Towards Social CRM – Scoping the Concept and Guiding Research

Web 2.0 and Social Media (SoMe) provide new opportunities for collaboration and co-value creation which supports a customer-centric management. Social Customer Relationship Management (SCRM) addresses these opportunities and aims at a high stakeholder engagement as a means to establish mutually beneficial relationships. At present, scholars attempt to comprehend what constitutes SCRM. This paper reviews state-of-the-art scholarly literature to provide a consolidated view on the current SCRM knowledge base. It reveals concurrent opinions, diverging perceptions and future directions for research along the dimensions SCRM definitions, objectives and approaches. We conclude that SCRM as a novel concept requires transformational efforts among all organizational parts. Approaches towards SCRM align on organizational determinants, CRM processes, the customer relationship lifecycle or develop conceptual models. We propose that research further explore this domain to progress the understanding of SCRM as basis for corresponding frameworks

To boardrooms and sustainability: the changing nature of segmentation

Market segmentation is the process by which customers in markets with some heterogeneity are grouped into smaller homogeneous segments of more ‘similar’ customers. A market segment is a group of individuals, groups or organisations sharing similar characteristics and buying behaviour that cause them to have relatively similar needs and purchasing behaviour. Segmentation is not a new concept: for six decades marketers have, in various guises, sought to break-down a market into sub-groups of users, each sharing common needs, buying behavior and marketing requirements. However, this approach to target market strategy development has been rejuvenated in the past few years. Various reasons account for this upsurge in the usage of segmentation, examination of which forms the focus of this white paper. Ready access to data enables faster creation of a segmentation and the testing of propositions to take to market. ‘Big data’ has made the re-thinking of target market segments and value propositions inevitable, desirable, faster and more flexible. The resulting information has presented companies with more topical and consumer-generated insights than ever before. However, many marketers, analytics directors and leadership teams feel over-whelmed by the sheer quantity and immediacy of such data. Analytical prowess in consultants and inside client organisations has benefited from a stepchange, using new heuristics and faster computing power, more topical data and stronger market insights. The approach to segmentation today is much smarter and has stretched well away from the days of limited data explored only with cluster analysis. The coverage and wealth of the solutions are unimaginable when compared to the practices of a few years ago. Then, typically between only six to ten segments were forced into segmentation solutions, so that an organisation could cater for these macro segments operationally as well as understand them intellectually. Now there is the advent of what is commonly recognised as micro segmentation, where the complexity of business operations and customer management requires highly granular thinking. In support of this development, traditional agency/consultancy roles have transitioned into in-house business teams led by data, campaign and business change planners. The challenge has shifted from developing a granular segmentation solution that describes all customers and prospects, into one of enabling an organisation to react to the granularity of the solution, deploying its resources to permit controlled and consistent one-to-one interaction within segments. So whilst the cost of delivering and maintaining the solution has reduced with technology advances, a new set of systems, costs and skills in channel and execution management is required to deliver on this promise. These new capabilities range from rich feature creative and content management solutions, tailored copy design and deployment tools, through to instant messaging middleware solutions that initiate multi-streams of activity in a variety of analytical engines and operational systems. Companies have recruited analytics and insight teams, often headed by senior personnel, such as an Insight Manager or Analytics Director. Indeed, the situations-vacant adverts for such personnel out-weigh posts for brand and marketing managers. Far more companies possess the in-house expertise necessary to help with segmentation analysis. Some organisations are also seeking to monetise one of the most regularly under-used latent business assets… data. Developing the capability and culture to bring data together from all corners of a business, the open market, commercial sources and business partners, is a step-change, often requiring a Chief Data Officer. This emerging role has also driven the professionalism of data exploration, using more varied and sophisticated statistical techniques. CEOs, CFOs and COOs increasingly are the sponsor of segmentation projects as well as the users of the resulting outputs, rather than CMOs. CEOs because recession has forced re-engineering of value propositions and the need to look after core customers; CFOs because segmentation leads to better and more prudent allocation of resources – especially NPD and marketing – around the most important sub-sets of a market; COOs because they need to better look after key customers and improve their satisfaction in service delivery. More and more it is recognised that with a new segmentation comes organisational realignment and change, so most business functions now have an interest in a segmentation project, not only the marketers. Largely as a result of the digital era and the growth of analytics, directors and company leadership teams are becoming used to receiving more extensive market intelligence and quickly updated customer insight, so leading to faster responses to market changes, customer issues, competitor moves and their own performance. This refreshing of insight and a leadership team’s reaction to this intelligence often result in there being more frequent modification of a target market strategy and segmentation decisions. So many projects set up to consider multi-channel strategy and offerings; digital marketing; customer relationship management; brand strategies; new product and service development; the re-thinking of value propositions, and so forth, now routinely commence with a segmentation piece in order to frame the ongoing work. Most organisations have deployed CRM systems and harnessed associated customer data. CRM first requires clarity in segment priorities. The insights from a CRM system help inform the segmentation agenda and steer how they engage with their important customers or prospects. The growth of CRM and its ensuing data have assisted the ongoing deployment of segmentation. One of the biggest changes for segmentation is the extent to which it is now deployed by practitioners in the public and not-for-profit sectors, who are harnessing what is termed social marketing, in order to develop and to execute more shrewdly their targeting, campaigns and messaging. For Marketing per se, the interest in the marketing toolkit from non-profit organisations, has been big news in recent years. At the very heart of the concept of social marketing is the market segmentation process. The extreme rise in the threat to security from global unrest, terrorism and crime has focused the minds of governments, security chiefs and their advisors. As a result, significant resources, intellectual capability, computing and data management have been brought to bear on the problem. The core of this work is the importance of identifying and profiling threats and so mitigating risk. In practice, much of this security and surveillance work harnesses the tools developed for market segmentation and the profiling of different consumer behaviours. This white paper presents the findings from interviews with leading exponents of segmentation and also the insights from a recent study of marketing practitioners relating to their current imperatives and foci. More extensive views of some of these ‘leading lights’ have been sought and are included here in order to showcase the latest developments and to help explain both the ongoing surge of segmentation and the issues under-pinning its practice. The principal trends and developments are thereby presented and discussed in this paper

