ibm's ecrm initiatives

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ITSY/044

IBS Center for Management Research

IBM’s eCRM Initiatives

This case was written by K. Prashanth, under the direction of Vivek Gupta, IBS Center for Management Research. It was

compiled from published sources, and is intended to be used as a basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either

effective or ineffective handling of a management situation.

2004, IBS Center for Management Research. All rights reserved.

To order copies, call +91-08417-236667/68 or write to IBS Center for Management Research (ICMR), IFHE Campus, Donthanapally, Sankarapally Road, Hyderabad 501 504, Andhra Pradesh, India or email: [email protected]

www.icmrindia.org

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ITSY/044


“Our goal is to be viewed as one IBM by our customers and to work as one IBM internally. We’re aiming to make IBM best of class in its industry for sales, marketing and customer service excellence. We believe we can achieve this goal by using Siebel applications to leverage our existing strengths as a market-intelligent enterprise. We’re transforming our business to take speed, responsiveness and efficiency to a whole new level.”

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- Vince Ostrosky, Vice- President, Customer Relationship Management at IBM.

“This is one of the biggest implementations we have ever done. So customers always ask us, how did we do it, and what did we learn?”

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- Cher De Rossiter, Program Director for IBM’s CRM Project.

INTRODUCTION

In January 2000, IBM, the $86 billion IT company, embarked on the largest Customer Relationship Management (CRM) project known at that time. Termed CRM 2000, the project aimed at ensuring that any point of interface between the customer and IBM, through any of its channels, in any country, was dealt with uniformly, providing the same service level, applying the same tools and information. In other words, IBM wanted to present a unified interface to its customers across the world. In 2004, four years after the project, the company was well on its way towards fulfilling its objective, reporting significant improvement in customer satisfaction levels.

IBM had always been known for its emphasis on customer service. It had its sales personnel clad in blue suits attending clients‟ calls and explaining to them how they could transform their business through various IBM products and services. IBM recognized that proper CRM implementation was possible by the integration of three elements – people, process and technology. Until the late 1990s, it addressed the issue of integration of people and processes. The third part, technology, was dealt with in 1999, when the company started focusing on this aspect. Commenting on this, Cher De Rossiter (Rossiter), IBM‟s Global Services and Program Director for its internal CRM project said, “In 1999, there was a shift in the technology side of the project. We started working on a new go-to-market strategy in which we would redefine the way we set up our internal customer service organization.”

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IBM went about implementing CRM in phases, addressing sub-divisions such as change management and training successfully. Commenting, Steve Wright, Vice-President, Worldwide Customer Relationship Management Deployment, IBM said, “By getting to know our customers better and enabling more effective collaboration around the customer and among multiple IBM organizations involving sales, marketing and support, we can significantly enhance the value we bring to our customers, while generating additional revenues and cost efficiencies for our company. The concept of „One IBM‟ is a cornerstone for the way we serve customers.”

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1 IBM takes customer service to the next level, www.ibm.com.

2 Erika Morphy, IBM Deploys Siebel: An Enterprise-Level CRM Rollout, www.crm-daily.newsfactor.

com, February 20, 2002. 3 Erika Morphy, IBM Deploys Siebel: An Enterprise-Level CRM Rollout, www.crm-daily.newsfactor.

com, February 20, 2002. 4 Creating „One IBM‟ for Customers Worldwide, www.siebel.com.

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BACKGROUND NOTE

IBM was incorporated in 1911 as the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (CTR), which manufactured punch card data processing equipment. On February 14, 1924, CTR changed its name to International Business Machines Corporation. The company‟s founder and President, Thomas J Watson, believed that the new name was more in keeping with its growing business portfolio and wider range of business-related products.

IBM set up its first research facility called IBM Research in 1945 in Manhattan. Over the years, IBM Research invented products that became the IT industry‟s foundation. FORTRAN, Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) architectures, relational databases, token-ring networking, the cursor and magnetic disk storage were all developed at IBM Research. However, IBM marketed very few of these products.

