Table of Contents
Table of Contents
TOC o “1-3” h z u Chapter one – Introduction PAGEREF _Toc366877866 h 81.1 Introduction PAGEREF _Toc366877867 h 91.2 Background of the study….. PAGEREF _Toc366877868 h 101.3 Rationale of the research study PAGEREF _Toc366877869 h 111.4 Development of research idea, question, objectives and hypothesis PAGEREF _Toc366877870 h 111.5 Research Access, Limitations & Resources PAGEREF _Toc366877871 h 131.6 Outline of the research PAGEREF _Toc366877872 h 13Chapter two – Literature Review PAGEREF _Toc366877873 h 152.1 Introduction PAGEREF _Toc366877874 h 152.2 Review on customer relationship management PAGEREF _Toc366877875 h 162.3 Defining customer relationship management (CRM) PAGEREF _Toc366877876 h 162.4 Goals of customer relationship management PAGEREF _Toc366877877 h 182.5 Types of customer relationship management PAGEREF _Toc366877878 h 192.5.1. Proactive and reactive customer relationship management PAGEREF _Toc366877879 h 192.5.2 Operational CRM PAGEREF _Toc366877880 h 202.5.3 Collaborative CRM PAGEREF _Toc366877881 h 202.5.4 Analytical CRM PAGEREF _Toc366877882 h 202.6 Definition of productivity PAGEREF _Toc366877883 h 212.7 Significance of productivity PAGEREF _Toc366877884 h 212.8 Single productivity concepts PAGEREF _Toc366877885 h 222.9 Typical Calculations of Productivity PAGEREF _Toc366877886 h 222.9.1 Physical Productivity PAGEREF _Toc366877887 h 222.9.2 Functional Productivity PAGEREF _Toc366877888 h 222.9.3 Economic Productivity PAGEREF _Toc366877889 h 232.10 Business value impact of customer relationship management on productivity PAGEREF _Toc366877890 h 232.11 Summary PAGEREF _Toc366877891 h 25Chapter three – Research Methodology PAGEREF _Toc366877892 h 263.1. Introduction PAGEREF _Toc366877893 h 273.2 Defining research philosophy and the selection of research philosophy PAGEREF _Toc366877894 h 293.3 Defining research approach and the selection of research approach PAGEREF _Toc366877895 h 293.4 Defining research design and the selection of research design PAGEREF _Toc366877896 h 293.5 Preferred research Strategies PAGEREF _Toc366877897 h 303.6 Time Horizon PAGEREF _Toc366877898 h 303.7 Research Instruments PAGEREF _Toc366877899 h 313.7.1. Sampling framework PAGEREF _Toc366877900 h 313.7.2. Data Collection mechanism PAGEREF _Toc366877901 h 313.7.3. Data analysis tools PAGEREF _Toc366877902 h 323.8 Applicability of research validity and reliability PAGEREF _Toc366877903 h 333.9 Ethical considerations PAGEREF _Toc366877904 h 333.10 Summary PAGEREF _Toc366877905 h 33Chapter 4 – Findings and Analysis PAGEREF _Toc366877906 h 344.1 Introduction PAGEREF _Toc366877907 h 354.2 Findings from the descriptive study PAGEREF _Toc366877908 h 374.3 Hypothesis testing PAGEREF _Toc366877909 h 454.4 Finding from the regression study PAGEREF _Toc366877910 h 464.5 Conclusion PAGEREF _Toc366877911 h 48Chapter 5 – Discussion PAGEREF _Toc366877912 h 495.1. Introduction PAGEREF _Toc366877913 h 505.2. Comparing the first finding with literature PAGEREF _Toc366877914 h 505.3. Comparing the second finding with literature PAGEREF _Toc366877915 h 515.4. Rationale for research gaps PAGEREF _Toc366877916 h 515.5. Chapter Summary PAGEREF _Toc366877917 h 52Chapter Six – Conclusions and Recommendations PAGEREF _Toc366877918 h 536.1 Introduction PAGEREF _Toc366877919 h 546.2 Summary of the major findings PAGEREF _Toc366877920 h 546.3 Covering of the aims and objectives PAGEREF _Toc366877921 h 546.4 Recommendations for improvement PAGEREF _Toc366877922 h 556.5 Recommendations for further research PAGEREF _Toc366877923 h 556.6. Chapter Summary PAGEREF _Toc366877924 h 56Appendix PAGEREF _Toc366877925 h 57Reference PAGEREF _Toc366877926 h 61
List of figures
TOC h z c “Figure” Figure 1 Types of CRM mapped against degree of personalization PAGEREF _Toc366877935 h 19Figure 2 Research onion model PAGEREF _Toc366877936 h 28
List of tables
TOC c “Table” Table 1: Concurrent corporate social responsibility dynamics PAGEREF _Toc366877928 h 36
