Success and Failure: Two Longitudinal Case Studies on Media-Tablet Usage in CRM

Media-tablets are gaining widespread acceptance in companies and are increasingly being used for various business tasks. However, although there are several successful examples, a growing number of media-tablet projects get turned down. Based on case study data covering one year, this paper presents two projects that introduced a front office customer-relationship-management application for media-tablets. For each case, we conducted expert interviews in 2011 and 2012 with both the project manager and internal client of the project, documented the existing solution, and conducted a user survey. Over the time frame, the two projects evolved differently in terms of success. While one project was further advanced, the other had in fact been turned-down completely by management. A comparison of the cases reveals that the successful project was funded by an operating department, and the advantages of the solution had been communicated to all internal stakeholders. In contrast, the other project was driven primarily by user demand for media-tablets and was executed as an innovation project without a clear business rational. Therefore, we advise managers to ensure that media-tablet projects follow a well-defined business logic and to communicate the advantages to all relevant internal stakeholders.