How to Streamline Your Company’s Internal Communications

How to Streamline Your Company’s Internal Communications

If you want to get an image of the perfect world that would exist if a company’s internal communications were wide open and clear, think about a sole proprietorship.

How many meetings would the employees of a ‘one man’ shop need to attend to make sure all the departments of the company were in sync?

The answer is, of course, none.

As a one man shop, the company’s ‘internal’ communications are always in sync. Marketing knows exactly when to kick in based on a downturn in sales.

How Many Meetings Do You Have to Sort Out Your Internal Communications?

Yes, we are definitely not comparing apples to apples here. As soon as you have more than a single employee, you must have proper internal business communications. But the example of the one-man shop is to introduce the idea that, if the systems are in place:

• Less effort is needed to communicate
• Less time is spent communicating
• The communication is more efficient and effective

Sounds fantastic. Except how do you go about ‘streamlining’ your internal communications? You have an internal messaging app, an open office concept and regular meetings. Where else can you take it?

How to Optimize Internal Communications

Every company is different. From different internal structures to different corporate cultures, it all can affect your internal communications and optimizing them. But there are steps every business can take to ensure that its internal communications are clear and functioning.

Information Visibility

If there is one step you should take towards improving internal communications, it is to increase information visibility. There are two things that need to be in place for this to happen.

• Your business needs systems in place that provide detailed, accurate and up-to-date information from across the enterprise.
• Everyone in the business must be able to access the same information from a single source.

While none of these have anything to do with the physical act of communicating, they give your company the information visibility so that your internal communications can be based on greater business intelligence.

Breaking Down the Barriers

Your first step towards increased data visibility and business intelligence might be to break down the internal barriers they face.

Many companies continue to cling to the ’if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ mentality for their systems and processes. It’s a cute saying, but it could be shrinking your company’s bottom line.

The concern about the costs of new IT systems and the potential implementation, training or reliability headaches can make a systems overhaul a tough sell in the C-suite.

But, while older systems might still ‘work’ they are incapable of delivering the visibility and intelligence the company must have to lower or eliminate costs.  Costs that they might not even realize they have while the older systems are in place.

Ways to Streamline Internal Communications

With greater information visibility and business intelligence in place, the following will help you further improve your internal communications.

1. Get the Team on Board

Even the most effective business intelligence and communications tools can’t force communications. Outlining the benefits of effective internal communications, answering questions and offering training and support is as important as any systems investment.

2. Move to the Cloud

On premises systems for things like shipping and inventory management might have good functionality, but they make it difficult for everyone to communicate based on the same information and it puts a strain on your IT infrastructure – all of which is eliminated if you moved to cloud-based systems.

3. Access Information from a Single Source of Truth

With access to the same information in the same place online, a conversation between your ordering department and warehouse management will be far more efficient, and mistakes eliminated.

If you would like to learn more about optimizing your company’s internal communications through improved data visibility and business intelligence, Contact Us here at AdvancePro.

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