JJMIE Volume 9 Number 1, February.2015 ISSN 1995-6665 Pages 67 - 74 Jordan Journal of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Perception of Sales Managers, Sales Persons and Customers towards Sales Force Automation Technology in Palestine Yahya Saleh a * , Mohammad Omar b a Industrial Engineering Department, An-Najah National University, P.O. Box 7, Nablus, Palestine b Ultimate Company for ERP Solutions, Ramallah, Palestine Received 27 Sept 2014 Accepted 23 Feb 2015 Abstract In line with the global markets’ current trend, the Palestinian market has recently witnessed consecutive implementations of different sales technologies by leading firms in different industries; one of these technologies is the Sales Force Automation (SFA) technology. However, although the adoption and use of sales technologies have been attractive topics for IT literature over the last two decades, the Palestinian empirical research remains silent in this regard, leaving the outcomes of implementing and using the SFA technology in the Palestinian market unveiled yet. Accordingly, this study unfolds the outcomes of SFA usage and uncovers whether this technology tells a success- or a failure-story among the Palestinian firms employing it. Based on literature review and a case study of SFA implementation by one of the leading Palestinian firms, a group of expected outcomes was hypothesized to measure the realization of the SFA technology benefits from three perspectives: sales managers, salespersons, and customers. The results show that using SFA technology in the Palestinian commercial firms has achieved all of its expected outcomes as indicated by responses of sales managers, salespersons, and related customers who were totally appreciating this technology and its key benefits. © 2015 Jordan Journal of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. All rights reserved Keywords: Sales Force Automation Technology, SFA Benefits, SFA Evaluation, Sales Management, Commercial Firms. * Corresponding author. e-mail: ysaleh@najah.edu. 1. Introduction In today’s world, so intense markets’ competition sales managers are confronting unsurpassed pressures to maintain effective selling strategies [1; 2], enforcing an additional burden on sales forces to create a competitive advantage [3]. Consequently, most firms, in every industry, are closely observing the area of Information Technology (IT) and rushing to invest significant resources in Sales Force Automation (SFA) technology with the goal of improving sales performance and enhancing customer services [4; 5]. In spite of the fact that there is no conclusive definition for SFA technology, it can be regarded as the deployment of technology in the form of computer hardware, software, and telecommunication by sales personnel to automate selling and administration [6]. By definition, SFA technology seems to come up with momentous potentials [7]. Order processing, order tracking, inventory control, customer management, sales performance evaluation [8], and most importantly, speed of information flow and sharing [9] are just a few examples of the business areas an SFA system aims to improve by means of automation. In accordance with the current global market trend, the Palestinian market has recently witnessed consecutive implementations of different sales technologies by leading firms in different industries along with the growing number of vendors who offer specialized implementation and support services on SFA and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technologies. Interestingly, mobile solutions, GSM wireless technology, and centralized databases have been employed with SFA systems to support the business nature of hosting firms, which clearly indicates that SFA local projects are not basic or simple, but rather, they embody an advanced model of latest technologies. The empirical study, however, has provided no ample scholarly evidence on the benefits gained from using SFA technology [10]; one of the noticeable findings is that a successful utilization of SFA technology is viewed as rather a sophisticated and unguaranteed task; it entails an additional in-depth examination of the conditions and circumstances in which the use of this technology produces satisfying results [2; 8; 11-14]. Some recent evidence went beyond this notion, Buehrer et al. [12] report that more than 50% of SFA adoption projects turned to be unsuccessful by leaving no positive impact on the firm’s sales. On the other hand, some studies empirically document favorable links between SFA systems and sales staff productivity (for example, see [15-17]; others testify on the SFA benefits [18; 19], and anecdotally, some believe that SFA is a nowadays-survival tool [9; 20-24]). However, other studies [25-30] believe that judgment on SFA benefits has not been completed yet, and the current empirical research is still lacking ample evidence.