Other Areas Impacted by Customer Management

Introduction

In a globalized commercial world such as the current one, markets are dynamic and changing, and the customer lies at the beginning and end of the value chain. One of the greatest values that entrepreneurship provides in an environment like this is the ability of entrepreneurs to take advantage of opportunities and discover new ways to meet customer expectations, and thereby transform the world in general and the market in general particular, all due to the unstoppable process of digital transformation. One of the consequences of globalization is the greater ability of customers to access both information and the acquisition of products and services offered even beyond the borders of countries. This means that the needs, desires, and expectations of customers are changing and increasingly demanding, with which the market has become so dynamic that only companies that manage to adapt to said dynamism survive. And for this it is necessary to invest in innovation and development, and to have an entrepreneurial spirit that is open to discovering and taking advantage of new opportunities and ways of satisfying those needs, desires and expectations. Entrepreneurship thus becomes one of the engines of change and transformation of society, which justifies the growing research interest in this area.

The area of entrepreneurship is being the center of study for various researchers from different perspectives due to its important role as an engine of economic and social development, reaching the point of being able to affirm that the entrepreneur is the single most important player in a modern economy. It was not too long ago that the field of entrepreneurship was considered little more than an applied trade as opposed to an academic area of study and there was no research to be accomplished because it was thought that those who could not attend college would simply "practice" the concept of new business start-up. The role of entrepreneurship in society has changed drastically in the last quarter century, to the point that, in recent years, entrepreneurship has been viewed as the engine of economic and social development due to the power it has developed to provide a better quality of life to society. society through its impetus and its transformative potential. Entrepreneurs are those who work on transformative environments, discover or identify opportunities, or create and exploit them to add value to society. Entrepreneurship is nowadays regarded as the study of the processes of identifying, evaluating, developing and exploiting opportunities, as well as of the resources and conditioners that influence these processes, as part of one of the most powerful tools that business has for bringing better customer experiences.

Nowadays, the customer is also considered the engine of business success. In such a world, companies must have the right tools to collect the necessary management information so that they can meet the needs and expectations of customers and thereby mold their productive, logistic, and commercial efforts to match these needs and expectations. This makes the development of entrepreneurial businesses especially difficult, which is why it is shown that all those tools and technological solutions that can have a high impact on customer management and entrepreneurial marketing are key, an area in which Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM) has proven to have a special impact.

In the current business environment, and especially evident in its entrepreneurial part, where the client appears as the key and determining figure for any decision making, it is essential to evaluate the impact that any strategy and tool may have on the management of the client's knowledge available to the company, in order to be able to adapt its commercial and marketing actions towards the most efficient and appropriate target. Marketing (understood as the management of commercial relationships with customers within the market), and more specifically entrepreneurial marketing (as a powerful association of marketing tools and the innovative and transforming power of entrepreneurship) is therefore one of the great forces that promote the economic development of society. Along these lines, CRM has emerged in recent decades as the most widely disseminated strategy and management tool in terms of a tool designed and focused on managing the powerful marketing strategies through the management of the relationships with customers, and consistently and efficiently managing information and actions aimed at the clients, which is especially important in the field of entrepreneurship. This study tries precisely to analyze the previous and relevant studies that unify these important aspects of business management: the management of customer relationships, and marketing as a strategy for reaching customers, specifically in the field of entrepreneurship. The ultimate objective is to identify the dimensions that other previous studies have highlighted as more relevant and with the greatest impact in these fields of business management, to draw conclusions from the results obtained, and to propose future lines of research consistent with the results obtained.

For most entrepreneurial marketers, marketing is a social, personal activity and not only an organizational function. Marketing to achieve growth is what many entrepreneurs are passionate about. Marketing from the perspective of an entrepreneur is not just one of the functions of the business that must be carried out such as accounting, finance, or HRM; but is often considered by entrepreneurs as the core function of the firm. Regarding marketing area impactful tools, Customer relationship management (CRM) is one of the leading business strategies and business management tools), and it has been shown to be crucial in developing sales, marketing, and production planning strategies. This key role of CRM is a consequence of the customer-related information that can be obtained from all CRM sources of value, in the sense of providing the overall efforts of companies with the appropriate sense of customer service and customer needs. CRM refers to both a customer relationship management philosophy and the technological solutions or methodologies required for its implementation because each tool and each level of implementation of CRM is a true reflection of the CRM philosophy or strategy itself. Value chain management, together with the resulting strategy for producing goods and providing services, thus becomes meaningful and effective when it is based on the knowledge of the vital business reality of customers. This feature is one of the most highly valued characteristics of CRM's action points.

Menguzzato and Renau established the principles that should be followed by business decision makers of successful firms that seek to achieve high levels of business performance and endure over time as model companies and shining examples of business success. In this sense, the presence and relevance of entrepreneurial marketing as part of business success is crucial to the study of any business management methodology. Therefore, any tool such as CRM, which supports the collection of customer management information and its use in planning strategies, is essential in management.

Hills et al. points out that entrepreneurs are characterized by creating and exploiting turbulent markets, something that other economic actors tend not to do. Economic theory suggests that entrepreneurs are seen as creating imbalances by introducing innovations to drive markets or as firms that attempt to move economies away from equilibrium by exploiting previously unidentified opportunities. The use of knowledge management and innovation, empowered by the use of CRM technologocal solutions, to create entrepreneurial rent has important implications for marketing. In this way, entrepreneurial marketing proves not to be the direct consequence of specific managerial decisions but more the outcome of entrepreneurial processes and culture. The aim of studying the reality of CRM through scientific research in the areas of business, sociology, and technology is to effectively demonstrate that CRM is one of the most powerful business tools for managing sales, entrepreneurial marketing, and services.

In this paper, and during the following sections, the impact of CRM on entrepreneurial marketing will be studied. First, a Literature Review section is presented in which what has been ascertained from previous studies on the relationship between CRM and marketing in general is referenced, particularizing on the entrepreneurial aspect of business marketing. In the following sections, the methodology followed in the study is explained, as well as the results obtained and the conclusions derived from this scientific study.