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The decade of the nineties has seen considerable attention devoted to the application of information technology to the sales force. This paper reports on an empirical investigation into the factors that relate to the acquisition and effective use of sales force automation. Several correlates relating to the firm's acquisition of sales force technology were identified. In contrast, relatively few variables appear related to whether or not the organization will realize any actual benefits from such investments. A key determinant appears to be whether the firm anticipates that sales force automation is likely to have an impact on areas of the organization extending beyond the sales force itself. The paper concludes with some implications of the findings of the investigation and some suggestions for future research.
It has been observed that the marketing department is typically the last area of the organization to adopt information technologies (e.g., Goslar 1987; Mitchell and Whelan 1989). Nowhere is this laggardly behavior more evident than in the case of sales force automation (SFA). Although the first pioneers to bring information technology (IT) to the sales force did so in the early 1980's, it is only now that SFA systems appear to be entering the rapid growth stage. With 1996 sales of $1.5 billion (King and Blodgett 1996), expected to grow to $10 billion by the turn of the century (Siebel and Malone 1996), SFA currently represents the fastest growing segment in the computer software business. Unfortunately, the many hundreds of organizations-and marketing departments-currently undertaking these investments must face the prospect of failure; to date, more than 60% of all SFA projects have been unsuccessful (Schafer, 1997).
The primary goal of the research reported in this paper was to identify the factors relating to the adoption and effective use of sales force automation systems among Canadian, mid-sized manufacturers. For purposes of this study, "effective" was defined as a positive return on SFA investment, traceable to improved sales force performance. The manufacturing sector was selected for study on the basis of its importance to the economy and because the typical sales force represents a distinct operating unit in such businesses, thus providing a common basis of comparison across a broad sample. Medium sized firms were targeted based on the observation...