CRM Systems in Industrial Companies: Intra- and Inter-Organizational Effects, by Andrea Perna and Enrico Baraldi

Although many words have been expended on the topic of customer relationship management (CRM) in consumer markets, it is a topic that has been investigated less in business-to-business (B-to-B) markets. In this work Perna and Baraldi address this neglected topic using an approach that may surprise the reader. The main title suggests a rather conventional treatment of the subject matter. On seeing the title, the prospective reader may imagine a work that perhaps describes the different applications of CRM systems in B-to-B companies, or even a textbookstyle work that seeks to explain how to implement a CRM system in an industrial business. But, in fact, the book is rather more interesting than that. The principal novel contribution of the work is to present an in-depth longitudinal case study of the design, implementation, and application of a CRM system at a single industrial firm—the Italian Loccioni Group (www.loccioni.com). The authors had the unique opportunity to work alongside the management of the Loccioni Group as they went through the process of devising, creating, and using their CRM system. For those who think that academic research in marketing is not always as close to business practice as it should be (Baines et al. 2009; Brennan, Tzempelikos and Wilson 2014; Cornelissen 2002; Wierenga 2002), this is about as close to the realities of business management as researchers can get. The structure of the book is admirably clear. After a brief introductory chapter, there are four chapters expounding the relevant theoretical, empirical, and practical background information concerning the subject matter, then four chapters that present the Loccioni case study, followed by a conclusion. The relevant background research in the field (Chapters 2 through 5) comprises the industrial networks (or IMP) approach to analyzing business markets; a historical explanation of the emergence of increasingly sophisticated information technology (IT) systems in business culminating in CRM; an investigation of prior research into CRM; and then the integration of these background studies through the mechanism of conceptualizing CRM as an “interacting resource. ” In this way the authors provide a neat conceptual framework that ties together the theory of business markets and marketing with that of CRM systems. The IMP approach is explained in some detail in Chapter 2. The principal concepts include the complexity and embeddedness of B-to-B relationships; the actors/resources/activities framework and associated actor bonds, activity links and resource ties; the dynamics of customer relationships; and managing relationships. The authors argue that because of the nature of B-to-B relationships, relationship management cannot be considered to be a unilateral, seller-dominated process. Chapter 3 provides a historical account of the development of IT systems in business from the early use of computers in the 1950s through the development of management information systems, database management systems, enterprise resource planning systems, and knowledge management systems. This provides the context for the discussion of the emergence of CRM Systems. In Chapter 4, the authors build on this historical account by examining CRM in detail. They argue that, “there is still no consensus within academia on a widely accepted definition of CRM . ” (Perna and Baraldi 2014: 62). In support of this assertion, they present several different definitions of CRM that have been proposed, showing, in particular, that there are those, such as Bose (2002) who define CRM as a set of IT tools, and those, such as Payne and Frow (2005) who define CRM as a strategic function. In Chapter 5, the final chapter before the exposition of the in-depth case study, the authors provide an integrated conceptual framework drawing upon the preceding three chapters. CRM is conceptualized as a sociotechnical resource, and management theories that focus on resources are brought