Developing customised CRM projects: The role of industry norms,organisational context and customer expectations on CRM implementation

This research paper investigates the influence of industry, organisational, and customer context on customer relationship management (CRM) projects. Organisations go through four phases in their CRM projects (assessment, design, implementation, and evaluation), yet the impact of industry norms, organisational contexts, and customer expectations on each phase are rarely examined. A longitudinal case study approach with six cases was used to investigate the potential impact of contextual factors on CRM projects. The cases covered a range of industries, organisational structures, and customer types. We found that current industry conditions and customer expectations influence the reasons for undertaking CRM and the assessment stage of the project. The organisational context has a noticeable impact on the design and implementation project stages. At the evaluation level, customer responses combined with organisational expectations affect the perceived success of the projects. By understanding the impact of context, customised CRM projects can be developed.     

Planning and uncertainty in new product development

The domain of New Product Development (NPD) is subject to considerable uncertainties. Aside from market‐related sources of uncertainty, the degree of innovativeness of the underlying product concept is a significant source of uncertainty, as unclear goals and specifications like, e.g. product specifications may lead to substantial delays in the project. However, companies are required to manage the innovation process as efficiently as possible. The resulting conflicting demands often leave companies struggling to achieve both efficiency as well as flexibility due to their often opposing implications for organizing and managing NPD projects. In this context, planning plays a central role; however, its usefulness for NPD project success is perceived quite differently. While there are reports about a positive influence of initial planning on various success measures, others have questioned the effectiveness of elaborated initial planning and contend that the ability to rapidly react to changes later in the process and to improvise may lead to success in NPD. This study aims at achieving a better understanding of planning in NPD by investigating a sample of 475 Research & Development projects in Japanese electrical and mechanical engineering companies. Regression analysis is used to shed more light on the interplay of planning intensity, changes, and the degree of technological newness of the NPD project and their influence on project success. Our results indicate planning to be of value for different types of innovation projects. Furthermore, the influences of the variables in question vary with the success measures that are taken into account, indicating that a more detailed and contingent understanding of planning in NPD needs to be developed.     

Project Management Characteristics and New Product Survival

We develop a conceptual model of new product development (NPD) based on seminal and review articles in order to answer the question, “What project management characteristics will foster the development of new products that are more likely to survive in the marketplace?” Our model adopts Ruekert and Walker's theoretical framework of situational dimensions, structural/process dimensions, and outcome dimensions as an underlying structure. We conceptualize their situational dimensions more narrowly as project management dimensions, allowing us to examine more specifically how project management practices affect the NPD process. In our model, project management dimensions include project manager style, project manager skills, and senior management support. Structural/process dimensions include cross‐functional integration and planning proficiency. Outcome dimensions include process proficiency and new product survival. Our empirical analysis finds support for 20 hypotheses, a reversal of one hypothesis, and nonsignificant results for one hypothesis. These results show that projects are best led by managers with strong technical, marketing, and management skills, using a participative style and enjoying early and continuous support from senior management. These project management dimensions promote cross‐functional integration and planning, which are important to process proficiency and new product survival. Our study suggests two broad conclusions. First, it confirms the links in the extant literature between situational (project management) dimensions, structural/process dimensions, and outcome dimensions in NPD. Second, firms can improve cross‐functional integration and planning through various project management practices. Generally, we find that firms interested in improving both proficiency in their development process and the survival rate of new products should take steps to promote cross‐functional integration and to improve their planning processes. While the linkage between cross‐functional integration and NPD outcomes is well established in the literature, the impact of the planning process on NPD outcomes is a research area ripe with opportunity. Our study highlights three aspects of planning that contribute to NPD outcomes. Plans should be detailed, team members should participate actively in the planning process, and teams should be given flexibility and autonomy to respond to unanticipated issues as they appear.     