Table 2: Demography of respondents PAGEREF _Toc366877929 h 38
Table 3 Process of data coding PAGEREF _Toc366877930 h 42
Table 4: Descriptive statistics results PAGEREF _Toc366877931 h 44
Table 5: Hypothesis testing results PAGEREF _Toc366877932 h 46
Table 6 unit root test PAGEREF _Toc366877933 h 47
Table 7: Autocorrelation test PAGEREF _Toc366877934 h 47
Chapter 1 – Introduction
Introduction
The high rate of growth in the business sector over the past few decades has increased the level of competition between the players. One aspect of this increased competition that has become significant and remained so in a sustained manner is the customer. Bose (2002) reiterates the concept of a good understanding of the importance of the customer in all business growth and productivity endeavors as key. Coupled with economic uncertainty, tough competition has continued to drive the strategy of many business organizations as they seek not only to remain afloat in these tough economic times, but also to grow in a sustainable manner.
All successful business enterprises have come to acknowledge the importance of a satisfied customer as one of the prime ingredients of growth and productivity. On the other hand, dissatisfied customers are sure to affect the sales performance due to a spread in the bad buying and business experience (Chou et al, 2002). Consequently, these two factors, business growth and reputational factors have both come to rely on a relatively new aspect of the business’s promotional and marketing practice – customer relations management.
The need and importance of the customers’ feedback cannot be ignored in any discussion or even mention of marketing and promotional activity as they relate to the business organization. Chen and Popvich, 2003) state the importance of this crucial aspect of the business’s endeavor to improve its customer experience. As part of the interdepartmental approach to the business organization’s customer relations management, customer feedback and related aspects contribute a great deal to the organization’s awareness of the performance of its services and goods with regards to the customer’s satisfaction. Therefore, customer relations management is a combination of customer relations management tools and information management instruments, all combined to create an increased organizational productivity through customer satisfaction (Chou et al, 2002). Peelan (2003) also reiterates the same point by stating how customer relations management is a specialized information technology that fosters customer segments, organizes customer satisfaction variables, and enables processes, which cater to customer satisfaction all in a bid to optimize revenue growth within the organization.
Chou et al (2002) categorize Syngenta AG as a leading specialized chemicals firm that originated from Switzerland and majors in agricultural seeds and pesticides. In addition, the company also deals with biotechnology and genomic research in many European countries such as the UK, all centered around improving on the seeds and their disease-resistance, or productivity properties. From a commercial perspective, Syngenta AG takes the third place globally in terms of total volumes of seeds sold and marketed (Chen and Popvich, 2003). Bose (2002) states that Syngenta AG employs more than 3000 workers globally who assist the company’s operations in more than 90 countries rake in gross annual revenues in excess of 12 Billion US Dollars. Therefore, these facts place Syngenta AG in the top tier globally in terms of performance among its industry competitors.
Recently, Chen and Popvich (2003) reported how top management at Syngenta AG noticed the need to optimize their customer relations management practice by improving its information technology aspects. Subsequently, this research will try to establish if there exists any relationship between the performance attributes of Syngenta AG and its customer relations management practices.
