Industrievertrieb versus Flächenbetrieb: Analyse der Vertriebsprozesse zur Optimierung zukunftsorientierter Unternehmensstrukturen

Abstract

The increasing volatility of markets, advancing technical innovations and growing global competitive pressure challenges companies with strategic decisions regarding the alignment of sales organizational structures, and processes. The selection of the appropriate sales process is subject to various influencing factors. In terms of this thesis, a differentiated consideration of these influencing factors is intended to provide an insight into the choice of the appropriate sales system. Therefore, it compares the sales processes of area sales and industry-specific sales and contrasts the strengths and challenges. In terms of content, this thesis relies on three methodological pillars in its approach. The first pillar examines the literature and links both areas with explanations of process management and sales management and identifies the influencing factors which, according to the literature, influence the choice of sales system. The second and third pillars represent the empirical part of this thesis and deal, on the one hand with a case study on the sales processes of Siemens AG Austria, in which the area sales and the industry-specific sales of the company are described, and challenges are identified. On the other hand, it shows the differences of the sales systems/processes by means of GAP analysis to identify further procedural and organizational influencing factors. The data basis for the GAP analysis was enriched in the course of this work by assessments in form of interviews of the heads of industry-specific sales and area sales of Upper Austria, Lower Austria and Salzburg of Siemens AG Austria. During this study, a total of ten influencing factors that affect industry-specific sales and area sales were considered. In addition to the influences of industry dependency, employee training, scalability, process costs, and product and process complexity known from the specialist literature, the influences of process duration, process methodology, process transparency, focus customers, and the area of influence also emerged as relevant impact variables on the sales system. Five of these factors were identified as part of the case study and the GAP analysis – as process-related and organizational influencing factors – and their differences in the way they affect the sales processes were shown.

Date of Award	2025
Original language	German (Austria)
Supervisor	Harald Dobernig (Supervisor)