In 1969, the US government started an anti-trust enquiry on allegations that IBM was trying to monopolize the market for general-purpose electronic digital computer systems and specifically, the market for computers designed for business. The enquiry, which lasted until 1983, hampered IBM‟s growth.

In the 1980s, IBM‟s culture was bureaucratic and rigid. The company took a very limited view of its market and business activities and operated within this narrow sphere. There was also lack of communication and understanding between the research and business divisions of the company. Owing to this, IBM lost a number of opportunities and failed to commercialize many inventions. The 1980s was a period of decline and by the early 1990s; analysts began writing off any chances of IBM‟s revival. In the fiscal 1992-93, IBM posted a loss of $4.97 billion, which was the largest single-year corporate loss in US history.

In 1993, Gerstner took over as CEO from John Akers (Akers). Gerstner introduced a number of changes in IBM‟s business operations and culture. Specifically, the company shifted focus from components and hardware to services and software. It also ensured a greater degree of communication between product development and marketing departments. Gerstner brought about a radical change in IBM‟s work culture. Employees were no longer required to adhere to a formal dress code. Gerstner believed that employees should first try to solve customers‟ problems, instead of just focusing on selling IBM‟s products. Gerstner wanted to foster a performance driven culture at IBM and insisted on results.

Under the new CEO, IBM was back into profits. By the late 1990s, the company emerged as the largest IT services company, with operations in over 160 countries in the world. Its diverse portfolio of products and services was grouped into seven segments – Technology, Personal Systems, Servers (Hardware); Global Services, Software, Global Financing and Enterprise Investments (Refer Exhibit I for an overview of IBM‟s business segments) and were sold through a large number of semi-autonomous entities (Refer Table I for IBM‟s business segment financials). The company had a matrix organization structure where the entire business was divided into six product groups, further grouped into five geographic regions (Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and the Asia Pacific) and serving three categories of customers – Enterprise, Global Mid-Market and Global Small.

Table I

IBM – Business Segment Financials (1997-98)

Business Segments Revenues

(1998)

Profits

(1998)

Percent of

Total

Revenues

Revenues

(1997)

Profits

(1997)

Percent

of Total

Sales

Hardware Segments 35,419 1,205 43.4% 36,630 13,157 46.7%

Global Service

Segments

28,916 7,791 35.4% 25,166 6,702 32.1%

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Business Segments Revenues

(1998)

Profits

(1998)

Percent of

Total

Revenues

Revenues

(1997)

Profits

(1997)

Percent

of Total

Sales

Software Segments 11,863 9,603 14.5% 11,164 8,379 14.2%

Global Financing

Segments

2,877 1,383 3.5% 2,806 1,358 3.6%

Enterprise Investments

Segments/Others

2,592 890 3.2% 2,742 1,013 3.4%

Source: IBM Annual Report, 1998.

The huge size of operations and complex organizational structure made it difficult for IBM to

obtain a complete view of the customer. The company aimed at achieving synergies within its

various product and service divisions to provide end-to-end solutions to its customers. Similar was

the case from the customers‟ point of view. They were dealing with IBM through its various

channels including sales executives, business partners, its website (www.ibm.com) and through its

call centres. The common perception among customers was that they were not dealing with a

unified IBM. Commenting on the problem, Dong Maine, General Manager of IBM said, “We did

not have a complete view of what a given customer was doing across the entire IBM Company at a

particular point of time.”5

To make matters worse, IBM had deployed around 1000 CRM applications in its operations across

the globe, each of which was confined to a single business entity. They were effective as stand

alone applications, but not as joint applications. The result was low customer satisfaction and

several revenue generating opportunities being missed. Realizing the critical nature of the problem,

in 1999, IBM decided to embark on a major enterprise-wide CRM implementation effort to deploy

a system, which combined all IBM‟s customer-facing applications. The project was named IBM

CRM 2000.

