Guest editorial
Jerry Fjermestad and, Nicholas C. Romano JrGuest Editors
About the Guest EditorsJerry Fjermestad is an Associate Professor in the School of Management at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He received his BA in chemistry from Pacific Lutheran University, an MS in operations research from Polytechnic University, an MBA in operations management from Iona College and an MBA and PhD from Rutgers University in management information systems. Jerry has taught courses on management information systems,decision support systems, systems analysis and design, electronic commerce, data warehousing, and graduate seminars in information systems. His current research interests are in collaborative technology, decision support systems, data warehousing, electronic commerce, global information systems, customer relationship management, and enterprise information systems. Jerry has published in the Journal of Management Information Systems, Decision Support Systems,Group Decision and Negotiation, the Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Information and Management, Logistics Information Management, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Technology Analysis & Strategic Management and the Proceedings of Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Jerry has also been a special issue editor of the International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Group Decision and Negotiation, and Logistics Information Management,and is currently doing a monograph with Dr Nicholas Romano on “Customer relationship management: advances and issues” in Advances in Management Information Systems.
Nicholas C. Romano Jr is Assistant Professor of Management Science and Information Systems at the Oklahoma State University. Dr Romano is founder and co-chair of minitracks on electronic commerce customer relations management (ECCRM) for the America’s Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS.) and the Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences (HICSS.) Previously Dr Romano was a Research Scientist at the University of Arizona’s Center for the Management of Information, where he helped to design, develop and evaluate collaborative technologies to improve group productivity. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Arizona in the summer of 2000, 2001, and 2002. His research interests include collaborative computing, Web-based application design and development, technology supported learning, GSS interface design, knowledge creation and management, and electronic commerce customer relationship management. Dr Romano received a PhD in Management Information Systems from the University of Arizona, has been a technical consultant for GroupSystems.COM and worked for the International Business Machines Corporation as a systems programmer. Dr Romano has published papers in a number of scholarly journals, conference proceedings and practitioner journals including the Journal of Management Information Systems, the International Journal of Electronic Commerce, the Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Information Technology and Management, Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences, and Proceedings of the Conference of the Association of Management, Proceedings of the Americas Conference on Information Systems, and the IBM AS/400 Systems Management Journal. Nicholas has also been a special issue editor or the International Journal of Electronic Commerce, and Logistics Information Management, and is currently doing a monograph with Dr Jerry Fjermestad on “Customer relationship management: advances and issues” in Advances in Management Information Systems. He is also working on a special issue of Information Systems Frontiers, with Ramesh Sharda, Joyce Lucca, and Lisa Neal, on “Computer-supported collaborative learning requiring immersive presence.
Electronic customer relationship management (eCRM) involves attracting and keeping economically viable customers and repelling or eliminating economically invaluable ones. The scope of this special issue on eCRM in the Business Process Management Journal is to provide an insight to research that is being undertaken in the new area. We have selected seven papers and one expert opinion, which have undergone a vigorous review process. The resulting articles are focused on the challenges and opportunities associated with eCRM.
Rado Kotorov, in his position paper on “Customer relationship management: strategic lessons and future directions” suggests the CRM should be treated more as a strategy than a solution. This notion is further supported in our second paper by Jerry Fjermestad and Nicholas C. Romano Jr on“Electronic customer relationship management: revisiting the general principles of usability and resistance – an integrative implementation framework”. This paper assesses the differences between successful eCRM implementations and ones with limited success.
The paper by Christopher Bull further emphasizes a strategic approach to developing and implementing CRM. Bull suggests that CRM is a complex and holistic concept with should be organized around sound business processes and effective leadership.
Ben Light’s case study suggests that organizations need to understand the theoretical and practical implications of the CRM project before it is undertaken. Furthermore, strategy again is a key component of any implementation.
Articles five and six are empirical investigations. Constantinos Stefanou,Christos Sarmaniotis and Amalia Stafyla, in their paper “CRM and customer-centric knowledge management: an empirical research”, suggest that based on a survey sent to large Greek organizations only half of the organizations employ instruments to systematically carry out customer satisfaction research and customer-related analysis. The other half have not adopted a CRM philosophy at this time.
Cho, Im, Fjermestad, and Hiltz, in their paper “The impact of product category on customer dissatisfaction in cyberspace”, conducted a series of surveys on customer dissatisfaction. The results suggest that online customers are more dissatisfied with sensory products than non-sensory products.
The final two papers relate to CRM. The paper “A framework of dynamic CRM: linking marketing with information strategy” by Chung-Hoon Park and Young-Gul Kim develops a framework of dynamic customer relationship management,suggests the information technology strategy to support the framework, and illustrates the applicability of such framework and strategy through a real business case. Meanwhile, “Understanding customer relationship management(CRM): people, process, and technology” by Injazz J. Chen and Karen Popovich explains that managing a successful CRM implementation requires an integrated and balanced approach to technology, process, and people.
