The current world is witnessing profound developments in the areas of information technology and business strategy.
In the technological area, recent developments have led telecommunication technologies to reach a high level of integration with computing technologies and vice versa. This trend has had a strong impact upon society, promoting, among other things, an enlargement of the conceptual focus of information technologies to embrace the notion of relationship technologies.
Regarding business strategy aspects,
companies are creating a sound and lasting competitive advantage by adopting “relationship” as the word of order.
As a matter of fact, the confluence of changing customer demands, emerging marketing and business theories, and available information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been imposing a shift on the way organizations relate to customers.
The gap between strategic marketing approaches and ICT deployment has been diminished over time, culminating in integrated business approaches that involve both strategic and technological dimensions at the same time.
This chapter focuses on the integration of knowledge management (KM) and customer relationship management (CRM) approaches.