Resumen
Sales Funnel Management (SFM) as a part of the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is of great importance in the automotive industry when the companies want to attract new customers and retain the existing ones. Due to the complex and changing business environment customers are becoming more and more demanding and less loyal to their current brands. Existing research has shown that IT/IS play a crucial role throughout the execution of the CRM activities. However, the mere existence of an IS in a company is not enough. The ability and willingness of companies to use these IS in a sufficient manner plays a key role in the success and failure of CRM activities. Therefore, the objective of the article is to show how the role of the IS impacts on the effectiveness of the SFM through conducting a case study analysis in a leading German automotive company. The results show that IS has an important impact on improvements in execution of all phases of SFM and importantly contributes to primary goals and measures of effectiveness of the SFM in the automotive company, which are the increased number of vehicles sold and the lowest possible cost per vehicle sold, as well as higher level of customer satisfaction.