Mémoire-projet

Abstract

This master thesis focuses on the implementation of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system within Global Design Technology SA, a Belgian engineering services company working in a business-to-business (B2B) environment. The project was developed to help the company better structure its customer relationship management, centralize commercial information and improve sales performance. The research question of this thesis is: “How can a CRM project be effectively implemented in an engineering services company such as GDTech in order to improve customer relationship management and commercial performance?”.

This research is based on a qualitative approach combining a literature review, a case study carried out within GDTech, external semi-structured interviews with CRM users and administrators from different companies, field observations and the analysis of internal documents and commercial indicators. The study also follows the progressive implementation of the Sellsy CRM solution within the company.

The results show that the success of a CRM project does not only depend on the software itself. Several factors appear to play an important role, such as the alignment between the CRM and the company’s needs, the structuring of commercial processes, the quality of the data entered into the system, user adoption and change management. The study also highlights differences between the expected use of the CRM and the actual practices observed in the field.

Finally, this thesis provides managerial recommendations to support CRM implementation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and engineering service companies. These recommendations mainly concern user support, continuous improvement, data management and commercial performance monitoring through relevant KPIs.