A framework for customer relationship management strategy orientation support in higher education institutions

A number of generic Customer Relationship Management (CRM) implementation frameworks have been developed, yet no systematic framework has been developed to help HEIs orientate CRM strategy to align with university business strategies and stakeholder needs. This research iteratively develops the CRM Strategy Orientation Support (CRM-SOS) framework, which aims to support HEIs in orientating their strategic CRM system at the pre-implementation stage and align CRM strategy with the business strategy; thus, reducing the chance that HEIs will experience CRM implementation failure. To reach our proposed CRM-SOS framework, we employed Design Science Research (DSR) methodology steps by analysing UK HEIs specific CRM implementation case studies, conducting semi-structured HEIs-based interviews, followed by evaluation of the resulted framework by HEI Information Systems (IS) experts. We concluded with a new CRM-SOS framework for HEIs consisting of five stages. The framework can be used to personalise the stages until they fit the strategic outputs and match the top management KPIs. Although existing research agrees that intensive attention should be given to CRM planning, there is no consensus or developed framework, for use within HEIs, demonstrating how CRM strategy can be orientated to align with university strategies and customer needs

Social Media Analytics in Social CRM – Towards a Research Agenda

Social Media have emerged as an additional source of information for companies. Regarding an analysis of the huge data volumes within the Social Web, other approaches than manually analyzing social content are needed. Thus, Social Media Analytics (SMA) applications have emerged in recent years and have become inevitable for automatically generating valuable in-sights. However, these tools still suffer different shortcomings, which inhibit a deeper analysis and understanding of data. This research investigates and categorizes currently available ana-lytics methods by outlining literature and analyzing practical applications. Furthermore, it draws a line between descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics in the field of Social Media Analytics. As a result, this research complements existing research with strategic ques-tions, possible outcomes of SMA applications, and enabling methods to compute these out-comes, and finally defines a research agenda

Assessing Design and Funding Methods of Water Infrastructure for Saskatchewan First Nations

Many water systems on First Nations in Saskatchewan are at risk of not being able to consistently meet water quality guidelines, which negatively impacts human health. It was the goal of my thesis to assess design and funding methods for water infrastructure projects on First Nations. It was important that this research was informed by community values and priorities gained from discussions with Elders, interviews with water treatment officers, and activities with elementary and high school students. A scoping review looked for existing literature on water infrastructure projects that involved the community in the design process, termed ‘co-design’. Of 1,551 articles searched, only 13 were found using the search terms (and synonyms): “water”, “co-design”, “Indigenous communities”, “infrastructure”, and “Canada”. A common definition of co-design and clear process is required to trend towards community informed design. Co-design as a process for water infrastructure in Indigenous communities encompasses the cultural, traditional, and spiritual values associated with water from the community’s worldview along with the environmental and technical conditions from an engineering standpoint. The increased involvement for this process requires extra funding, which is difficult in communities that are already restricted by rigid funding frameworks. Communities prefer a centralized system (piped water) to reduce the likelihood of contamination and water quantity rationing. The preference for a centralized system is prevented by a funding formula that does not provide the higher capital expense of this infrastructure. However, the formula can be expanded beyond capital investment and regular operation and maintenance to include costs associated with human health. The installation of both decentralized and centralized systems were quoted and compared for an example community of 100 homes (500 people). The approximate capital cost of a centralized system and decentralized system were found to be $3,512,000 and$ 1,365,000, respectively. However, the extra costs associated with the decentralized system were $ 570,000 per year, which covers the greater capital investment for a centralized system in under 5 years. The provision of safe drinking water for human health justifies a greater capital investment on its own, but the inclusion of other variables in the funding formula suggests that it is economically feasible as well

