E-Collaboration Within the Dispersed Sales Force Training Process of Multinational Pharmaceutical Companies

In this paper the authors propose an ICT architecture for the support of collaborative tasks within a dispersed sales force training process in multinational pharmaceutical companies. Four areas of collaboration are identified through case studies. Each of these areas comprises a certain number of collaborative tasks. The equivocality and complexity of these tasks have to be taken into account when considering ICT support. The authors used a task-media-fit-matrix to decide on and justify usage of certain information and communication technologies for the support of collaborative tasks. The task-media-fitmatrix, in our opinion, can help both practitioners and researchers in either justifying investments in e-collaboration tools or evaluating ICT architectures in the field of ecollaboration.