The Next Wave of CRM Innovation: Implications for Research, Teaching, and Practice

Globalization and customers’ ever-changing needs have created a hyper-competitive market. As a result, customer relationship management (CRM) has become a core topic of interest among both practitioners and academics. Further, over the years, with the advancements in the technology landscape, such as digital technologies, CRM has improved in myriad ways. This paper summarizes a panel discussion on CRM innovations held at the 2016 Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS 2016) in Chiyai, Taiwan. The panel discussed CRM fundamentals and how traditional CRM systems work in organizations. Then, the panel focused on the advancement in technology landscape such as big data, analytics, Internet of things, and artificial intelligence and how such technologies have transformed innovations in the CRM landscape. Finally, the panel highlighted the limitations in the current CRM curricula in the universities and how the curriculum today needs to reflect such advancements to enhance the union between the CRM curricula and the industry needs. Further, this paper provides future research ideas for academia and contributes to research interests on CRM in general.