Digital technologies in architecture, engineering, and construction

Digitalization in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) sector is slow due to significant challenges in technology adoption. The study aims to promote technology adoption by advancing the understanding of digital technologies in the AEC sector. This article presents the findings from a quantitative scoping review, encompassing 3950 technology-related abstracts retrieved from the Scopus database, providing a preliminary assessment of literature size, geographic innovation hotspots, research gaps, and key concepts in the AEC field. The results show that Building Information Modelling (1852 studies) dominates the literature, while topics like 3D Printing (311) and Internet of Things (227) are gaining traction. China (687 publications) and the United States (566) produce most research articles. Despite the increasing interest in emerging technologies, their implementation often necessitates acquiring specific skill sets. Academia needs to put a stronger focus on these technologies in education and tighter collaboration with the industry is needed.publishedVersio

Positive Disruptions Caused by SCRM Activities in the SECI process of Knowledge Creation: Insights from Four Case Studies

Web 2.0 has been in the foray for a while playing an important role in threading business processes, various departments, systems and key stakeholders (within firms) to activate customer participation and involvement. In order to re-emphasize customer centricity, firms have been using SCRM (Social Customer Relationship Management) approach as a part of their CRM (Customer Relationship Management) strategy. The activities under SCRM are a major source for organizational knowledge creation that occurs due to a continuous dialogue between tacit and explicit knowledge. Also, various social platforms (operating for SCRM) where collaboration takes place acts as a shared context for knowledge creation. To comprehend the actions and limitations of a knowledge-creating firm thoroughly, this research paper examines the process of knowledge-creation by (1) revisiting Nonaka-Takeuchi SECI (Socialization, Externalization, Combination & Internalization) process to recognize how SCRM activities can be prolific in organizational knowledge creation (2) exploring positive disruptions created by integrating SCRM activities with four modes of SECI process for additional knowledge creation (3) analyzing case studies of four firms from consumer products sector that use SCRM approach and (4) discovering the elements under SCRM approach that satisfy ‘BA’ as a shared context

Tracking Adaptation and Measuring Development in Kenya

Tracking Adaptation and Measuring Development (TAMD) is a twin-track framework that evaluates adaptation success as a combination of how widely and how well countries or institutions manage climate risks (Track 1) and how successful adaptation interventions are in reducing climate vulnerability and in keeping development on course (Track 2). With this twin-track approach, TAMD can be used to assess whether climate change adaptation leads to effective development, and also how development interventions can boost communities' capacity to adapt to climate change. Importantly, TAMD offers a flexible framework that can be used to generate bespoke frameworks for individual countries that can be tailored to specific contexts and used at different scales. This report compiles the results of TAMD feasibility testing phase in Kenya

Assessment Schema for Social CRM Tools: An Empirical Investigation

This paper presents an assessment schema for Social CRM tools based on an empirical investigation. A constraining factor regarding the implementation of Social CRM tools (e.g., Engagor, Demand Media) is a lack of corresponding comparability of the different features (e.g., analysis of individual data, CRM interface). Little research has been conducted on the assessment of Social CRM tools, and even less have used empirical investigations to develop an assessment schema for surveying the use of corresponding technologies. To address this gap, the study reveals a quantitative investigation of Social CRM technology use as well as develops an assessment schema for Social CRM tools (i.e., including a Monitoring and Capturing, Analysis, Exploitation, Communication, IS integration and Management dimension). The data is analyzed using formative indicators with a sample of 122 marketing, communication and IT decision makers. The results of the analysis serve as weights for the assessment schema. It can be used to develop values for Social CRM tools with regard to their different ‘use’ features and dimensions

Performance Measures for Social CRM: A Literature Review

Social CRM deals with the integration of Web 2.0 and Social Media into Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Social CRM is a business strategy supported by technology platforms to provide mutually beneficial value for companies and their target groups. In practice, one factor impeding Social CRM implementation is the lack of performance measures, which assess Social CRM activities and monitor their success. Little research has been conducted investigating performance measures in order to develop a Social CRM performance measurement model. To address this gap, this article presents the qualitative part of a two-stage multi-method approach. It comprises a systematic and rigorous literature review as well as a sorting procedure. In this effort, 16 Social CRM performance measures and four categories of a performance measurement system are identified. The sorting procedure validates the corresponding classification and ensures a high degree of external validity. In a subsequent study, formative survey instruments are developed from the respective findings and are tested by applying a confirmatory factor analysis