Distilling the Potential Added-Value of New Information and Communication Technologies: Case of Mobile Technologies for the Sales Force

Identifying the potential added value of information and communication technologies before implementation and rollout is important to the new technology acceptance and usage. This becomes even critical when it comes to the sales force. Studies showed than more than 60% of sales force automation (SFA) technologies fail. A common failure factor is the perceived lack of value of SFA by the sales force. Consequently firms face the challenge of identifying prior implementation how the new technology could provide a value-adding support to their sales force; especially when the technology in question is an emerging one such as mobile technology. The aim of this paper is to identify, how mobile information and communication technologies (M-ICT) have the potential to provide a value adding support to the sales force of a pharmaceutical company; before those technologies got actually implemented.