Toward software quality enhancement by Customer Knowledge Management in software companies

Customer Knowledge Management (CKM) plays an important role in the production of high quality software products. As CKM in Enterprise Software (ES) development is still immature, this raises questions on how CKM enablers can be used to help ES development companies improve their software quality. In this study, Human, Organizational and Technological CKM enablers were identified from the literature. The weights of these factors were determined by experts from the ES development companies. Based on the most important factors, a theoretical model was developed. The proposed model was evaluated by distributing a survey questionnaire to decision-makers in ES development companies. The results showed that “Customer Involvement” together with “Trust” were the most influential factors, followed by “CRM Technology Infrastructure” and “Cross-Functional Cooperation”. In addition, there was no impact from “Organizational Training”, “Customer Knowledge Map”, and “CKM Strategy Development”. The results also revealed that the impact of CKM on software quality is significant. The proposed model in this study can be used as a guideline for the successful application of CKM in ES development companies to improve the software quality.