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Why don't we talk anymore?
Analysis: How to improve inter-departmental communication

By Stewart Baines

Published: Tuesday 06 March 2007

Sometimes it's hard enough to get small teams working together. How can you encourage communication across a company's business units? Stewart Baines offers some advice.

The CRM revolution made it clear that companies must continually strive to improve their communication and relationship with their customers. But without equal attention being paid to interdepartmental communication, it will ultimately be impossible for companies to present a united front to their customers.

Even with small and medium-sized enteprises (SMEs), which you might think have an easier time communicating than large corporations, the problem lies in departments with conflicting motivations and targets, incompatible processes and individuals feeling that they can't change things. Throw in some business process outsourcing, a general unwillingness to carry the can and changing business practices - and you have a recipe for the unconnected enterprise.

Impact of changing business practices

Changing business practices have a major impact on the ability of a company to function in a unified way. Colin Smith, director of corporate communications at Webex, a developer of web-based collaboration tools, says: "The days of the big vertically integrated company is over. So many companies now outsource, or have departments spread all over the world."

Offshoring, teleworking, disintermediation, diversification and rapid expansion have left those inside the original entity confused about their ever-changing roles.

People working on a single project may include a rep from a supplier, an outside contractor, a marketing consultant, a regional account director and a logistics provider. All need to work together as a unified team, sharing information and documentation over sometimes vast geographical distances and different time zones.

Technology is helping lubricate the working processes of these virtual teams. Some examples are remote access, wi-fi, videoconferencing, web conferencing, Skype audio conferencing and presence management. Even the revisions function of word-processing applications can help the collaborative process.

There are many useful collaborative functions appearing in standard applications. But they cannot overcome longstanding cultural divides on their own, or make the unmotivated motivated. Webex's Smith says: "Too many people are relying on email for document management, for instance. It really wasn't designed for it. For some companies their business practices are moving so quickly and their tools aren't keeping pace."

Conflicting objectives

Rebecca Clayton, marketing director of the Experian offshoot QAS, which provides data integrity services such as address verification, says: "We talk to thousands of companies a year and come across many communications challenges between departments. It's usually because they have so many conflicting objectives.

"Our research shows that you get problems with inaccurate customer records because some people just don't care enough to update them. They've been deskilled because part of their jobs are offshored or because they're temps."

This is a typical problem of the modern enterprise where core functions are shipped out to partner companies or offshore outsourcers. Those that are left can lose motivation and become confused about their role and responsibility.

Ludovic Relandeau, vice president UK operations, Mega International, which specialises in business process monitoring tools, says: "Many companies do not realise that around 80 per cent of their agility and potential operational improvement lies in communications flows and not in elementary tasks performed by individuals and systems.

"People naturally become good at performing the tasks they are performing regularly." According to Relandeau, what each individual struggles with is understanding his or her place within the organisation: "Sometimes there is a 'throw it over the wall' culture, where each person and each department has no real understanding of what the next facilitator in the process really needs."

When jobs have become so specialised, it's no surprise that most people only know who is directly before or after them in a value chain. Any problem with deviates from the norm becomes unanswerable and therefore someone else's problem.

According to Jason Goodwin, UK head of solutions strategy at SAS, a business intelligence software developer: "One of the major barriers to cultural alignment [between departments] is the way companies set about measuring themselves. People do what they're measured against and all too often measures are set in functional silos which creates pockets of people working to maximise their potential but to the detriment of their colleagues across the hall.

"To ensure cultural and operational alignment, measures need to be based on the organisation's mission, vision and strategies. These measures need to be cascaded down but with the cause and effect relationships between the measures fully understood and mapped out."

A collective responsibility

Clayton's company QAS measures the criteria it believes is important in customer relations - these are interdepartmental measurements such as time to answer incoming calls or time it takes to deal with returned mail. If any of the 12 criteria fall below targets, the manager responsible must explain to the UK board why and what can be done to rectify the problem.

She says: "The key thing here is ensuring there is someone responsible. There needs to be accountability. Each department needs to be accountable through its manager."

According to Clayton, it's important for all departments to recognise that ultimately they have a role in customer satisfaction and retention, not just the customer-facing personnel.

Bridging the communications and cultural gaps between departments so that companies can present a unified face to their customers is a multi-pronged campaign.

Staff need to know their place in relation to others in the company and how they can help others meet their objectives. The overall objectives and thus rewards need to be more closely aligned between departments rather than having them pull against each other. Someone needs to carry the can as all too often no one can be found that is ultimately responsible for customer satisfaction. Technology needs to help (such as conferencing tools) rather than hinder (leaving important information buried in an email archive). And departmental silos need to be torn down.

Only once SMEs begin moving towards these goals can they hope to gain the benefits of a 'joined-up enterprise'.