An Empirical Study of Platform and Derivative Product Development Projects

Many firms now realize the importance of planning product families and product platforms. However, little research addresses planning and execution of different types of projects within a product family platform series. This study investigates project characteristics, development challenges, typical outcomes, and success factors for product development projects at different locations in the product family spectrum. “Platform” projects result in products that initiate a new product family platform for a company. “Derivative” projects result in products consisting of extensions to an existing product family platform. Data on 108 new product development projects from a variety of assembled products industries were collected via a detailed survey and analyzed. Findings indicate that: (1) platform and derivative projects differ in project task characteristics (including the amount of new technology development undertaken and project complexity) and market newness; (2) platform and derivative projects generally do not differ in terms of project success (achievement of project objectives, level of company satisfaction, and perceived customer satisfaction) or smoothness of project execution; (3) both platform and derivative projects generally are executed in similar ways; (4) certain managerial approaches (including contingency planning, project-based evaluation of personnel, and overlap of design and manufacturing engineering) are associated with higher project execution success for both platform and derivative projects; and (5) use of interdependent technologies and novel project objectives are associated with project execution failure for platform projects. The results suggest that firms can continue to employ a single product development management process for both platform and derivative projects, as long as modest customization of the process is made for the given project type. Completely different management processes are not required. In all, the results presented in this article suggest specific managerial actions companies can take to significantly improve product development success. © 1999 Elsevier Science Inc.     

The co-production of value in digital,university–industry R&D collaborative projects

In the context of R&D collaborations between universities and industry, this study investigates the co-production process and the contextual elements that shape it. We develop a conceptual framework that builds on the service-dominant logic perspective that value propositions emerge from the interaction between co-producing parties and the integration of resources. Specifically, the framework explicates how individual, organizational, and external factors shape the type of interactions and the platforms used, the availability and use of operand and operant resources, and the organizational and individual outcomes sought in R&D collaborative projects. We investigate the interplay among these factors through group interviews with UK industry practitioners and university researchers in the context of digital research projects. The types of interaction, resources, and outcomes sought that characterize successful R&D collaboration are revealed, and the contextual aspects that enable, facilitate, block, or create barriers to successful R&D collaborations are identified. Finally, we propose five practical principles for the successful development of collaborative R&D projects within the university–industry context.     

Empirically testing ES success factors in business process reengineering

Previously proposed success factors for Expert Systems implementation are field tested in the context of business process reengineering (BPR) projects. Due to its nature mimicking human expert behavior, ES technology applications in BPR provide a unique opportunity to study major organization changes within a relatively short time. Using Pearson correlations and multivariate regression analysis, eight ES implementation success factors proposed in the literature were empirically tested in this study in terms of their importance to the BPR benefits derived from the application. Sixty-two ES applications within E.I. Dupont de Nemours and Company dealing with business process changes significant enough to be called BPR were used. Despite the relatively small sample size, six of the eight success factors were corroborated: user satisfaction with the ES, the importance and difficulty of the business problem addressed, user attitudes toward ES technology and the particular ES project, the degree of user involvement in the ES implementation process, and the ES developer(s) skills.     

NPD Planning Activities and Innovation Performance: The Mediating Role of Process Management and the Moderating Effect of Product Innovativeness

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of planning and control on the performance of new product development (NPD) projects. It is hypothesized that (1) thorough business planning at the beginning of a project creates a basis for proficient project and risk planning; (2) the proficiency of project planning, risk planning, and process management activities each improves innovation performance directly; (3) the relationship of planning and success is mediated by process management; and (4) the strength of these relationships is moderated by uncertainty, as determined by the degree of innovativeness. To test the hypotheses, data from 132 NPD projects were collected and analyzed. A measurement model was used to establish valid and reliable constructs, a path model to test the main effects, and a multiple-moderated regression analysis for the moderator hypotheses. The results suggest that the proficiency of project planning and process management is important predictors of NPD performance. Specifically, project risk planning and goal stability throughout the development process are found to enhance performance significantly. Business planning proves to be an important antecedent of the more development-related planning activities such as project planning and risk planning. Additionally, the results lend support to the hypotheses regarding the mediating role of process management in the planning–performance relationship. Project planning and risk planning support the quality of process management and thus impact NPD performance indirectly. Only to a limited extent are the strengths of these relationships moderated by the degree of innovativeness of the NPD project.     

Perceptions of Material Resources in Innovation Projects: What Shapes Them and How Do They Matter?

