Corporate CRM - The Influential Factors and Difficulties Facing the FMCG Industry: A Case Study of Procter & Gamble

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a widely used business management method in today's industry. In order to attract more new customers and squeeze greater revenues from the ones on hand, companies are seeking a comprehensive CRM solution that can facilitate the complex business rules and processes within organizations and at the same time enhance customer data for better customer segmentation and profitability measurement for organizations' decision making. Corporate CRM, on one hand, benefits companies as a core business strategy that integrates internal processes and functions, and external networks, to create and deliver value to targeted customers at a profit; on the other hand, such CRM programme requires a great deal of coordination and cooperation between functions in relation to the programme. This research aimed to firstly investigate the iterature regarding the development of CRM, the trend of CRM in modern business, and the influential factors within Corporate CRM system, i.e. the difficulties facing the organizations; and subsequently matching the result from literary review to the practical business world through case study of P&G and in-depth interviews with key function managers to discover the linkage between academic research and actual business practices. Finally, from the case study findings, this paper would further shed a light on the possible development and investigation in regard to the organizational structure, consumer perception, and the cooperation between retailers and FMCG manufacturers in the future