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 Our Readers
Say…
Members of AQP were recently surveyed to determine
if their organizations had an official process for
managing intercompany communications with customers
or suppliers. Despite the fact that it’s
clearly essential for customers and suppliers to
exchange information regularly and to ensure that the
right people in their organizations obtain the right
information at the right time, only 42% of the
respondents’ organizations had a system in
place to make sure this happens systematically.
Details and other information from the survey appears
below.
Is communication between your organization and its
customers and suppliers managed by a formal process
or left to informal practices? This question formed
the basis for this issue’s AQP member
survey.
Management of Intercompany
Communications
Three specific communication aspects were
addressed in the initial survey questions, as shown
below:
- Does your organization have an official process
for managing intercompany communications with
customers and suppliers?
- If it does, does the process cover e-mail
messages, too?
- Does your organization have an official policy/
process regarding archival of intercompany
communications that are sent to or received from
customers or suppliers?
The following table recaps the data for these
questions.
| Category |
Percent of
Respondents |
| Official communication process
exists |
42% |
| Process covers e-mail
messages |
38% |
| Archival policy/process
exists |
40% |
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53 Respondents
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It’s interesting to note that only 26% of
the members’ organizations had both
communications management and archival processes.
Additionally, 13% of the organizations had archival
processes without having communications management
processes.
Distribution and Understanding of Customer
and Supplier Information
The next two questions asked, “How does your
organization ensure that information received from
customers/suppliers is distributed to and understood
by all appropriate employees?” We looked at the
responses to these questions in two ways: the nature
of the process used and who was responsible for
applying the process.
Almost one-third of the survey respondents (32%)
reported that their organizations had comprehensive
communication systems that involved databases, focus
groups, surveys, and other more formal processes that
included planned distribution lists and
documentation. Phone- and e-mail-based processes were
used for 23% of customer communications. Only 17% of
the members reported that their organizations did not
have a process. Regardless of the process used,
recipients were most frequently responsible for
transactions. Management, marketing, and
administrative personnel also were mentioned having
responsibility for distributing customer
communications.
In the case of supplier communications, 22% of the
participants commented that no formal processes
existed for these communication areas, which tied
with the 22% who mentioned that their processes
relied on telephone and e-mail distribution.
Approximately 20% of the members described more
comprehensive systems. Once again, recipients were
most frequently responsible for transactions.
Purchasing, supplier management, managers of other
departments, quality systems personnel, and
administrative personnel also were mentioned.
Clearly, organizations are more likely to invest time
and effort into developing formal processes for
customer communications than they are for supplier
communications.
Significant Issues
Our final question addressed members’
perceptions of intercompany communications issues
with customers and suppliers. Figure 1 shows the top
80% of the categories mentioned.
Figure 1
The most commonly reported issues involved
performance problems with the currently defined
approach. These ranged from the process not being
fully developed to it not being applied routinely in
all appropriate circumstances. All the common issues
with process development and management were
mentioned: poor documentation, ineffective
measurement, lack of management/leadership support,
conflicting priorities, poor integration with other
processes, etc.
The next two most commonly described concerns were
related to the timeliness with which communications
were disseminated and the people to whom they were
distributed. Getting the “right”
information into the hands of the “right”
people at the “right” time is definitely
a challenge for most organizations. This difficulty
is exacerbated by the sheer volume of communications
between customers and suppliers; organizations must
decide whether screening communications and limiting
distribution based on the nature of them improves
focus or diminishes comprehension.
The problems with process management, timeliness, and
distribution were summed up by one member who stated,
“The fact that some people get useful
information and many others don’t is partly a
result of not having a well-defined process for
communication and partly because there seems to be so
much to communicate.”
Of course, many comments were received regarding
the quality of the actual communications. What can an
organization do if the message isn’t accurate,
clear, or complete? What if a particular message
isn’t delivered consistently to multiple people
in the organization? All of these factors reduce the
likelihood that the recipients will understand the
communication well enough to act on it
appropriately.
Another issue that was mentioned several times
seems worth sharing. It involved the engagement of
the people who receive the messages. As one member
commented, “With so much going on today and
people so overloaded, the most significant issue is
people caring about what is communicated.”
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