Studies on the role of material resources for team performance in innovation projects have provided inconclusive results. This paper focuses on team members' perceptions of the provided material resources' adequacy to address this gap. Understanding what drives perceptions of material resource adequacy may not only reconcile conflicting results in the literature, but may also provide much‐needed guidance for project funding, so as to maximize innovation project performance. Further, the analyses in this paper differentiate between two outcome dimensions of innovation project performance, namely, the degree of new product quality and new product novelty, and thus offer a more fine‐grained analysis of the relationship between perceptions of material resource adequacy and innovation project teams' performance. The posited hypotheses are tested using a sample consisting of survey data from 121 innovation projects in the electronics industry. To avoid common source bias, data from different respondent groups, that is, team leaders, team members, and team external managers of the examined innovation projects, were used. The results of the regression analyses identify team potency and workload as socio‐cognitive drivers of innovation project teams' perceptions of material resource adequacy. Moreover, it is found that perceived material resource adequacy relates positively to new product quality, while it relates negatively to new product novelty. This paper thus provides an important step toward disentangling the ambiguity surrounding the relationship between material resource adequacy and innovation project teams' performance, showing that a key finding of cognitive psychology seems to hold also on the team level of inquiry: the significant influence of socio‐cognitive factors on perceptions. This finding paves the way for putting more attention in research on innovation and project management on cognitive aspects, in particular considering mechanisms behind the formation of team perceptions. Further, the results provide evidence for differential effects of perceived material resource adequacy on innovation project performance, depending on the indicators used for measuring the outcomes of an innovation project. This contributes necessary detail to studying the relationship between material resource adequacy and innovation project performance, which so far has produced inconclusive results, suggesting that these contradictions might result to a large degree from different operationalizations of innovation project performance. On a practical level, the findings of this paper suggest that material resource adequacy seems not to be a catch‐all variable, influencing innovation project outcomes in a uniform way. It appears to be a useful lever for influencing team outcomes depending on the desired result, which may be manipulated by shaping team variables that exert a systematic influence on perceptions of material resource adequacy.     

Influences on strategic decision effectiveness: Development and test of an integrative model

This paper draws upon three broad perspectives on the strategic decision‐making process in order to develop a more completely specified model of strategic decision effectiveness in a different context, namely Egypt. The key variables in this model consist of three strategic decision‐making process dimensions (rationality, intuition, and political behavior); seven moderating variables concerning decision‐specific, environmental, and organizational factors; and strategic decision effectiveness as an outcome variable. A two‐stage study was conducted in which the first stage provided exploratory insights and the second stage investigated hypotheses on the impact of strategic decision‐making process dimensions on strategic decision effectiveness and the moderating role of broader contextual variables. The second‐stage study produced three major findings: (1) both rational and political processes appear to have more influence on strategic decision effectiveness than does intuition; (2) strategic decision effectiveness is both process‐ and context‐specific; and (3) certain results support the ‘culture‐free’ argument, while others support the ‘culture‐specific’ argument. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Linking learning and knowledge creation to project success in Six Sigma projects: An empirical investigation

This study investigates the impact of two organizational antecedents, (1) Six Sigma resources (technical) and (2) team psychological safety (social), on learning behaviour and knowledge creation and, in turn, on the success of Six Sigma process improvement projects. The paper proposes an integrated model to explain process improvement implementation success through two learning activities undertaken by Six Sigma project teams: Knowing-what and Knowing-how. The conceptualization of these knowledge types in this research is different from usual conceptualization as it represents the knowledge brought into projects through various phases of Six Sigma projects. The three hypotheses proposed in the model were tested using the data collected from 52 Six Sigma project teams from a single organization. Regression analysis showed psychological safety affects project performance through knowing-how. Regression and bootstrapping analyses showed resources influence project performance through the combined mediation of knowing-what and knowing-how.The paper provides an interdisciplinary treatment of knowledge management in process improvement teams, and offers a research model demonstrating how Six Sigma project teams promote deliberate organizational learning. By doing so, this study empirically establishes the notion that technical and social supports jointly impact the success of operations management initiatives such as Six Sigma through learning. The limitations of the study along with the future research directions are highlighted.     

Learning processes in municipal broadband projects: An absorptive capacity perspective

Effective knowledge management is important to the success of information technology projects. This research applies the integrated lens of the absorptive capacity theory and the social process model of information system development projects to examine the dynamic of knowledge activities concerning broadband infrastructure development in the context of municipal broadband networks. The research questions are: (1) What is the extent of the dynamic of knowledge activities involved in the development process?, (2) What are the events that trigger knowledge activities in municipal broadband development?, and (3) How does a city create and utilize new knowledge in the development process? This study examines municipal wireless projects in three cities (Chaska, MN; Hermosa Beach, CA; and Fredericton, Canada). Events that trigger knowledge activities are assignment of personnel, physical system construction, performance problems, resistance, and reassignment of organizational roles. Four factors that influence knowledge activities and project performance are the dynamic of technology development, partnership commitments, limitation of external knowledge and learning-by-doing, and political dynamics. The study has policy implications for cities that are in the process of planning and deployment. A good project planning, user expectation management, systematic performance evaluation, a careful partner selection process, and the use of service level agreements are important to project success. In addition, cities need to take into consideration that the technology is not a plug and play technology and that considerable efforts are needed to integrate the technology with other solutions to deliver broadband services as well as to configure the system according to topologies, street conditions, buildings, density of trees, among others.     

