The criticality of risk factors in customer relationship management projects

Customer relationship management (CRM) remains an area of considerable interest in contemporary project management literature, due to its association with high failure rates. These high rates are the result of a number of risk factors in CRM project implementation, including the unwillingness of customers to provide firms with relevant information. This research examined the criticality of four risk factors in the CRM market in South Korea. Quantitative data analyzed using PASW17 were collected from a sample of 250 CRM project practitioners. Although the authors found strong evidence to support the focus on these risk factors, which include "user training," "top management support," "business strategy and technology alignment," and "effective project feedback," they found that, although some risk factors may be identified as "critical," their criticality is dependent on the context of the project. In effect, the findings could be contextualized to reinforce an earlier notion that the complexity of the system should be considered, especially with various waves of increasing functionality as maturity increases.