Background to the Study
All business firms that understand the importance of productivity optimization rely on a wide variety of tools and techniques to improve it. Chou et al. (2003), attaches Syngenta AG to this fact by recognizing its modernized approach to customer relations management as part of the wider endeavor to optimize revenues through customer satisfaction. However, the firm’s management has noticed some slight deficiencies in the CRM aspects of the company in the currently dynamic competitive business environment. According to Chen and Popvich (2003), these deficiencies affected the company’s utilization of resources thus affecting work flow by incurring more-than-optimal resources such as time and funds. Ideas were suggested to the effect that information technology was one of the avenues through which the organization would improve its customer relations management practice. However, these suggestions faced the immensely crucial problem of probability of success. Thus, Syngenta AG’s management faced a huge dilemma concerning the existence of the relationship between improved performance and customer relations management. The company needed to ascertain the extent of the relationship between productivity and customer relations management and identify the resultant collaborative and operational customer relations management strategies would assist the organization boost its performance in terms of corporate productivity (Bose, 2002).
Rationale of the Study
As the global business and corporate scene faces a recessionary wave, many business organizations face stiff business conditions that continue to affect their sales revenue and profit margins. Syngenta AG is no exception. As Chen and Popvich (2003) point out, the global agricultural inputs magnate also faces periods of hardship that the management thinks can be reversed through an age-old, proven, productivity-based strategy. According to the strategists, the currently unfavorable business indicators can be driven back to favorable levels through the productivity-based strategies redeeming performance and reputational losses the company has been incurring alongside other international companies in the current economic downshift.
Scholars and industry heavy weights have identified the effects blends of customer relations management and customer feedback through optimized information technology has on the firm’s performance. Therefore, customer feedback could be essential as part of Syngenta AG’s endeavor to return profitability levels back to the desired levels through satisfying customers in a more pronounced manner (Chou et al, 2002).
A major determinant of productivity is customer relationship management whose efficient process will increase the overall organization’s productivity in multiple views (Bose, 2002). In academic perspectives, this study will add huge valued towards Syngenta AG’s concerns and towards aspects of customer relationship management by figuring out the level of association between corporate productivity terms and customer relationship management in a material business sense.
Development of the research idea, question, objectives, and hypothesis
Research aim: The concerned research endeavor aims at identifying the extent to which customer relations management is related to corporate productivity as a means to optimizing sales revenues.
Research objectives:
Obtain a relevant definition of the term and concept of productivity through Syngenta AG’s perspective.
Identify the extent of the relationship between organizational productivity and customer relations management.
Establish the extent of the present rate of success in Syngenta AG’s customer relations management.
Identify the presence of deficiencies in Syngenta AG’s customer relations management.
Research questions:
How is the term and concept of productivity defined from Syngenta AG’s perspective?
How are concepts of customer relations management and organizational productivity related?
Identify the present status of Syngenta AG’s customer relations management.
What deficiencies exist in Syngnenta AG’s customer relations management?
Hypothesis:
Null hypothesis 1: There is no relationship between customer relationship management and organizational productivity.
Alternative hypothesis 1: There is relationship between customer relationship management and organizational productivity.
Null hypothesis 2: There is no relationship between operational customer relationship management program and organizational productivity.
Alternative hypothesis 2: There is relationship between operational customer relationship management program and organizational productivity.
Null hypothesis 3: There is no relationship between collaborative customer relationship management program and organizational productivity.
Alternative hypothesis 3: There is relationship between collaborative customer relationship management program and organizational productivity.
Null hypothesis 4: There is no relationship between analytical customer relationship management program and organizational productivity.
Alternative hypothesis 4: There is relationship between analytical customer relationship management program and organizational productivity.
Research Access, Limitations, and Resources
Due to the status of authorization attached to this research endeavor, based solely on the university’s permission to proceed, the opportunities to collect relevant information from various sources among other data collection efforts presented no problems. In addition, due to the applicability of the research endeavor and any accurate findings on an international agricultural company, the issues of research material applicability would be met. So much, the researcher anticipated her research findings to find use in other similar industrial and corporate scenarios.
The fundamental limitations of this research endeavor would revolve around the limited sample size and resource pool. Additionally, some degree of bias was expected from the respondent resulting in both systematic and non-systematic disorders in the research findings.
Finally, the researcher should be noted to be fully competent and a holder of all pertinent skills, conceptual and analytical, required in executing such business-oriented research.
