Secmaker–aR&D--‐focusedITsecuritycompany : Investigatingrisksassociatedwithoutsourcingthesalesfunction

Abstract: The emergence of the personal computer has had huge impact on society. Implications of which have been difficult to foresee. Following the arrival of the Internet, IT security has become an increasingly important aspect of business. If a firm does not take IT security seriously it may cause major financial loss, and reflect poorly on decision makers. To cater to the needs of businesses, and public sector organizations, the IT security industry has grown fast. Following this development, Secmaker has emerged as one of the leading IT security companies in Scandinavia. Secmaker AB was founded in 1994 in Stockholm. Their product NetID is a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) system, which allows information to be exchanged securely in a normally insecure environment, for example the Internet. Today they have grown to a staff of 34, consisting mainly of developers and a handful of sales and   anagement employees. Due the nature of the industry Secmaker has taken the strategic decision to outsource the sales force. Previously when Secmaker’s clients consisted mainly of public sector organizations they have dealt with the sales process themselves. This did not prove to work all the time so when moving into the private sector they decided on using sales partners in order to reach new customers. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and explore the potential risks in outsourcing a sales force. We limited us in investigating the sales process alone. This allowed us to leave the technical aspects of the product to the side, and focus on this phase in which they previously had issues. The method used in this thesis is a qualitative, inductive, case study. We have collected data  performing semi-­‐structured interviews with key figures in the industry both within Secmaker, and independent. Further this primary data will be analyzed with respect to our theoretical, secondary, data we have collected through a comprehensive literature study.