The leading CRM vendor, Siebel Systems,6 was chosen for the project after IBM studied all major

CRM software vendors, applying over 1400 business capabilities and 400 architectural criteria.

Giving the rationale for choosing Siebel, Vince Ostrosky, Vice-President, Customer Relationship

Management at IBM said, “When you look out in the market today, you won‟t find another

solution that comes close to what Siebel Systems offers in the CRM space. We recognize Siebel

reflects a thorough understanding of today‟s best practices for sales, services and marketing.”7

IMPLEMENTING CRM 2000

To manage the worldwide installation of Siebel‟s e-CRM applications, IBM launched a global

programme (Refer Exhibit II and III for the description and pictorial view of the systems

architecture of the CRM solution). The deployment was planned in a phased manner, so that the

lessons learned in one phase could be carried forward to the next phase. A three-tier governance

structure was created to manage the business transformation efforts. The first tier consisted of an

5 Thomas M. Siebel, IBM: Customer-Focused e-Business Enables Integrated Solutions for Customers,

Taking Care of E-Business, Doubleday Publications, 2001. 6 Siebel Systems is a leading provider of business applications software, enabling corporations to sell to,

market to, and serve customers across multiple channels and lines of business. The company provides

organizations with a set of industry-specific CRM applications, analytics products, and business

processes, empowering them to deliver superior customer experiences and establish better customer

relationships. 7 IBM takes customer service to the next level, www.ibm.com.

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executive investment review board comprising top management, which clearly laid out the

strategic vision and handled spending across the portfolio. The second tier comprised a

management team of business leaders and IT leaders, whose task was to review the progress of the

project as per plan and that it was addressing the requirements of each functional group involved.

Finally came the CRM project team, which was responsible for day- to- day implementation, which involved mapping business processes, managing organizational change, specifying the requirements of the system and allotting resources. The project team was composed of 200 employees. Within the project team, there was an architecture team, who had the job of integrating the existing IBM systems with the new CRM applications and handling data modelling.

8 Siebel

staff supported this team. While setting up processes and establishing interfaces, IBM employees developed a good understanding of Siebel technologies and became Siebel-certified architects and configuration experts.

Even before starting implementation of the CRM solution, the project team developed a detailed implementation methodology, comprising tasks to be done during the initial stages. This included specifying the system requirements for other steps such as prioritization (which systems to be deployed first), generation of code, testing after installation, full-fledged launch of the system, managing change from existing processes to new processes and monitoring future progress. This uniform methodology was followed at any place where the system was deployed, making integration of applications easier and speeding up deployment in different geographical locations and units. Once the methodology was specified, the actual process of deployment began.

The team embarked on the Phase I of the CRM project in which the software application – a combined Tele Web channel comprising websites and call centres – was deployed at ibm.com. Two Siebel solutions – Siebel Sales and Siebel Call Centre (Refer Exhibit IV) were installed at 26 ibm.com call centres across the world, an effort requiring 7000 IBM personnel. It could be used by 4800 IBM employees. Elaborating on the importance of call centres, Rossiter, IBM Global Services and Program Director for its internal CRM project said, “We knew our call centres would be where we would go first because they are the foundation of our CRM strategy.”

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The Tele-Web call centres handled inward as well as outward sales, service and other related activities over the phone and the Web. Ibm.com was chosen as the first point of deploying the CRM solution because, most often, the call centres were the first point for collecting, analyzing and supplying customer data to the rest of the firm. This made them the preferred testing platform for implementing the new CRM solution.

After the installation, the staff had a wide variety of information on products and customers on their fingertips. They could view all past dealings of a particular IBM customer, like purchases made, services asked for and so on. This enabled them to develop a quick understanding of customer requirements and plan the conversation with the customer. They could deliver quick and accurate response to queries. Access to customers‟ past records was also very useful to staff while making sales calls. They could learn what products or services the customers had rejected in the past and ensure that they did not offer similar products in the future.

