Beyond the corporate walls - strategies for improving external communications

Here's a startling statistic from Dr. Jayson Myers, President of CME as presented during the 2006 Canadian Manufacturers Week: Average manufacturers realized an after-tax profit margin of 1% of sales. That means that, out of every eight-hour production shift, it took seven hours and 54 minutes to cover costs associated with operations, depreciation and taxes. That leaves only six minutes to make money to reinvest in the products, technologies and skills needed to sustain growth.

This sobering statistic makes one thing clear. Canada's manufacturers need new strategies to enhance productivity. And while improved external communications won't eliminate these challenges, they can help manufacturers accelerate many of their processes and resolve problems in the supply chain.

The concept of collaboration

To understand how improved external communications can enhance productivity, consider the issues manufacturers face. To meet evolving customer demands, manufacturers need the ability to gather ongoing customer feedback. To adhere to product quality standards, they need to work with global suppliers to ensure the quality of incoming goods. To properly time delivery, they must be able to communicate with their distribution partners - no matter where they're located.

Each of these scenarios contemplates the ability to collaborate effectively with external partners. According to Evan Rosen, author of The Culture of Collaboration1, effective collaboration is about maximizing time, talent and tools to create value. Rather than each person working independently on a project and then passing it along to the next person, effective collaboration would see every team member come together to work on projects simultaneously.

While this may sound complex, external collaboration strategies can be as simple as sending out a fax or email, participating in a videoconference or receiving automated updates from suppliers. If you take a more formal approach to collaboration, solutions such as customer relationship / supplier relationship management and supply chain integration can provide a more disciplined way to collaborate with trading partners and customers.

The trick, of course, is to find ways to take a disciplined approach to collaboration, rather than implementing a patchwork of disconnected strategies. Only in this way can manufacturers realize the greatest benefits of collaboration - from improved agility, faster time to market and better customer service to improved process efficiency, greater supply chain transparency and enhanced productivity.

Stay tuned for the next instalment in this series from Allstream, where we discuss collaborating with customers. To learn more about this topic, or share comments or questions, contact David Lukey at Allstream at david.lukey@mtsallstream.com.

¹ Evan Rosen, The Culture of Collaboration (Red Ape Publishing, 2006)