Burswood, ECU win CRM study grant

A research collaboration between Edith Cowan University and Burswood International Resort Casino has been rewarded with a $500,000 grant by the Australian Research Council.

The two organisations have been working together for the past three years and were successful in the recent round of ARC grants for a formal research study on customer relationship management business applications.

According to ECU researcher Peter Love, the study aims to model the impact of customer relationship management business applications and develop strategies that strengthen the benefits to service sector customers.

“The research is significant, not only because of the value of the research in dollar terms, but also because customer relationship management is a major focus of information technology expenditure and has an underlying focus on improved customer service,” Professor Love said.

“This is something that is obviously significant for most organisations but particularly for the service industry that potentially has a long-term relationship with the customer.”

Professor Love said when the research was completed, at the end of 2007, the outcome should prove beneficial for a broad number of businesses.

“The research will result in a model for customer relationship management implementation that will hopefully be used by both practitioners and academics,” he said.

Burswood chief information officer Gordon Dunbar said the organisation was increasingly looking at implementing programs that delivered outcomes to exceed customer expectations.

He said Burswood had been working with ECU researchers for the past three years and welcomed the formal study.

“The success of the ARC grant is a natural progression in the relationship that has been developing between ECU and Burswood over the past three years,” he said.

Mr Dunbar said Burswood was currently implementing a ‘customer first’ strategy, programs aimed at enhancing its services to customers.

“By combining ECU’s leading edge academic research with Burswood’s commercial imperatives, we will accelerate our progress while ensuring that lessons learnt will assist in fine tuning the delivery of all our customer first initiatives,” he said.

Professor Love said customer relationship management crossed several areas of business including marketing and information technology and by studying the impact of business applications better outcomes could be derived.

“Basically customers benefit through the organisation understanding their needs and wants and catering for them in a proactive way,” he said.