5 DISCUSSION
example, salespeople tend to have explorative tasks in the pre-project and operations phases, where new opportunities are sought, constructive tasks in the sales phase, where the offer needs to be created for customers and supportive tasks in the project implementation phase, where the focus is on finishing the project according to the contract. This cyclical nature of tasks is especially demonstrated in Article II, for which collaboration across interfaces was studied along with project lifecycle phases.
Similarly, the tasks of project managers/the project management function and service people/function circle around these types during the project lifecycle phases.
In addition to internal actors, external customer-facing actors were studied in this dissertation. Specifically, Article III discussed the role of agents, consultants, technology subcontractors and designers and the management of their relationships at the front end of projects. Additionally, agency relationships in the implementation (actors as subcontractors, suppliers and consultants) and operations (actors as local maintenance partners, parts suppliers, logistic service providers and external service suppliers) phases were discussed. To complement this article, Article IV studied agent involvement in solution marketing more specifically.
This dissertation challenges the previous view of project marketing as a process managed mainly by the solution providers themselves. In this study, it was revealed that different external actors or agents can assume project marketing responsibilities in addition to internal marketing forces. Conceptual (Article III) and empirical (Article IV) studies revealed a variety of different actors that may participate in projects and project marketing. Agents or other intermediaries in project marketing are, to some extent, referred to in previous project marketing-related research (Aarikka-Stenroos et al., 2018; Blomquist & Wilson, 2007; Cova et al., 2002; Möller
& Rajala, 1999), but the discussion has been incomplete regarding how these external actors participate in solution providers’ project marketing activities during the process (with the exception of Momeni et al. (2019a) regarding distributors).
Especially in Article IV, the results revealed that agents participate in the project marketing process in various ways: not at all, as a connector, as a consultant or as a value-adding partner.
The relational view of project marketing (Cova et al., 2002) stresses the importance of identifying local actors in a specific milieu and building relationships with them to secure valuable project deliveries to customers (Ahola et al., 2013;
Haimala, 2008; Skaates & Tikkanen, 2003). This dissertation complements these previous studies, especially regarding external actors’ involvement between solution providers and customers at the front end of projects. Customer-facing external actors, however, do not often replace the solution providers’ internal actors in the
marketing process, but their role can be seen as complementing it. Participation in the marketing process can also be seen as affected by, from the agency theory perspective in Article III, actor goals, information asymmetry and risks shared between the actors. In addition, participation seems to vary depending on the capabilities of the agent and the length and nature of the relationship between the solution provider and the agent, as discussed in Article IV. The findings suggest that agent participation in solution providers’ businesses needs to be assessed both on a strategic level and for each project separately.
Using different intermediaries in the marketing and sales work (such as agents, sales representatives, dealers and distributors) of firms has been acknowledged in previous research, especially on sales channels (Gabrielsson et al., 2002; Gu et al., 2019; Parvinen & Pöyry, 2018). However, previous research has concentrated more on simple product and service businesses where the use of intermediaries is commonplace. Research on the use of intermediaries between customers and solution providers in the context of complex solution businesses has not received as much attention. This might be due to the assumption that the more complex the asset, the more likely and preferable it is to use the company’s own sales force rather than outsource sales (Jobber & Lancaster, 2009; Peng & York, 2001). The results of this dissertation reveal that this type of intermediary seems to play a role in the complex solution marketing context. The results contribute to the discussion on the changing roles of intermediaries (Bergestuen et al., 2022; Gadde, 2014; Gu et al., 2019; Olsson et al., 2013) by revealing how different agents can be used when selling complex solutions.
5.2 Managing internal and external actor integration in project marketing
The second research question dealt with the organisational integration of the firm and asked: How do solution providers integrate with customer-facing actors in their project marketing processes? As the customer-facing actors and the practices for how they participate in the solution providers’ project marketing processes are recognised, attention turns to how this participation could be managed from the solution providers’ point of view. The following chapters discuss participation from the points of view of information processing and organisational integration.
Regarding internal integration, Articles I and II represent the main sources of novel findings. Article II discussed cross-functional integration across sales, project
operations and services interfaces, therefore contributing to the internal integration discussion in project marketing. Article I took the perspective of institutional logic and how it conditions sales practices and how salespeople are integrated with each other. Connections between the integration mechanisms, both in discussion and practice, were identified in Article I to cope with different institutional logic employed in sales work; thus, Article I can be seen as contributing to the integration discussion as well.
In general, the results indicate that cross-functional integration is necessary in project marketing to take advantage of a firm’s expertise. As Article II showed, internal integration is needed across functions (i.e. between sales, project operations and service). Previous studies have concentrated on an interface, for example, between sales and project operations (Turkulainen et al., 2013) or project operations and service (Artto et al., 2015; Momeni & Martinsuo, 2019b). At the functional level, integration happens through various mechanisms (meetings, IT systems, processes and rules) depending on the project lifecycle phase and with whom (i.e. functional interface) the integration occurs (Adler, 1995; Artto et al., 2015; Cooper & Budd, 2007; Momeni, 2019; Turkulainen et al., 2013). Article I concentrated on integration across three interfaces (instead of just one) between sales, project operations and service. The results offered a more nuanced setting for understanding integration across various interfaces during the project lifecycle than previous research has managed to offer so far. The results imply that customer information management is not a concern for just one interface; rather, transferring it requires integration across several functions. For project marketing, the results contribute to understanding a constructivistic logic (Cova & Hoskins, 1997) of offering solutions and how internal functions can be connected and customer information shared during the process.
