Pssst! Want to know a secret for improving performance?

Reducing operating costs. Introducing new processes. Improving labour productivity. Enhancing customer service. According to a Management Issues Survey conducted by the CME at the end of 2006, these are the most important determinants of future business growth for most Canadian manufacturers. So would it surprise you to know there's actually a solution that can help you achieve these goals?

It's true. Business research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan empirically established that increased high-quality collaboration can improve business performance. According to a global study conducted by the firm1, collaboration can help increase profitability, sales growth, labour productivity, product development, innovation and product quality. Most notably, the measure of performance most improved through collaboration is customer satisfaction.

For manufacturers, these findings represent a real opportunity for competitive advantage. The trick, then, is understanding what types of collaboration solutions deliver the most benefit, for the least cost, to your organization.

Taking a big picture approach

Despite the advantages delivered through collaboration, it is important to keep in mind that collaboration is a corporate strategy that should be approached from a big picture perspective. For manufacturers, this means identifying your immediate pain points before determining how they can be addressed through improved collaboration.

For instance, if your primary focus is on enhancing customer service, you may want to begin by facilitating collaboration with customers. If you are interested in cutting costs from your supply chain, you may prefer to consider ways to collaborate more fully with your suppliers. If you've been trying to assess how to enhance logistics, distributor collaboration may be the place to start.

The point is that you don't have to reengineer your entire company to begin reaping the rewards of improved collaboration.

Admittedly, simply investing in collaboration technology may not be sufficient to deliver all the benefits you seek. Ultimately, collaboration systems are just tools to help you communicate more effectively both within and outside your enterprise. To experience the full advantages of those tools, you'll need to adopt a culture of collaboration - one that fosters communication among your staff, customers, suppliers and beyond.

Although this may take time, the effort is well worth the investment, as we will demonstrate in our next article, where we discuss the cost justification for adopting collaboration technologies.

To learn more about this topic, or share comments or questions, contact David Lukey at Allstream at david.lukey@mtsallstream.com.

¹ Frost & Sullivan, Meetings Around the World: The Impact of Collaboration on Business Performance (Frost & Sullivan Whitepaper, 2006)