The ibm.com contact centres, which were initially accessible by the company‟s employees, were made available to IBM‟s business partners, such as software vendors, system integrators and consulting partners in due course. To start with, their access was limited to sharing leads. The association was further expanded to share other critical information, reflecting the seriousness of IBM‟s channel integration efforts.

8 The task in which data models are developed. Usually both the IT people and the data users from the

business work jointly on this task. This ensures that the user‟s perception and needs are appropriately

understood and accounted for within the data models. 9 Erika Morphy, IBM Deploys Siebel: An Enterprise-Level CRM Rollout, crm-daily.newsfactor.com,

February 20, 2002.

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While Phase I of the deployment was underway, IBM commenced Phase II, which catered to pre-

sales and post-sales technical service and support. This too was critical, as the company‟s technical

service and support team was one of the largest in the world, numbering 3200. The various entities

served included Tech-Line, Sales Productivity Centres and the Personal Computers Division

(PCD) in the US and Sales Support Centres in Europe. The project team installed Siebel Services

and Siebel eService solutions. The pre-sales units included Tech Line and Sales Support centres.

They offered technical assistance to the IBM sales team by providing information on product

pricing, product configurations and other technical information. The post- sales units included

post- sales support centres and the PCD. The solution enabled PCD employees to address customer

service requests and respond to technical queries more effectively. The solution also assisted

customers in getting most information themselves, through e-support. The customers could enter

their service requests, track them and modify them online.

Business partners had an important role to play in IBM‟s activities. Therefore, IBM implemented

CRM solutions for them as well. IBM implemented Partner World Lead Management (PWLM),

developed on the basis of Siebel Partner Relationship Management (PRM), in thousands of partner

companies in the US and Europe. This enabled IBM to strengthen its ties with business partners.

Partners, who signed up for the PWLM solution received direct leads from IBM‟s contact centre.

Sales leads could be allotted instantly, depending on the ability of the business partner in

successfully converting them into business for the company. The partners had to either take the

lead or reject it within a specified period. Further, if they accepted it, they had to follow it up

within some hours or days, as determined by IBM.

By December 2002, over 8,000 IBM employees and thousands of business partners in 43 countries

across the world were using CRM applications. In 2003, the CRM application, which was until

then confined to contact centres, technical support centres and business partners, was extended to

the field sales force. This saw a quantum leap in the number of users of the system from 8,000 to

60,000 worldwide. The CRM applications were installed in a wide variety of languages – English,

French, Japanese and so on. It was extended to Chinese and Korean in 2004. This facilitated easier

and quicker understanding of applications by employees and integrated the diverse sales force,

irrespective of location, currency or language.

IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

Installation of eCRM systems was only a part of the implementation process of CRM solutions at

IBM. A more important task was to manage internal business process changes following the

installation. The various tasks involved – making call centre agents accustomed to the new

solution, transferring massive volumes of customer data scattered across different locations into a

single database, sales process reengineering and more.

The primary challenge of the project team was to garner support from those who would be using

the system. For this, the team ensured that the end-users were actively involved in every phase of

deployment, from preparing requirement documentation to final testing and validation. This made

them feel to a part of entire activity, and at the same time, develop better understanding of the

systems they would be using in future.

Another key element in gaining user confidence and support was training. This helped overcome

resistance among employees to use the new system. Commenting on the importance of training,

Vince Ostrosky, Vice- President, Customer Relationship Management at IBM said, “If our users

don‟t have sufficient education or help-desk support, they‟ll view the new system as a productivity

detractor instead of an enhancer.”10

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IBM takes customer service to the next level, www.ibm.com.

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The training was imparted by the IBM Application Management Services (AMS) Learning

Development Division, which created and distributed all end-user education material in association

with the Siebel End User education team. Training was conducted using a combination of

classroom sessions and e-learning. The latter reduced overall training costs by a significant 67%.