For the project marketing discussion (Cova et al., 2002, 2019), this dissertation argues that internal integration in project marketing is a dynamic phenomenon in which multiple practices can be used. The utilised practices are conditioned not only by the nature of project business (such as high task uncertainty and ambiguity) (Artto et al., 2015; Turkulainen et al., 2013) but also by the relevant institutional logic employed in the organisational environment. Cova et al. (2019), in their study of interpersonal practices in project marketing, came to a similar conclusion on how the institutional macro-environment conditions practices at the micro level. This dissertation complements this study by showing how the institutional microenvironment (i.e. employed business logic in a firm) also conditions the practices at the levels of salespeople and sales organisations. Based on the message
of the first two articles, integration needs to be seen as a multilevel phenomenon that happens at the organisational, functional and individual levels. The practices are not isolated but interact with each other and dynamically change throughout the project lifecycle.
Based on the results of this dissertation, the sales function and salespeople tend to play a core role in integration in project marketing. This means that salespeople require integrative capabilities in project marketing and across the business logics of solution providers, as they often span boundaries inside and outside the firm. This was shown in Article II, but also in Article I, where salespeople were the key focus of the study. Salespeople often face customers first and collect information about them that needs to be shared with the relevant actors in the firm (across units) but also inside the sales function (other salespeople). Article I studied how competing institutional logics (Edvardsson et al., 2014; Pache & Santos, 2013), namely equipment and project sales logics, condition the practices for how the sales of both offerings are managed. Different practices, such as division of the sales function or joint meetings, can either bring people closer or further from each other (or in Article I, use different bridging or segmenting practices respectively) or the goal could be to sustain the current state by implementing different demarcating practices. To put together the findings of Article I and II, it appears that salespeople are rather independent in their work and employ both dynamic formal (e.g. use of IT systems, meetings, processes) and more informal (e.g. informal discussions and meetings) practices when collaborating with each other and across units.
As project marketing extends across the borders of a focal firm, integration must also be managed with external actors. Regarding external integration, Articles III and IV provided several insights into how different agents can be integrated in the project marketing activities of a firm. Article III focused on relationships and how they could be managed from the agency theory perspective, whereas Article IV discussed the various ways agents can be involved in solution providers’ project marketing processes.
The obtained results indicate that external integration with customer-facing actors should be managed as a portfolio of relationships. In our articles, the various agent relationships were categorised based on temporal orientation and goal congruence into routine, volatile, trustful and strategic relationships in Article III. In Article IV, the categorisation of agents was based on the responsibilities of the agent in solution marketing and the degree of involvement in the process and resulted in no agent involvement, agent as a connector, agent as a consultant and agent as a value-adding partner categories. Gossling et al. (2015) studied supplier integration in a construction
project context, dividing suppliers into strategic partners, preferred suppliers and approved suppliers. The categorisation presented in this dissertation contributes to the management of external integration with customer-facing actors in project marketing by revealing the richness of these relationships and that integration is to be managed on a case-by-case basis.
In comparison to, for example, the supplier integration context, integration with the sales agents in complex solution sales is characterised by uncertainty in the market and, eventually, in the tasks and goals to be achieved. This might result in opportunism by the agent (Müller & Turner, 2005) as they may work on a commission basis and aim to serve solution providers whose solutions can be more easily sold to customers. Moreover, complex solution sales often require technological expertise from the agent; therefore, emphasis on integration is likely to result in training, development and motivation-oriented practices.
Previous studies on external integration in project businesses highlight both control (e.g. performance monitoring, formal agreements, goal-setting) and cooperation (e.g. personal contacts, co-location, early actor involvement)-oriented mechanisms to integrate with external actors such as subcontractors, suppliers or service providers (Aagaard et al., 2015; Ahola et al., 2017; Crespin-Mazet & Ghauri, 2007; Gosling et al., 2015; Martinsuo & Ahola, 2010; Xu et al., 2021). In Article III, goal alignment, contracts, information sharing and risk management are highlighted in the relationships with various agents mainly due to the agency theoretical lens. In Article IV, other aspects, such as trust, task sharing and commitment to long-term relationships, are underlined when collaborating with agents. Therefore, the results of this dissertation contribute to the external integration discussion by increasing the understanding of integration with agents at the front end phase of project marketing (Jalkala et al., 2010; Momeni & Martinsuo, 2019a).
Finally, as in the case of internal integration, external integration is likely to differ in various phases of project marketing. In the empirical context studied in Article III, information sharing between PBFs and agents seemed to be more open and richer in the front end and operations phases, whereas in the project implementation phase, information sharing was more operational in nature. For project marketing and integration across the actors, this indicates that integration mechanisms promoting open communication across actors are preferred in the front end and operations phases. In the implementation phase, actors may concentrate on efficient mechanisms for sharing information to complete the project according to specifications. Similarly, in Article IV, agent involvement was discovered to change and evolve in different phases of solution marketing. This temporal aspect of
external integration is underlined in the previous external integration discussion as well (Hietajärvi et al., 2017; Martinsuo & Ahola, 2010; Momeni & Martinsuo, 2019a;
Xu et al., 2021); for example, Momeni and Martinsuo (2019a) noted that distributor integration requires strengthening the relationship during discontinuities. This dissertation complements these studies by underlining the dynamics of integration work with external customer-facing actors in project marketing.