Systems selling

It is fashionable to talk about systems selling. It is not so clear what it means and where it applies. The term originated, in fact, not with the seller but with the buyer. The federal military establishment developed the practice of buying major weapons and communications packages through a single prime contractor. Instead of buying individual items for a battleship, such as the ship's shell, the artillery, the electronic submarine sighting equipment, and the telecommunications devices, it bought them as a single package from a single company, even though no single company produced all the components. Package contracts were awarded to companies with the capability to design, engineer, build, assemble  and service the complete package. The package was the system, and prime contractors were compelled to bid on the system as a whole, getting in turn their own subsystem phrase, although in practice it was antedated by general contractors in a vast variety of fields from building dams to constructing oil refineries.

The growing complexity of products that have elaborate inter industry characteristics has made system buying an increasing necessity. Computers must be tied into communications networks, and warehouses tied into computers and transportation networks. The combination of competences, resources, and equipment needed to make a single piece of industrial equipment or to organize a totally efficient activity requires the elaborate coordination of a constantly expanding network of varied coming itself, but marketing plays a central role.