Interactive e-learning ensured that all concerned were exposed to the same content and could reach

the same level of understanding training content. Another advantage was that they could take the

course according to their own convenience. This was especially useful to field sales executives.

THE BENEFITS

The deployment of the CRM solution led to significant productivity improvement at various IBM

units within a year of implementation. Without increasing the number of staff manning call

centres, more number of calls could be dealt with and more leads generated. The implementation

enabled employees in the pre-sales and post-sales service and support areas to improve their ability

to deal with customer calls. Many of them surpassed set targets. Similar was the case with business

partners. On the whole, implementation of the CRM solution enabled IBM to enhance interaction

with customers and develop better understanding about how customer service could be improved.

CRM implementation benefited IBM in several ways, as explained by Anthony Marsella

(Marsella), Senior Manager, EMEA market intelligence. Describing the efforts made by IBM and

the results reaped, Marsella said, “As part of the Siebel deployment, we‟ve re-engineered our

customer information to enable an integrated view. We‟ve amassed a lot of intellectual capital,

defined data management processes, put in information structures and extensively built up our

knowledge base. By bringing together information through worldwide processes you get a synergy

that you don‟t get as a separate business.”11

As far as quantifiable results were concerned, IBM gained significant benefit. As on June 2003, it

was believed that ibm.com, its tele-web channel, was accounting for 11% of its overall revenues of

$86 bn. Productivity improvements were reported at each of the 26 centres across the world. The

improvements ranged from 1% to 7%, based on the location. With the addition of field sales

personnel to the list of beneficiaries, productivity improvement was expected to rise.

Another benefit was cost savings. Between 1999 and 2001, IBM dispensed with over 177 legacy

CRM applications of the 1000 existing applications. This reduced maintenance costs and enabled

IBM to take advantage of cost synergies resulting from the integration of processes and

implementing one uniform eCRM solution for similar processes.

IBM did not rest on its laurels. IBM was always conscious that CRM was a continuous process,

which had to be tackled with a lot of seriousness. Commenting on this, Rossiter said, “In a

company as large as IBM, CRM is not the destination, but the journey.”12

11

IBM deploys largest worldwide Customer Relationship Management, www.ibm.com. 12

Lisa Picarille, Equal In The Eyes Of CRM, CRM Magazine, June 2002.

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Exhibit I

Business Segments of IBM

The Technology Segment produced peripheral equipment for use in general purpose computer

systems. This included storage and networking devices, advanced function printers and display

devices. The segment also provided components such as semiconductors and hard disk drives

for use in IBM‟s products and for other original equipment manufacturers (OEM). Major

business units included Storage Systems, Microelectronics, Printer Systems and Networking

Hardware.

The Personal Systems Segment produced general-purpose computer systems. It also developed

certain types of system and consumer software, designed for use by one user at a time (PC

clients). Major brands included Aptiva home PCs, IntelliStation workstations, Netfinity servers,

PC 300 commercial desktops and ThinkPad mobile systems. Consumer software (mainly

education related) brands included Crayola, Edmark and World Book Multimedia. These

products were sold primarily through reseller and retail channels.

The Server Segment produced powerful multi-purpose computer systems that operated many

open-network based applications, which could be accessed by multiple users simultaneously.

They performed high-volume transaction processing and served data to personal systems and

other end-user devices. The servers were the engines behind the bulk of electronic business

transactions, including e-commerce. Major brands included S/390, AS/400 and RS/6000. The

segment‟s products were sold directly by the company and through business- partner

relationships.

The Global Services Segment had emerged as the world‟s largest and most versatile

information technology (IT) services provider, which offered computer hardware and software

products and professional services including business and IT consulting to customers. The

segment also provided business transformational services like ERP solutions, e-business

services and full scope services like strategic outsourcing or Total Systems Management

services. The Global Services segment attempted to integrate the full range of IBM‟s

capabilities, including hardware, software and research, to provide value to clients.

