A new study has found that many business decision-makers still feel their firms are failing to fully make the most of the customer relationship management (CRM) programs they have initiated.

In the new study of more than 100 organisations by PMP Research, commissioned by the Evaluation Centre, 42 per cent of businesses questioned felt that their CRM schemes had only been partially successful in adding value to their companies.

Although 37 per cent of respondents reported seeing some benefits from the implementation of new CRM initiatives, just four per cent said those schemes had been 'very successful' - the same figure who actually found that CRM had given no positive effects at all.

Furthermore, problems with CRM systems were also found to be more critical than ever in the success of modern businesses, with a resounding 83 per cent of those surveyed identifying customer relationship strategy as 'slightly' or 'much more' important than it was three years ago.

Despite their misgivings, therefore, many companies are still focusing on using and improving their CRM processes in order to boost customer satisfaction and retention, with more than three-quarters of those polled reporting that they are currently changing or adding to their CRM systems in order to realise more benefits.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were 'guaranteed response times' and 'allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues'