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Blast from the past

I've always forgotten until now about this. With my year in Cranfield moving into a stage where I need to start really thinking about my Master's dissertation, I was again reminded of a thing I was supposed to do: post the abstract of my Bachelor's dissertation for online reference and storage. The 112-page, 24 500 words of a brick was titled "Strategic Customer Relationship Management of Growth Companies", and I was really happy with the end result. Though with the benefit of hindsight, I'd do a lot differently.

But here's the abstract at last. I have also a 1000-word executive summary available.

Customer relationship management, or CRM, is often understood narrowly as a technology or a utility. In a more recent theoretical discussion it is however understood from a strategic perspective or as a fully-fledged business strategy that requires implementing CRM from a strategic point-of-view and combining it into the company’s other business strategies cross-functionally. From this perspective, the focus is on what CRM offers to growth businesses that are mostly thought to gain their growth by acquiring new customers.

This thesis understands CRM and customer management from a process-based, holistic and innovative point-of-view. The core of its theoretical basis is a framework of CRM that determines its five most crucial processes. Another important element of the theory used in this thesis involves literature that describes and studies rapid-growth companies, especially in the field of information technology.

The purpose of the thesis was, with the help of a theoretical framework and a thorough study, to establish what is “growth-oriented” CRM of growth companies and how the theoretical framework suits their needs. The qualitative study, conducted by themed interviews in the summer of 2007, involved five Finnish ICT growth companies.

The study revealed that typical to growth companies’ CRM is a project-based, short time-perspective method of managing and examining their customer relationships. Taking into account this and their demand for growth, it is concluded that these companies have a challenge in forecasting their business accurately, as one interviewed company told. Perhaps one of the most important observations was that these companies have grown profitably via their old customer relationships. Additionally, this involves that how companies manage their older relationships and the success of their acquiring new business are very closely interconnected.

This thesis describes and gives a justified opinion on CRM of growth companies, basing it on leading literature and observations acquired with the study. The thesis also views literature from the viewpoint of the reality of these companies and thus makes new suggestions and findings to it. Furthermore this thesis gives concrete development suggestions so these could develop the profitability of their customer relationships.

Keywords: CRM, customer relationship management, customer management, rapid growth, growth company

Thesis mentor: Dr. Seppo Leminen

PS. The conceptual framework of CRM I used was the model of Dr. Adrian Payne and Penny Frow.