The Software Segment delivered operating systems for the company‟s servers and middleware

for IBM and non-IBM platforms. Middleware included application development, data

management, networking, systems management, transaction processing, and messaging. In

addition to its own product development and marketing efforts, the segment supported more

than 29,000 independent software vendors. This ensured that IBM‟s software and hardware

offerings were also included in these vendors‟ solutions.

The Global Financing Segment provided a broad array of financial services for IBM‟s

customers and its business partners. The primary focus was to leverage its financial structuring

and portfolio management skills to expand the company‟s customer and partner base.

The Enterprise Investments Segment provided a broad spectrum of initiatives in IT solutions,

supporting IBM‟s hardware, software and services segments. The segment developed unique

products designed to meet specific marketplace requirements and to complement IBM‟s overall

portfolio of products.

Source: IBM Annual Report, 1999-2000.

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Exhibit II

Systems Architecture of CRM Solution

IBM installed CRM applications developed by Siebel. The CRM applications had to be made

compatible with several other application systems and data sources, so that a unified IBM could

be presented to the customers. The complete solutions comprised several IBM products along

with external interface mechanisms of Siebel Systems.

The IT infrastructure (hardware and software) required to implement the Siebel CRM solutions

was pretty robust and incorporated the latest available technology. The hardware primarily

comprised of e-Server P Series servers along with Enterprise Storage Servers (this configuration

was code named as Shark). The software installed included IBM‟s DB@ database, WebSphere

application servers and MQ Series messaging software.

The system was developed on an XML-based messaging architecture, which connected the

Siebel applications to nearly 50 data sources and interfaces across IBM as well as its partner

organizations. In order to establish proper links to facilitate flow of data between Siebel

applications and IBM‟s applications, IBM used Oasis standard messages. The messages moved

through a „middleware‟ infrastructure which included various IBM WebSphere product

components. The presence of the MQ Series middleware component ensured that the messages

could be transferred in a secure and reliable manner. This was further strengthened by the MQ

Systems Integrator (MQSI), which was used for implementing the message broker, a part of the

CRM solution. The message broker ensured that the messages heading for different legacy

applications were formatted and sent in a proper manner. The XML-based messages were key

components in the IBM‟s eCRM solution, as they enabled its employees responsible for

delivering messages to perform their tasks efficiently. The XML-messages could also be used to

add new applications into the system, by using a system adapter, which communicated with the

legacy applications through XML messages.

Apart from middleware, the CRM solution also employed other products like DB2 UDM which

rested on AIX13

which had in it all databases employed by IBM CRM solution. The solution

also employed the WebSphere IBM HTTP Server (IHS), web servers along with WebSphere

Network Dispatcher to properly support the client network linked to the Siebel solutions.

Adapted from “IBM takes customer service to the next level,” www.ibm.com.

13

Abbreviation for Advanced Interactive Executive, IBM‟s licensed version of UNIX operating system.

AIX is particularly suited to support technical computing applications, including high function graphics

and floating point computations.

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Exhibit III

Systems Architecture Diagram of IBM’s eCRM Solution

Source: www.ibm.com.