Planning system characteristics and planning effectiveness

The nature of the multivariate relationship between six characteristics of planning systems and three different conceptualizations of planning effectiveness is examined using canonical correlation analysis. The analysis indicates that the organizational context of planning—captured here by two key characteristics—resistance to planning and resources provided for planning—is the dominant impact on planning system effectiveness, broadly construed. While individual design elements of the planning system such as use of techniques and external orientation do influence effectiveness, the contextual dimensions appear to be overriding. Implications for further research on planning systems and directions for future extensions of this study are discussed.     

The shaping of inventory systems in health services: A stakeholder analysis

Although many studies have addressed the diagnosing and redesign of inventory systems in an industrial setting, the field of operations management seems to lack a thorough understanding of the process of shaping inventory systems in a health care setting. In this article, a contribution is made to fill this gap by exploring the process of reshaping a hospital inventory system of medicines by means of an exploratory case study. In doing so, we concentrate on the question how the outcomes of this process are affected by the different stakeholders involved. Our case study indicates that decisions made during this reshaping process are heavily influenced by the dynamics of the relationships and interactions between the stakeholders involved in the project. Based on our case study there are also some strong indications especially in a health care setting, the existence of multiple stakeholders having a multi-goal focus regarding the inventory system can have a strong influence on the outcomes of inventory projects. For project managers it is important to be aware of these characteristics and circumstances in order to help health service organisations to develop and use inventory systems more effectively.     

Cash flow at risk valuation of mining project using Monte Carlo simulations with stochastic processes calibrated on historical data

Mining projects are subject to multiple sources of market uncertainties such as metal price, exchange rates, and their volatilities. Assessing a mining project's exposure to market risk usually requires Monte Carlo simulations to capture a range of probable outcomes. The probability of a major loss is extracted from the probability density function of simulated prices at a given time into the future. This article proposes an approach to calibrate the stochastic process to be used in Monte Carlo simulations. The simulations are then used for measuring the cash flow at risk of a mining project. To assess the performance of the proposed approach, a case study is conducted on a mining project. The results show that the calibration approach is robust and apt at fitting various stochastic processes to historical observations.     

Contributing beyond the call of duty: examining the role of culture in fostering citizenship behavior and success in project-based work

Shifting goals, priorities and evolving customer demands require an exceptional effort, beyond the call of duty, on the part of employees to increase the likelihood for successful implementation of technologically driven projects. Our model posits that citizenship behavior, which captures individuals' behavior that goes above and beyond prescribed roles, effects project success and is influenced by the culture that exists in the project. We provide support for the model utilizing 222 participants in 71 product development, IT implementation and engineering projects, originating in firms from various industries in the United States using structural equation modeling. Owing to the constraints typically facing project managers, in terms of personnel availability and control over rewards, our findings suggest that project culture can be used by managers as an alternative lever to trigger employees' citizenship behavior, which in turn drives success. We provide valuable implications for individuals assigned to lead projects, who are concerned with aligning project culture with citizenship behavior, as part of their planning activities.     

Assimilating social values in computer-based technologies

This paper describes the key elements of social impact assessments for computer-based technologies. It recommends that analysts examine the infrastructural demands of new computing developments and social outcomes on 12 different criteria. Social impact analysis can be used to evaluate and select among different system alternatives and to monitor a selected system as it evolves. This paper recommends a ten stage political process which requires a project to be tracked from the early stages of design, through its implementation, and during the period it is used. The concepts developed draw upon the literatures of social impact analysis and urban planning.     

