Abstract—Customer relationship management (CRM) has the potential for achieving success and growth for organizations in the nowadays environment of extensive competition and rapid technological development. CRM enables organizations to know their customers better and to build sustainable relationships with them. However, CRM is considered as buzz word and it is not understood well. The main components of CRM are people, technology, and processes. This paper provides an extensive review of the literature regarding the CRM processes. This review aims to increase the understanding of the different perspectives and the various types and levels of CRM processes. This paper reveals that there are four major perspectives of CRM processes which are customer facing level processes, customer oriented processes, cross functional CRM processes, and CRM macro-level processes. This paper recommends that for ensuring the successful adoption and implementation of any CRM initiative, organization should understand the different levels of CRM process and the integrated activities among the CRM processes at each level. In addition, for organizations to be successful adopters and implementers of CRM programs/systems, they should understand the need for business process re engineering and effective anticipation and management of the change that may accompany any CRM initiative. This paper suggests a pre-implementation plan for CRM programs/systems. Such a plan aims to initiate and communicate a customer-oriented culture within the organization. This step emphasizes on increasing the understanding of CRM concept and communicating and spreading the knowledge of the promising benefits of CRM programs/systems to all parties in the organization. All that will contribute in increasing the success rate of CRM programs/systems implementation.

Index Terms—Customer Relationship Management (CRM),CRM Processes, Cross-functional Processes, Implementation,Process Model.

Cite: Khalid Rababah, Haslina Mohd, and Huda Ibrahim, "Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Processes from Theory to Practice: The Pre-implementation Plan of CRM System," International Journal of e-Education, e-Business, e-Management and e-Learning vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 22-27, 2011.