Research outline
In the dissertation, the researcher is going to discuss about the definition of customer relationship management, the definition of productivity, the ways productivity can be measured using tools and techniques for efficient customer relationship management using tools and techniques.
Furthermore, in the research methodology part of the study, the research philosophy, research designs, research approaches, data collection techniques, sampling framework and the ways to cover ethical aspects of this business research are explained.
Within the discussion and analysis portion of the business research, the researcher has delineated the statistical tools and techniques, which had been used to depict the different layers of relationship that exist between customer relationship management and productivity. The researcher compared research outcomes with the academic findings and tried to explain the gaps among the literatures. Finally, the conclusion portion of the study depicted with a set of actionable recommendations to improve the present condition of the organizational productivity.
Chapter 2 – Literature Review
2.1 Introduction
This part of the research is primarily concerned with identifying the series if academic evidence relating to the researcher’s area of research. As such, the section will present a discussion that forwards the pertinent issues, supporting views, as well as any conflicting perspectives the academic community related to this research area has identified and put on record. Therefore, the various definitions of customer relations management, productivity concepts, and goals as well as objectives of customer relations management will be discussed. In addition, the significance and measurement procedures of the value of customer relations management on the business’s value will be investigated from the literature available.
2.2 Reviews on customer relations management
Both scholars and industry players have identified the importance of investigating the relationship between the customer’s satisfaction and their organization’s productivity as a subject of great interest. According to Baird and Parasnis (2011), the idea of CRM is new and with the concurrent advancement of information and enterprise software, it has adopted a great importance in real life business practices. The idea of customer relationship management has evolved from the relationship marketing techniques with the core objective of CRM being to promote a long-term profitable relationship with customers’ thorough improved productivity and customer service in organizations. CRM practices have been augmented in practical organizations because of the diverse customer base with differentiated preferences and buying behavior (Baran et al, 2008).
The currently competitive nature of business operations, especially in a global perspective, has forced the business community to embrace CRM practices in order to increase their customer’s portfolio value as one of the marketing and promotional methods of increasing profitability through tailored offerings (Buttle, 2008). In addition, Buttle (2012) points out how the customer relationship management efforts encompass a coordinated effort of all the departments in an organization. The application of CRM is a complicated process, which includes mining of all the customers’ data in order to obtain a good overall view of all the customers’ organized information for enabling firms to provide much efficient services (Chaturvedi, 2009). CRM helps a firm to focus effectively on the exact type of customers and market segments for sustainable future profitability and corporate growth (Coltman, 2007).
Consequently, the idea of CRM has been identified as one of the most crucial tactics that business organizations can manipulate as part of the larger marketing and promotional business practice to achieve two core goals – satisfy the customer better, and achieve increased profitability.
2.3 Defining customer relations management (CRM)
Customer relationship management has been defined as the core concept surrounding the business strategy and information technology concepts, integration of which helps an organization improve their efficient service criteria and promote productivity while catering to customers’ demands. Ernst et al (2011) define CRM as a collection of strategies that the organizations use to augment business value and create increased productivity through more customer-focused offerings.
Additionally, Homburg and Seiben (2008) add value to the process of creating an all-inclusive definition of CRM by stating that it is a collection of all business practices surrounding marketing, sales, and customer relations that aim at creating more productive business relationships between the customer and business organization. CRM adds extra advantage to the cost reduction, increase interaction values that ensure high sales revenue with the same resources. The theory of total quality management, backed by technological advances, has a severe impact over the development and shaping up of the modern customer relationship management, at least in recent times (Huang, 2007).
Although there is confusions around different definitions of customer relationship management by different authors in their researches but the core ideas evolve around customer relations and management, customer retention, personalization and marketing strategies (Huang, 2007). Some firms in technology intensive industries consider CRM as the ultimate technological solution to the customer management and tools for sales force automation, which integrates marketing and sales activities too (Iriana and Buttle, 2007). According to Keramati et al (2010), CRM is a function of sales and marketing departments wholly concentrated on individual customer communication management functions. On the other hand, King and Burgess (2008) argued that CRM has its major focus on two-way communication between customers and suppliers to build profitable long run relationship over time with the help of information technology strategies and resources.
