SALES FORCE AUTOMATION USE AND
SALESPERSON PERFORMANCE
by
MURAT SERDAROGLU
DISSERTATION
submitted to the Faculty of Business Administration and
Economics of
University of Paderborn
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Ph.D. of Management (Dr. rer. pol.)
June 2009
Sales Force Automation Use and
Salesperson Performance
Murat Serdaroglu
Abstract
Understanding how technology investments create business value is a
research priority in today's technology-intensive world. Drawing on a
literature review as well as a qualitative study in the pharmaceutical
industry, this research suggests that sales technology can support both:
externally focused tasks towards managing customer relationships and
internal administrative tasks. Building on this distinction, our quantitative
analysis reveals that sales technology impacts salesperson performance
directly when used as a customer relationship tool. In contrast, it has a
perfectly mediated impact when used for internal coordination purposes. To
unleash its real potential, sales technology should be designed to enable
customer relationships rather than being perceived as a cost cutting tool. In
addition, the motivational structure for using sales technology differs
between two SFA-use dimensions. While the customer relationship
dimension is driven by factors that trigger voluntary usage, the internal
coordination dimension is predominantly explained by factors imposed from
outside. Management should not impose technology usage. Rather, they
should support self-initiating factors that stimulate technology usage for
improving customer relationships. Combining upstream research focusing
on the drivers of SFA-usage with downstream research shedding light on its
performance impact, the study offers important implications for maximizing
the pay-back from SFA-technology investments.
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