A Project Failure Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

A Project Failure - Case Study Example It is known that some companies engage in evaluating customer needs, training staff to be more proactive with customers, and/or creating teams or assigning individuals to upgrade customer services. In addition, performance-based companies more frequently compensate sales and other staff at least partially on customer satisfaction scores. This type of business requires effective and unique set of management tools in order to reach a customer and retain him. The aim of the paper is to prove, analyze and evaluate CRM and impact of these strategies on customer relations. The case study describes an attempt of the private Chinese trading company to introduce IT project and improve performance of the organization. I selected this case study for analysis, because it vividly portrays problems and difficulties faced by organizations in IT projects. The majority of case studies describes success factors of CRM but omits difficulties and weaknesses of planning process. The report describes culture and morale of the organizations, research methodology and data collection methods, and causes of the project failure. Then, it gives brief recommendations for other companies how to avoid project failure and introduce CRM (Dow, 1999). The goal of CRM is to examine and analyze customers' needs and wants in order to meet their requirement and expectations. CRM has a great impact on profitability and effective performance of organizations. The importance of CRM is explained by the fact that many organizations have begun to develop global markets and have established face-to-face sales teams either directly, using their own personnel, or indirectly, through contracted sales agents. Bergeron (2002) defines customer relationship management as "the dynamic process of managing a customer-company relationship such that customers elect to continue mutually beneficial commercial exchanges and are dissuaded from participating in exchanges that are unprofitable to the company" (p. 3). In modern environment, CRM and development influence profitability because the attention has shifted to a greater emphasis on the management of the whole system and its relationship with other systems. In this situation, CRM can be seen as a med iator which helps to cope with different demands both within the production system itself and between that and other systems. As environments change, they pose new problems for managers of organizations. Thus, with the emphasis on CRM comes the realization that increasing operating efficiency. CRM influences profitability because it includes changing knowledge and technology, new values, new markets, and changes in the global distribution of wealth. New knowledge, for instance, can invalidate the existing knowledge of an entire industry. When environments become turbulent, complex, and resource constrained, the knowledge and skills that companies once possessed can become useless, and even a hindrance to change. CRM projects acquire new knowledge and technology, and employ these assets in production quickly (Freeland, 2002). Current State of Customer Relationships Forms The case study underlines that the project manager needs excellent planning, management and control skills. He/she should have a good knowledge in psychology and human resource management in order to improve morale and motivation of