From an information technology perspective, CRM entails an organization-wide integration of all the data warehouse, internet, intranet, extranet, phone, production, marketing and sales technologies. As per Knox et al (2012), CRM must use information technology to amass data for developing organized information to build up much personal interaction with customers to ensure a higher lifetime value to the firm. According to Krasnikov et al (2009), customer relationship management, if implemented successfully, enables businesses to maintain a customer driver, cross-functional and technology oriented business process strategies for maximizing relationship benefits. Krasnikov et al (2009) also argued CRM as not a mere technology application but rather a systematic combination of sales, marketing and service activities.
2.4 Objectives of CRM
From an industrial and practical perspective, Kumar (2010) stated that the goals of CRM surround two major issues: developing promotional processes efficiency and augmentation of process organizational efficiency. The ultimate goal of any business-focused firms’ investment in customer relationship management activities is to reduce operational costs and augment profitability (Kumar, 2010). Such objectives can better be achieved thorough activating sales and customer centric CRM activities from all aspects. As per Lin et al (2010), increased customer contentment and building customer loyalty should be the major CRM objectives for a business organization. Any organization can achieve business goals such as efficient sales management, simplified marketing and sales process, gathering new customer and retaining the old ones through improved customer service with an improved focus on customer relationship management (Berry and Linoff, 2011). Such activities will also provide room for more sales revenue and long run profit potentials.
Hence, any CRM practice needs to be at the intersection of customer processes augmentation, and an enhancement of organizational processes aimed at boosting both organizational performance and customer satisfaction.
2.5 The types of CRM
There are five broad categorizations of CRM. The most basic is between reactive and proactive CRM practices. The next include analytical, operational, and collaborative.
2.5.1 Operational CRMWithin the realm of operational CRM, customers can interact with a company through a number of approaches. The organization itself and its employees facilitate the direct connection with customers with several junctions called as touch points (Ngai et al, 2009). Customer relationship management aspects that are enabled with sale transactions, due payments, seeking information, suggestions, queries and complaints through operational touch points are called operational CRM or front office customer relationship management. Such CRM practices affect the promotional and marketing aspects of the organization quite severely if not well addressed.
2.5.2 Collaborative CRMOsarenkhoe and Bennani (2007), outline the specific functions of a corporation, which facilitate any two-way communication among companies and its customers via number of channels for enabling and improving customer interaction quality, are defined as collaborative CRM. Collaborative CRM concentrates on establishing a cooperative effort with the business partners of a business organization. These partners can be business agents, distribution channels and/or other stakeholders (Raab et al, 2008). Interestingly, collaborative CRM does not encounter direct customers for the purpose of increasing productivity. Rather, such CRM’s idea is to maintain a well performing relationship with partners for better business coordination.
2.5.3. Proactive and reactive customer relationship managementMendoza et al, (2007) state that proactive CRM comes into being while a company forecasts the market movements and responds to customers’ trending needs by itself with innovative strategies. Conversely, when a company adapts to the suggestions, requests, recommendations and complaints of customers, suppliers and other parties, the activities are defined as reactive customer relationship management (Nambisan and Baron, 2007). Proactive business firms concentrate on analyzing the customers changing demands and market movements to be prepared for future product and service needs and offer superior values through such actions at the evolution of customers’ need. Firms practicing proactive customer relationship management focus more on the personalization needs and individual marketing efforts.
Figure SEQ Figure * ARABIC 1 Types of CRM mapped against degree of personalizationSource: Baird, C. H. and Parasnis, G. (2011) ‘From social media to social customer relationship management’ Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 39, No. 5
2.5.4 Analytical CRMAnalytical customer relationship management, otherwise called strategic CRM, sits at the top tier of CRM types in terms of importance from a business productivity perspective. Business analysts are the key persons with responsibilities such as sort of customer relationship management (Reimann et al, 2010). Such analysts facilitate the major objective of analytical CRM by sorting out various preferences, tastes and activities of customers for offering custom-made solutions of their needs. Such analytical CRM works with capturing data from numerous touch points and subsequently analyzing them to find generalized consumer behavior. In addition, they develop solutions according to the findings of their analysis (Richards and Jones, 2008). Analytical CRM requires widespread use of management information system and information technology.