Internet

Web

browser

BPS

Customers

External

systems

Credit Card

authorization

Front end Back end

RS/60000 SP2 Systems

WTE

ND

Rev Proxy

WebSphere

IHS

MQSeries

HACMP

LDAP

DCE

DFS

Isolated Siebel Subnet

Siebel

application

MQSeries

HACMP

Tivoli

Enterprise storage

subsystem

DCE

DFS Cache

IBM Intranet

Legacy

systems

Siebel client

Pre-Siebel 7

Internal

Users

Web browser

Post-Siebel

7 Internal

Users

Firewall

Firewall

RS/60000 SP2 Systems

IBM @server

pSeries 680s

Siebel DB

DB2 UDB

HACMP

SAN switch

DASD

Shadow DB

DB2 UDB

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Exhibit IV

Siebel eCRM Applications Deployed at IBM

2000 2001 2002 2003

Siebel Sales Siebel Partner

Relationship

Management

Siebel Partner

Relationship

Management

Siebel Marketing

Opportunity

management

Opportunity

management

Leads

processing and

integration with

IBM Sales

Comprehensive

marketing

automation

Account

management

Account and contact

management

First pre built

customer data

chart

Activity

management

Activity

management

Integrated database

marketing and

campaignmanagem

ent

Contact

management

Service request

management

Full marketing

communicationssu

pport

Lead management Configurable routing

tables

Measure, monitor

and track

marketing

strategies

Partner

administration

Siebel Call Center Siebel eService Siebel Sales

Integrated telesales,

telemarketing and

customer service

solution

Service request

management

Campaign

management

Dynamic agent

desktop via

intelligent call

scripting

FAQ support Proposal generation

Powerful computer

telephony

integration (CTI)

Customer profile

system

Target account

selling

Data-driven

workflow for

routing,

authorizations and

escalations

Web collaboration Sales analysis

Contd...

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Contd...

Siebel Service General e-Business Siebel eService

Data-driven

workflow for

routing,

authorizations and

escalations

Login and security E-mail response

management

Creation of service

request

Pre built applications

Request tracking Pre built e-business

objects and

components

Assignment

manager

Pre built e-business

data model

Service order parts

fulfilment

Source: www.ibm.com.

http://www.ibm.com/

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Additional Readings & References:

1. Campanelli, Melissa, Big Blue Retools, Sales & Marketing Management, June 1994.

2. Brewer, Geoffrey, IBM Gets User-Friendly, Sales & Marketing Management, July 1994.

3. Keenan Jr., William, IBM to Shift More Business to Resellers, Sales & Marketing

Management, March 1995.

4. Kenlaw, Will, Transformation = re-engineering + automation, Sales & Marketing

Management, April 1995.

5. Keenan Jr., William, Managing Phone Sales: There Is A Difference, Sales & Marketing

Management, July 1995.

6. Brewer, Geoffrey, IBM, Sales & Marketing Management, October 1997.

7. Brewer, Geoffrey, Lou Gerstner Has His Hands Full, Sales & Marketing Management,

May 1998.

8. Cioci, Michelle, Marketing To Small Businesses, Sales & Marketing Management,

December, 2000.

9. Holding The Line on Call-Center Sprawl, www.itworld.com, February 02, 2001.

10. Karpinski, Richard, Inside IBM's CRM Play, www.Internetweek.com, October 04, 2001.

11. Reiners, David, Finish Fast by Starting Smart, Customer Interface, October 2001

12. McCartney, Laton, The New Benchmarks, www.eweek.com, November 5, 2001

13. Morphy, Erika, IBM Deploys Siebel: An Enterprise-Level CRM Rollout, crm-

daily.newsfactor.com, February 20, 2002.

14. Picarille, Lisa, Equal In The Eyes Of CRM, CRM Magazine June 2002.

15. Building The Right Partnerships, Sidebar: TeleWeb Gives IBM Wider Reach,

www.optimizemag.com, January 17, 2003.

16. Strout, Erin, Blue Skies Ahead?, Sales & Marketing Management, March 2003.

17. IBM and on demand, www.ibm.com.

18. IBM CRM 2000: From Strategy To Management, www.ibm.com.

19. IBM Takes Customer Service to the Next Level, www.ibm.Com.

20. The IBM CRM Vision, www.ibm.com.

21. Growing Success, IBM - Business Transformation through End-To-End Integration,

www.ibm.com.

Books Referred:

1. Thomas M. Siebel, Taking Care of eBusiness, Doubleday Publishing, 2001.

Related Case Studies:

1. Dow Chemicals Customer-Centric E-Business Strategy, Reference No. 904-013-1.

2. Marriott‟s Customer-Focussed E-Business Strategy, Reference No. 904-014-1.

3. Charles Schwab Customer-Focussed E-Business Strategy.

ibm's ecrm initiatives

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