Exploring the potentiality of information technology integration within customer relationship management and knowledge management in the postgraduate educational organizations

Abstract

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has emerged in recent years as one ofthe most challenging issues and an outstanding point in the world. There is a minority of HigherEducation Institutions (HEIs) adopting CRM systems as the reviewing literature indicated thatthere is a lack of wide-ranging researches that discussed the association of CRM with theeducational organizations performance. The aim of this paper is to measure the effectiveness ofimplementing CRM systems and technology on the higher education organizations by assessinghow well these systems perform in promoting students’ relations and raising customer satisfactionawareness in order to successfully attract, retain and serve them. For that reason, building asustainable relationship with students is the keystone for acquiring loyal profitable ones. Thestudy relied on the descriptive and analytical approach using both Qualitative and Quantitativemethods to describe the subject in a comprehensive and accurate manner through data collectionand analysis of the CRM impact on Customer satisfaction. This was accomplished by interviewingkey managers from various educational service areas; in addition, survey questionnaires weredistributed to a population of postgraduate students in order to obtain a deeper understanding.Since there is a substantial volume of documents and manual work that constitute quite a lot oflimitations, this requires data integration into a system which can be accessed at any given time.The findings seem to provide a remarkable contribution to the development of the postgraduateeducational services. Meanwhile, CRM remains a discussed phenomenon, the collected data helpreaching better familiarity with the topic. Regarding a successful implementation of a CRMstrategy, unlimited benefits to the HEIs are supposed to be gained. Such EIs can realize increasingrevenue through better market segmentation, customizing and providing high quality services,accessing information in order to achieve scholars’ satisfaction, and above all, ensuring long-lasting students’-retention and loyalty.