The organisational impact of SaaS adoption on CRM applications

Abstract

Software as a service (SaaS) approach is a demand-driven application that provides network-based access to an integrated portfolio of applications across the virtual value chain of an enterprise. Therefore, the aim of the present paper is to investigate the organisational technological and economic factors, which influence the adoption of SaaS for customer relationship management (CRM) applications. The theoretical framework refers to transaction cost theory (TCT) and resource-based view (RBV) theory. The research is based on the case study method and analyses four companies of big dimensions, which have adopted the SaaS, approach at least for three years. The results show the importance of some organisational factors such as the optimisations of marketing processes, while other factors such as costs are strongly connected to the reduction of financial risks more than to the costs control in a strict meaning.