Abstract:

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a solution for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organise, automate, and synchronise business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service and support. Whilst most Enterprise Systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems and Business Intelligence (BI) systems are separate from CRM systems, that is, they operate as separate software packages and often run on separate servers, CRM solutions will replicate and integrate various functionalities and tools from ERP systems and BI systems. This poses unique challenges for teaching CRM particularly with a practical focus. This paper describes the development and teaching of a module in CRM as part of an Enterprise Systems program. Students carry out a series of practical tasks that enable them to experience typical CRM transactions in sales, marketing and customer service. Some of these tasks trigger interaction between the CRM system and an ERP system and/or a BI system. Our experience in the CRM education domain provides a helpful reference for educators that are developing or enhancing their enterprise courses to include Customer Relationship Management curriculum.