QUALITATIVE INVESTIGATION OF TAM
13
CES organizations are not the only entity serving the public across the United States in
the program areas that they focus on. One area of concern for CES professionals is remaining
relevant in a crowded market, particularly in the face of challenging fiscal situations. Typically,
CRM adoption is motivated by wanting a competitive advantage, but Judd’s (2019) landscape
assessment shows that the CES has generally been slow to adopt CRM technologies. Judd’s
(2019) data also shows that many CES organizations are utilizing custom-developed CRM
systems that appear to be lacking modern features typically found in commercially available
systems. These limitations, and the limitation of not adopting CRM technologies, may be
hindering the efficiency of CES professionals in engaging and serving clients in a way that meets
client expectations. Additionally, CRM technologies are an industry-leading platform for
gathering data from a variety of sources that help enable an organization to reach new audiences.
Consequently, there is a need to improve the efficiency of CES outreach and engagement efforts
in the communities it serves, and CRM may be one potential vehicle for reaching this goal.
Problem Statement
The problem is that a significant number of land-grant university CES programs are not
adopting CRM technologies despite evidence to suggest it would enhance their communications
efforts and their outreach and engagement mission. According to Judd (2019), approximately
40% of all land-grant universities in the United States are utilizing CRM technologies, and many
of those are not commercial systems with industry-standard features. Another approximate 40%
of these universities are evaluating the use of CRM technologies, while the remaining have no
plans to utilize CRM (Judd, 2019). The specific problem to be addressed is identifying the
barriers that exist in adopting CRM technologies, including TAM variables, in the CES, and
Powered by FlippingBook