Many industries are going the way of digitalization and the purpose of this paper is to find out how the digitalization affects the sales process in the recruitment industries. The reason behind lays in the lack of research in this field, including digital tools used in sales processes, primary improvements that are achieved by implementing digitalization but also how salespeople accept the new tools. To discover all information needed, two different methods were used, first being quantitative, where the general data and information about the digitalization in sales processes from secondary available sources were collected. Secondly, the qualitative method is used, where the semi-structured interviews five sales professionals of different roles, working in recruitment companies were executed. The interviews were analyzed by using the narrative analysis, as the individual experiences needed to be highlighted. The digitalization in sales processes within recruitment industries is graded between 6 and 7, indicating that there is still room for the improvements as some tasks are still done manually. As an IT companies, they have and use many systems and tools such as Customer Relationship Management (Microsoft Dynamics), JIRA, Outlook, MS Teams, Tableau, Kickscale, Kiwi, DealHub, Marketing Automation, 3CX. All these tools bring certain improvements with its implementation from which the most mentioned were time and resource saving, less manual workload, increased knowledge about the tool and efficiency, better tracking of the process and easier overview of customer documents such as contracts, invoices and more. Findings additionally show that salespeople are very uncertain when it comes to the implementation of the new tools. Usually, two weeks before the tool gets implemented, the management offers the workshops and trainings for salespeople to get used to the new tool but on average, salespeople need between one and six months to adopt the new tool properly. The challenges that occur on the way of implementing the new tool are diverse, starting from choosing the right tool which is capable to integrate into already existing system, budget and time constraints, salespeople mindset and tool optimization. Choosing the right tool must be done carefully, with the requirement analysis because if not, it can lead to a big resource loss of the company but also salespeople time. Additionally, each tool must be optimized and modified according to the company needs; if not, it does not increase digitalization level and efficiency. Even though salespeople are uncertain about the new tools, all this can be handled with enough trainings, support from the colleagues, management, Key Users and the constant work with the tool. The limitations that occurred during this study were smaller sample size, limited geographical area covered and the potential bias of the interview partners. Further research on this topic is necessary due to the limited resources up till now.
Date of Award | 2024 |
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Original language | English |
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Supervisor | Thomas Holzmann (Supervisor) |
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Digitalization of Sales Processes in the Recruitment Industry
Zjajo, A. (Author). 2024
Student thesis: Bachelor's Thesis