Hassan Sherwani ROLE OF SALES AND MARKETING IN ... - Oulu

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Undefined Defined Aligned Integrated
Figure 11: Levels of marketing and sales integration (Kotler et al. 2006)
The functions are clearly defined, each has their specific tasks, and there is exchange of
information and operative communication between the two. Coordination and
collaboration exists, however, there seems to be no blurring of functional boundaries,
interchange of people or responsibilities and the marketing people usually remain distant
to the customers and the sales people have a minor role in devising marketing activities
and materials. Moreover, one unit focusses on its functions and is unaware of what is
happening in other unit. This is a big hindrance for the collaboration but, there is no
serious problem coming out of this situation. The reason is that company is operating at
local level and everyone knows how system would work. Once, there is an international
setting then situation might not remain same. As Oulun Energia as a company is
considering international ventures in near future, it is better for its most important
trading department to adopt a better system to collaborate within the company so that it
can be replicated. Also, as mentioned before, the reward and incentive systems used by
one function are unknown to the other, which might also raise question about the true
alignment of marketing and sales goals. Therefore, the integration level is definitely
neither undefined nor integrated.
Oulun Sähkönmyynti’s marketing and sales functions exhibit some of the characteristics
of alignment and the functions are also defined. Marketing and sales people both plan
and participate in major exhibitions together. Collaboration and joint planning exists on
some level at least, though there seems to be no joint training and the mutual
understanding between the members of each function is hard to estimate. The
interviewees (Sutinen, 2013), speaking from the perspective of the sales function, had a