The Use of the Internet in the Personal Sales Function for Building Materials B2B Firms: Adding Value with Technology

This paper seeks to explore the potential of the internet for adding value to members of a highly standardised and largely commodity priced industry. The focus is on the largely interpersonal area of personal sales to give an understanding of the need to look at processes underlying functions to get an appropriate evaluation of the potential benefits derived from the use of such technology. Beyond this, the paper deals with the analysis required to evaluate the potential impact of the adoption of technology based systems by such organisations to illustrate the complexity involved in such adoption. There are conclusions which can be drawn from this analysis for the vendors of such systems.