Managing the Sources of Uncertainty: Matching Process and Context in Software Development

There is increasing interest in the literature about the notion of a contingent approach to product development process design. This interest stems from the realization that different types of projects carried out in different environments are likely to require quite different development processes if they are to be successful. Stated more formally, a contingent view implies that the performance impact of different development practices is likely to be mediated by the context in which those practices operate. This article provides evidence to support such a view. Our work examines whether projects in which the development process matches the context achieve superior performance. We focus on two sources of uncertainty that generate challenges for project teams: platform uncertainty, reflecting the uncertainty generated by the amount of new design work that must be undertaken in a project; and market uncertainty, reflecting the uncertainty faced in determining customer requirements for the product under development. We develop hypotheses for how these sources of uncertainty are likely to influence the relationships between a number of specific development practices and performance. We then test these hypotheses using data from a sample of 29 Internet software development projects. Our results provide evidence to support a contingent view of development process design. We show that in projects facing greater uncertainty, investments in architectural design, early technical feedback, and early market feedback have a stronger association with performance. The latter relationships are influenced by the specific sources from which this uncertainty stems: platform uncertainty mediating the impact of early technical feedback and market uncertainty mediating the impact of early market feedback. Our results also indicate that while greater uncertainty is associated with making later changes to a product's design, this practice is not associated with performance. Our findings suggest that managers carefully must evaluate both the levels and sources of uncertainty facing a project before designing the most appropriate process for its execution. In particular, they should explore the use of specific development practices based upon their usefulness in resolving the specific types of uncertainty faced. Importantly, these decisions must be made at the start of a project, with purposeful investments to create a process that best matches the context. Reacting to uncertainty ex‐post, without such investments in place, is unlikely to prove a successful strategy.     

Does Strategic Planning Enhance or Impede Innovation and Firm Performance?*

Does strategic planning enhance or impede innovation and firm performance? The current literature provides contradictory views. This study extends the resource‐advantage theory to examine the conditions in which strategic planning increases or decreases the number of new product development projects and firm performance. The authors test the theoretical model by collecting data from 227 firms. The empirical evidence suggests that more strategic planning and more new product development (NPD) projects lead to better firm performance. Firms with organizational redundancy benefit more from strategic planning than firms with less organizational redundancy. Increasing R&D intensity boosts both the number of NPD projects and firm performance. Strategic planning is more effective in larger firms with higher R&D intensity for increasing the number of NPD projects. The results reported in this study also consist of several findings that challenge the traditional views of strategic planning. The evidence suggests that strategic planning impedes, not enhances, the number of NPD projects. Larger firms benefit less, not more, from strategic planning for improving firm performance. Larger firms do not necessarily create more NPD projects. Increasing organizational redundancy has no effect on the number of NPD projects. These empirical results provide important strategic implications. First, managers should be aware that, in general, formal strategic planning decreases the number of NPD projects for innovation management. Improvised rather than planned activities are more conducive to creating NPD project ideas. Moreover, innovations tend to emerge from improvisational processes, during which the impromptu execution of NPD activities without planning spurs “thinking outside the box,” which enhances the process of creating NPD project ideas. Therefore, more flexible strategic plans that accommodate potential improvisation may be needed in NPD management since innovation‐related activities cannot be planned precisely due to the unexpected jolts and contingencies of the NPD process. Second, large firms with high levels of R&D intensity can overcome the negative effect of strategic planning on the number of NPD projects. Specifically, a firm's abundant resources, when allocated and deployed for NPD activities, signal the high priority and importance of the NPD activities and thus motivate employees to acquire, collect, and gather customer and technical knowledge, which leads to creating more NPD projects. Finally, managers must understand that managing strategic planning and generating NPD project ideas are beneficial to the ultimate outcome of firm performance despite the adverse relationship between strategic planning and the number of NPD projects.     

The value of a ‘failed’ R&D project: an emerging evaluation framework for building innovative capabilities1

In literature and R&D organizations alike, project success consists in minimizing the deviations from set targets in terms of quality, cost and time. The main management task is to execute and monitor progress to reduce risks – assuming that project attributes are known, necessary resources can be estimated and a reasonable time table can be agreed upon. In such a context, evaluating project success is easy. However, in an innovative context, setting project targets initially is difficult and the contributions of the projects sometimes are of an unexpected nature. This paper investigates if projects can be evaluated in terms of how they contribute to the building of innovative capabilities of the firm instead of independently. Based on a case study at the Régie Autonome des Transports Parisians and the theoretical framework of innovation fields, a framework for evaluating projects from an additional perspective is proposed. Based on the following four criteria: financial resources, the development of a structured, refined and expanded strategic vision, developed competences (with related suppliers) and identification of knowledge gaps (occasionally with related partners for knowledge production), this framework shows how seemingly failed R&D projects can instead be considered as invaluable to the overall innovation process.