system will have different applications for different communications channels, separate 

databases in different functional areas and multiple vendors. E-commerce systems are often 

separate from traditional systems. Such fragmentation makes implementation and main-

tenance of such systems a headache for managers and will often result in poor levels of 

service for the customer. The solution that many companies are looking to move to is close 

to the situation above. This need has been the reason for the growth in importance of enter-

prise resource planning systems from companies such as SAP and Oracle. However, the 

difficulty is that no single company can provide best-of-breed applications in all areas. To 

gain competitive edge, companies may need to turn to solutions from innovators who, for 

example, support new channels such as WAP, and provide knowledge management solu-

tions or sales management solutions. Thus managers are faced with a precarious balancing 

act between selecting standardised products or integrating more leading systems for each 

CRM capability.

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