QUALITATIVE INVESTIGATION OF TAM
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technology professionals. The majority of interview participants (58%) identified as currently
using a CRM system, while a significant percentage identified as evaluating use. Several had no
plans to use or adopt CRM technologies (15%), and few had either discontinued use (4%) or
reported previous experience (4%). These reported adoption rates are similar to the findings by
Judd (2019) from his initial landscape assessment.
In both the landscape assessment and the interviews, most universities utilizing or
evaluating CRM reported that Salesforce was the system that is being used or considered (see
Figures 2-3. In the interviews, Modern Campus Destiny One was the next most frequently
reported system (19%), and various other systems, including ActiveCampaign, Momentous,
Microsoft Dynamics, QuickBase, AirTable, and Open Source solutions, were infrequently
reported. When interview participants were asked to provide a definition of CRM, the top
responses included lifecycle contact management (28%), client engagement (19%), strategic
marketing and communications (15%), contact and database management (11%), email
marketing (7%), and revenue generation (6%). Other responses (12%) included events
management, reporting and evaluation, project and task management, customer service, and no
response. As previously mentioned in Chapter 1, there is no single unified definition of CRM,
and this finding is true for the CES. The term “ CRM ” is used interchangeably between CRM as a
business philosophy or process and the technology used to support this process. In addition, the
term is used based on a single state Extension service definition according to their organizational
goals and plans for the technology.
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