QUALITATIVE INVESTIGATION OF TAM
148
contributing to employee resistance in their states. In one participant use-case in the north central
region, the organization is piloting Salesforce across a limited number of users. This particular
participant focused tremendous efforts on training and support, ensuring that the Salesforce
interface was customized appropriately for the pilot program. As a result, her organization
appears to be overcoming hurdles of complexity, compatibility, and trialability while
simultaneously creating a perception of the system that it is both easy to use and demonstrating
value to Extension users that increased the perceived usefulness. On the other end of the
spectrum in the northeastern region with a participant use-case of Salesforce that has a limited
set of users, training and support appears to be elusive and creating the appropriate interfaces
aligned with the organizational needs is a significant source of frustration. That participant
reported that the system is difficult to use and although they believe in the potential usefulness,
they simply are not seeing their return on investment.
Critical Success Factors
Findings from the Farhan et al. (2018) study demonstrated that the top critical success
factors for CRM implementation were top management support and commitment, IT systems
management and integration, a clearly defined CRM strategy, knowledge management
capabilities, and an organizational culture of change. Anaam et al. (2022) found that top
management support, training, and perceived usefulness were the most significant critical
success factors for CRM implementation. This research on the CES found that participants
reported very similar findings, although sometimes spread across more than one category and
contextualized for the CES. This includes identifying training and support, perceived usefulness,
user buy-in, strategic organizational planning, integrations strategy, and leadership commitment
as the top critical factors. With that said, participant perceptions toward successful CRM
Powered by FlippingBook