Eureka! Institutional Repository

In the era of economic globalization and technology expansion, enterprises understand that, in order to support their activities and gain larger market share, they must integrate their front-office Customer Relationship Management (CRM hereafter) and back-office Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP hereafter) systems as to give birth to new customercentric strategies and remain competitive. Researchers’ and practitioners’ interest in ERP/CRM integration is increasing. There is, however, a strong debate in the research community, concerning the success and failure rate of ERP/CRM integration projects. The successful integration is elusive to many enterprises and therefore, both academics and practitioners have attempted to identify and understand the factors affecting the ERP/CRM integration process. In order to further advance research within this area, the present paper reports a comprehensive review of the literature on Critical Success Factors (CSFs hereafter) involved in ERP/CRM software integration. The findings suggest that a variety of factors have a great impact on the ERP/CRM integration projects, such as top management support and clarity of responsibilities, clear integration motivation, objectives, strategy and methods, users’ appreciation on system integration, qualified project team, effective coordination between project team and ERP/CRM staff, business process reengineering, effective internal and external communication and so on. Future research should develop a model of the effectiveness of ERP/CRM integration based on empirical evidence, in order to provide a better understanding of the factors critically involved in a successful ERP/CRM integration.