The concepts of customer relationship management (CRM) and knowledge management (KM) both focus on allocating resources to supportive business activities in order to gain competitive advantages. CRM focuses on managing the relationship between a company and its current and prospective customer base as a key to success, while KM recognizes the knowledge available to a company as a major success factor. From a business process manager’s perspective both the CRM and KM approaches promise a positive impact on cost structures and revenue streams in return for the allocation of resources. However, investments in CRM and KM projects are not without risk, as demonstrated by many failed projects. In this paper we show that the benefit of using CRM and KM can be enhanced and the risk of failure reduced by integrating both approaches into a customer knowledge management (CKM) model. In this regard, managing relationships requires managing customer knowledge – knowledge about as well as from and for customers. In CKM, KM plays the role of a service provider, managing the four knowledge aspects: content, competence, collaboration and composition. Our findings are based on a literature analysis and six years of action research, supplemented by case studies and surveys.

The majority of financial services companies in Germany and Switzerland have, with varying objectives and success, conducted customer relationship management (CRM) implementation projects. In this paper we present a framework for the analysis of CRM approaches in financial services companies. Building on previous research and using comprehensive literature research, we develop a CRM reference architecture that focuses on the process and system level for the description and classification of CRM approaches in companies. Moreover, we analyze three CRM case studies in Swiss and German financial services companies and derive different types of CRM approaches in the financial services industry: Customer Satisfaction Management, Customer Contact Management, and Customer Profitability Management. We describe each type in accordance with the CRM architecture and a case example.

The success of a virtual community depends chiefly on the community members' utilization of the community system that supports it. It is therefore essential that the functions of the system meet the members' requirements. The objective of this paper is to identify usage patterns in virtual community systems focused on learning and knowledge exchange in order to derive recommendations for the design of virtual community systems. We therefore analyze two specific professionally-oriented virtual communities focusing on learning and knowledge exchange by indepth case studies.The first one is a learning network consisting of participants of a post-graduate study program. The second one is an expert network consisting of academic researchers and employees of several major European financial services companies. For each of these two communities, we describe the community's initial situation, its special characteristics, its objectives, its members and different application areas regarding a supporting community system. Thereafter, we identify the requirements that the community system needs to fulfill to satisfy the members' needs. Based on these requirements, the different functions of the system that should meet these requirements, are presented. For each community, we measured the utilization of the functions implemented in the community systems using a web log analysis tool.Reflecting the measurement results on the case descriptions and the members' requirements, we drew conclusions on how members use a virtual community system: Most importantly, functions that support structured user processes with clear user requirements are preferably used. Moreover, personal information on community members is frequently viewed. On the other hand, most synchronous and asynchronous communi-cation functions are rarely used and community users make few own contributions to discussions. Finally, functions that implement potentially redundant functions, for example group calendars or link collections, are rarely used.

Purpose-The aim of this paper is to identify key issues and successful patterns of collaborative customer relationship management (CRM) in financial services networks. Design/methodology/approach-The study takes the form of a multi-case analysis. Findings-The paper finds that key issues of CRM in financial services networks are redundant competencies of partnering companies, privacy constraints, CRM process integration, customer information exchange, and CRM systems integration. To address these issues, partnering companies have to agree on clear responsibilities in collaborative processes. Data privacy protection laws require that customer data transfer between partnering companies has the explicit approval of customers. For process integration, companies have to agree on process standards and a joint integration architecture. Web services and internet-based standards can be used for inter-organizational systems integration. Data integration requires the development of a joint data model. Either a unique customer identification number or a matching algorithm must be used to consolidate customer data records of partnering companies. Research limitations/implications-Because of the limited number of case studies, generalizability is limited. The findings can serve as a starting point for researchers seeking to further explore the topic with quantitative methods. Practical implications-The findings can be used by financial services networks to improve their collaborative CRM approaches. Originality/value-The importance of collaborative CRM in business networks is likely to increase due to the continuing deconstruction of value chains not only in the financial services industry, but in other industries as well. Nevertheless, the topic has not received much attention in research.

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In this article, we analyze the design factors of community systems in two real-world professional communities — a learning network and an expert network — that employ a mix of communication modes, that is, face-to-face communication and computer-mediated communication. Our objectives are to determine which design factors influence community activity and therefore community output. We furthermore intend to make recommendations to improve the design of community systems that support professional communities using a mix of communication modes. Our study is exploratory and based on action research given the lack of studies on the design of community-supporting systems in professional communities that employ a mix of communication modes. To illustrate similarities and to enhance the generalizability of our findings, we analyzed two real-world professional communities in-depth, namely, a learning network and an interorganizational expert network. Our study shows that face-to-face communication is the primary mode of communication in these communities; the community systems that they employ only have a supporting function. This leads us to a few design guidelines for the systems that support such communities. Generally, community systems have to support professional communities’ work processes and relationship development. Important functions for work-process support are those that support face-to-face meetings (for the preparation and wrap-up of meetings) and that explicitly support specific work processes. Important functions for relationship development are functions that enable or facilitate face-to-face meetings, for example, member profiles