Developing a Practical Tool to Help Small and Medium Sized B2B Enterprises Choose a Suitable CRM System

Customer relationship management is important for every company. Customer relationship management software can be a vital tool for handling customer data in small and medium sized enterprises. In the market, there are several different customer relationship management software solutions and vendors, so it can be hard for a company to find suitable solution for them. The use of the customer relationship management software can vary a lot in different companies although they might be in the same business or industry. Accordingly, choosing the right type of customer relationship management system to fit the company’s needs is challenging in general an especially for small and medium sized enterprises with limited resources. The objective of this thesis was to help companies to choose the suitable customer relationship management software for their use. In the thesis, a recommendation table was built, which the company can use to choose customer relationship management software solutions to meet their needs based on the industry, the customer relationship management software characteristics and guidelines for choosing the customer relationship management software. The recommendation tool takes into consideration alternative system characteristics and the operating context of the company. The recommendation table is an Excel sheet where the company can cross-reference their needs of characteristics and guidelines when choosing the customer relationship management software. The recommendations are based on professional and academic literature. Only 16 different customer relationship management software solutions were investigated in the study based on the characteristics and classifications that were done first. In the market there are over 200 customer relationship management software solutions available. The recommendation tool was piloted with three companies in different industries. The results were analysed and the recommendation tool was corrected based on the findings of the piloting. In conclusion, the next steps should be identified choosing the software and also improving the recommendation tool was created in this thesis