Sometimes, firms select easy short-term information technology (IT) solutions over harder, more reliable options because they are looking for a quick fix. However, these easier solutions often skip steps and overlook potential errors. This creates technical debt that eventually needs to be paid back when firms are forced to address these oversights in the long run.

Professors Rajiv Banker and Yi Liang, along with their co-author, found that that technical debt in a firm’s CRM system negatively impacts the firm’s sales performance because technical debt reduces the reliability of CRM systems and hence impairs their ability to serve the customers.