Eleutherios Papathanassiou

The state of CRM adoption by the financial services in the UK: an empirical investigation

In recent years, organisations have begun to realise the importance of knowing their customers better. Customer relationship management (CRM) is an approach to managing customer related knowledge of increasing strategic significance. The successful adoption of IT-enabled CRM redefines the traditional models of interaction between businesses and their customers, both nationally and globally. It is regarded as a source for competitive advantage because it enables organisations to explore and use knowledge of their customers and to foster profitable and long-lasting one-to-one relationships. This paper discusses the results of an exploratory survey conducted in the UK financial services sector; it discusses CRM practice and expectations, the motives for implementing it, and evaluates post-implementation experiences. It also investigates the CRM tools functionality in the strategic, process, communication, and business-to-customer (B2C) organisational context and reports the extent of their use. The results show that despite the anticipated potential, the benefits from such tools are rather small.

Mass customisation

The development of customised services that are offered at competitive prices is among the highest priorities in the services industry. Mass customisation (MC) attempts to give customers what they want, when and where they want it, at a cost comparable to that of mass-produced goods. The adoption of MC in conjunction with the rapid development of the Internet applications can open up new opportunities for developing services, which are affordable and customised to customers needs. This paper reports on the results of an exploratory study of 35 IT and marketing managers of banks and insurance companies in the UK. It investigates three critical issues for the successful implementation of MC, namely, the management approaches to developing MC, the employees awareness and the potential of the Internet as a means for closer interaction and collaboration with customers for the customisation of services.

Electronic commerce opportunities for improving corporate customer support in banking in Greece

Banking, one of the most information intensive sectors, is an ideal domain for the successful development of e‐commerce. The present exploratory study focuses on e‐commerce opportunities for improving corporate customer services in the Greek banking sector. It reports on a survey of 11 marketing and information systems managers from five major Greek banks. The results indicate that the potential of e‐commerce ranges from simple applications, such as giving information about services, to more sophisticated ones that involve customers in services design and customisation. Suitable management actions are proposed to Greek banks in order to fully benefit from the Internet.

The Development of B2C E-Commerce in Greece: Current Situation and Future Potential.

The development of Internet applications for business use is expected to change the way organisations operate, and improve their customer services. However, the potential of the Internet to improve customer satisfaction has not been studied, either in countries with well‐developed electronic markets or in countries in the early stages of e‐commerce. This article reports on the results of a survey of 120 companies in Greece. The aim of this study was to evaluate the potential of customer‐oriented Internet applications and to investigate how the Internet and e‐commerce can offer new opportunities for businesses to improve their customers’ satisfaction.

Management context and impact of e‐commerce in the Greek food industries

Increased competition characterises the food sector worldwide, but the potential of e‐commerce (eC) to improve customer satisfaction in the food industries has not been thoroughly studied. Reports on the results of a survey of 48 information systems (IS) and marketing managers from food companies in Greece. Examines the eC management context and investigates how the Internet can offer new opportunities for improving customer satisfaction. The results show that there is potential for customer‐oriented eC applications across the value chain.

Evaluation of websites’ compliance to legal and ethical guidelines: A fuzzy logic–based methodology

Privacy issues are a top priority in web design. However, websites’ evaluation methods do not consider legal and ethical issues. This article proposes a fuzzy logic–based methodology for evaluating websites’ compliance with legal and ethical principles. Using fuzzy Delphi and fuzzy numbers, the methodology develops the Fuzzy Legal and Ethical Compliance Index (FLECI) that addresses the inherited vagueness of the evaluation process and calculates websites’ conformity to legal and ethical guidelines. To illustrate the proposed methodology, this research collects data and then evaluates and classifies 100 websites with respect to their privacy policies using fuzzy equivalence. This article provides a foundation for the development of comprehensive website evaluation methods that include privacy and ethical issues in their evaluations. Future research can investigate the applicability of the proposed methodology and the fuzzy numbers calculated in this article in websites across industries and cultural activities.

An Integrated Object & Fuzzy Cognitive Maps Approach to Business Process Management

For the last 15 years, in an attempt to successfully face the competition, organisations have been carrying out quality management initiatives such as Total Quality Management (TQM) and Business Process Re-engineering (BPR). A key aspect of quality management is business performance assessment and process re-design. Traditionally, the overall performance of an organisation has been associated with its financial performance. In the last decade however, there has been an increasing criticism of the traditional financial management driven approaches to business performance control (Olve et al. 1999). Financial measures show the effects of actions and decisions based on past market conditions that may in the mean time have changed. Therefore financial measurements fail to provide adequate guidance for long term planning because they may be based on assumptions and figures which are no longer valid. It is now recognised that running a company can hardly be reduced to optimising monetary profits. In fact, the need for more comprehensive evaluation of business performance has led to the development of new techniques such as the Balanced Scorecard (BS) (Kaplan and Norton, 1992,1993, 1996). Since 1992, BS has been widely applied in business management. The BS concept is based on three dimensions in time: yesterday, today and tomorrow; actions taken today for tomorrow may have no noticeable financial effects until the day after tomorrow (Olve et al. 1999). The company focus therefore must be broadened so that it keeps a continuous watch on non-financial performance indicators in addition to the financial ones.