Business/IT-alignment for customer relationship management: framework and case studies

In this paper we apply business/IT-alignment principles to create a framework for CRM. We build upon earlier related work that showed that CRM performance has a positive correlation with the degree of maturity and alignment between business and IT. The business/IT alignment CRM framework facilitates assessing an organisation's current CRM maturity and identifying future CRM improvements. The framework is validated by two different cases, a Caribbean telecommunications firm and a Dutch insurance company. The results of these applications support the validity and applicability of the framework.