Electronic Customer Relationship Management (e-CRM): Data Integration for Technical Institutions

Abstract

Educational institutions worldwide are undergoing funda- mental shifts in how they operate and interact with their “customers”: students, alumni, donors, faculty members, and staff members. Kotler and Fox [32] state that “the best organization in the world will be ineffective if the focus on ‘customers’ is lost. First and foremost is the treatment of individual students, alumni, parents, friends, and each other internal customers). Every contact counts!”. Many organizations are fa- miliar with using CRM (Customer relationship management) to manage and enhance the customer relationship. Good customer relationship can bring great benefits and a competitive advantage to organization. And in this era of technology, CRM that consists of e-CRM (Electronic customer relationship management) is acknowledged as another potential solution for business. The focus is currently shifting from improving internal operations to concentrating more on customers. Technical education customers are demanding more attention and immediate service-that is, “Internet time”. Proactive institutions are now adjusting their practices by refocusing their efforts externally. Because of the need to concentrate more on customers, many institutions are once again turning to technology-this time to customer relationship management (CRM) software. CRM goes several steps further than ERP by helping institutions maximize their customer-centric resources. The purpose of this study is how Electronic Customer Relationship (e-CRM) will help the technical institutions to integrate the data from customer touch points.