Integrating Customer Relationship Management and Project Lifecycle Management using Information Technology Infrastructure Library Techniques to Improve Service Delivery

Abstract

Fast growing companies that acquire and merge with other companies have a challenging task of integration. Products and services offered by acquired or merging companies sometimes have different Information Technology platforms, but their services overlap, leading to complexity in the integration process. Even when underlying technologies are disparate, operational CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is used by organizations to give the customer a unified experience. Operational CRM is the process used to manage customer grievances, also known as customer care. This process ensures that the changes being made within the organization are invisible to the customer. However, in the long term unified operational CRM alone cannot suffice because of risks associated with staff attrition, which comes with mergers and acquisitions.

PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) is commonly used by organizations to manage the features and services provided by a product, from product deployment to product retirement. When updates, fixes, or enhancements to existing products are integrated with operational CRM, it benefits the organization in multiple ways. The benefits of such integration include capture of tacit knowledge, information availability to customer-facing staff, and a platform for measuring product performance.

ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is a set of best practices, or body of knowledge, which describes all aspects of delivering IT services. ITIL Version 3 is used by the ISO (International Standards Organization) to certify organizations as being compliant with the ISO/IEC 20000 standard. This body of knowledge includes a description of a CMS (Configuration Management System). CMS is a central repository of information about products offered by an organization, including information about the applications and processes used to deliver all products and services.

This project uses ITIL concepts to integrate operational CRM and PLM. The resultant CMS will include performance metrics for all products and services, which can be used to create realistic service-level agreements and operational-level agreements based on current performance levels.