1. Introduction
The extant literature does not thoroughly investigate the benefits of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. CRM systems are different from enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM) systems in that they focus on relationships with customers. Therefore, it could be argued that CRM systems can have the greatest effect on firm performance. Thus far, the research finds evidence that CRM systems do improve customer satisfaction (Mithas et al., 2005), but implementing CRM systems does not improve stock returns or profitability (Hendricks et al., 2007). This raises the question: If there are no measurable benefits achieved while implementing CRM systems, then why do companies continue to invest heavily in them?