Seemingly, the principal focus of any organization is naturally remains over the operational items. Nevertheless, being proactive in CRM tactics and attending these policies from the analytical point of view will help to cater a better level of results in business indicators.
2.6 Definition of productivity
Sharma et al, (2008), describe productivity as the relationship between one or more related resources consumed, and the output produced in the process of business-oriented processes of production. The choice of a suitable concept of productivity relies on the objectives of measurement, data availability, and a research preference. A measure of productivity is considered a ratio of outputs produced to that of inputs used. Besides, Sinisalo et al (2007) discuss the need for the observer to contemplate over different choices regarding the nature and scope of both the resources and outputs considered. For instance, outputs may be measured for delivered product while resources may be measured for cost or effort. Numbers of productivity may be used in many various means, e.g., for the estimation of project and the evaluation of process. A measure of productivity assists an organization in making effective decisions about investments in methods, tools, processes, and outsourcing (Tamošiūniene and Jasilioniene, 2007). In addition to the wide area of inputs and outputs to be measured, other factors such as changes in requirements and quality of service delivery may influence the interpretation of the outcome of productivity measure.
2.7 Importance of Productivity
The significance of productivity revolves around what can be measured to determine growth rate or level. A high level of productivity or high growth rates point out a forceful and growing economy or prospective industry. Therefore, to keep alive in the competitive marketplace, a nation or her discrete industry will try to make efforts to develop her growth of productivity (Urbanskienė et al, 2008).
Commonly, productivity can be used at four levels: project/site, organization/firm, individual industry and entire economy. As measures of productivity, prevail largely to be compared, it is better to use measures of production as performance indices (Venkatesan et al, 2007). By means of empirical production functions, when inputs and outputs have been calculated in constant prices, ratios of real outputs to individual real inputs can be measured to determine single productivity measures; and ratios of real outputs to all related real inputs can be measured to determine a MFP or TFP (Buttle, 2008). Single productivity measures reveal both productive efficiency changes and factor substitutions resulting from relative factor prices changes. Conversely, MFP or TFP has widely been recognized as a better sign of efficiency of productivity than conventional partial productivity for the measurement of effective resources utilization.
2.8 Single productivity conceptsThe first measure of productivity, Labor productivity (Q/L), is a ratio measure of outputs produced to labor inputs used (Chaturvedi, 2009). Since labor is the only one of the factor of inputs, changes in productivity of labor are influenced by changes in factor substitution and by changes in factor substitution as calculated by multi-factor or total factor productivity (Coltman, 2007).
Other concepts of single productivity are intermediate productivity and capital productivity, which measure the relationship between output and intermediate input and the relationship between output and capital input, respectively. The most commonly used measure is labor productivity among the three concepts of single productivity.
2.9 Typical Calculations of ProductivityInterestingly, and from a perspective of unitary productivity measurement, measures of size and resources may be integrated in many various manners. The three common approaches to outlining productivity are referred to as physical, functional, and economic productivity.
2.9.1 Physical ProductivityHerein, the ratio of the amount of products to the resources used (usually effort) is calculated. Ernst et al, (2011) identify how products may be calculated with respect to screens, classes, code, or any other unit of product. Normally, effort is calculated with respect to staff hours, days, months, or years.
2.9.2 Functional ProductivityHere, the ratio of the amount of the functionality delivered to the resources used (usually effort) is calculated. The functionality may be determined with respect to requirements, use cases, features, or function points as suitable for the type of the software and the method of development. Usually, and as pointed out by Homburg and Sieben, (2008), effort is determined with respect to staff hours, days, months, or years.
2.9.3 Economic ProductivityIn this ratio, the amount of product produced to the cost of the resources consumed to produce it is calculated (Homburg and Sieben, 2008) as part of a larger economic productivity identification endevor. Economic productivity assists in assessing the efficiency of an organization’s economy. For the calculation of economic productivity, we ha
