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were received or delivered. There were no procedures whereby deliveries were analysed
for cost, vehicle loading, or delivery planning. Vehicles were called in to deliver product to
the customer when the order and documentation were completed.
7. Product quality. No information was collected on the quality of the company's products.
8. Suggestion scheme. There was no employee suggestion scheme in place.
Technical Department
1. New materials/techniques. The company had no established procedure for monitoring
new concepts in the market. The Technical Director used personal contacts at university to
keep abreast of relevant changes and tended not to use other information sources.
2. New equipment and processes. The company subscribed to two of the leading
equipment magazines, but largely relied on the suppliers' technical sales force to keep
them informed about changes in manufacturing techniques. There was no standard policy
of attending exhibitions or symposia on systems development.
3. Government assistance. There was little attempt to make use of available government
assistance. There was irregular contact with the local Chamber of Commerce which
supplied some information.
4. Project development. The Technical Department maintained a manual record of all new
projects. The Technical Director kept this information under lock and key. Only staff
directly involved in a particular project had access to the information concerning that
project, and then only via the director.
5. Customer queries. No record was kept either of customer queries or of how rapidly the
department dealt with them.
Marketing and Sales Department
1. Current customer analysis. The Marketing and Sales Department kept a manual record
of the progress of business with current customers. Each year, these were used to create
the new business plans. There was no method for collecting and assessing customer
complaints, or for identifying and reporting new product concepts raised by customers.
2. New quotations. The company received all their tenders for quotation direct from
customers. These were circulated to the relevant sales personnel who had the
responsibility of following up the business in their specific area. There was no search
mechanism through relevant journals or government publications for tenders.
3. Pricing. The Marketing Department had no system to optimise the returns from
contracts. The past history of quotation success and competitive pricing were not collected
in any systematic fashion.
4. Installations. There was an ad hoc method of controlling installation engineers, but no
method of evaluating their performance, as each individual job varied greatly in complexity
and length of time.
5. Promotional policy. There was no standard policy to identify available exhibitions
throughout the world. The company did not use an advertising agency to establish other
alternative promotional methods.
6. Government help. The company had in the previous 3 years been a subscriber to the
overseas trade information service run by the government, but this had now lapsed. There
was no other contact.
7. Competitive information. Sales representatives were asked to collect material whenever
possible. This was stored in a central filing system where in theory all could gain access.
8. Sales productivity. There was little collection of information on the effectiveness of the
sales force, who were appraised annually on the basis of total sales value achieved.
9. Customer care audit. There was no customer care information
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