Is a Sales Growth Objective a 'Quality' Objective ?

[Patricia Ravanello]

This is what makes the Cove the greatest quality related forum in the UNIVERSE...Don't ever feel concerned about disagreeing and defending your points of view. From the healthy clash and exchange of ideas, I think we all learn. From your posts, I am sure that you are a very passionate Quality professional and, obviously, feel very strong about your positions and how ISO 9001 could "save" the (corporate) World. I have been close to that place. Most of us, quality professionals, tend to think that the World revolves around quality, or at least, it should. We complain that management does not see the light, is short sighted, allow the organization to neglect the customers, etc....true in many cases. But quality has a place. And like anything else, when overstated, people will question you.

I still say it. Don't overpromise what ISO 9001 is or does. I am interested to see the sites you referred to. When I look at the ISO website, I find the following:
http://www.iso.org/iso/en/iso9000-14000/understand/inbrief.html


The ISO 9000 family is primarily concerned with "quality management". This means what the organization does to fulfil:

- the customer's quality requirements, and

- applicable regulatory requirements, while aiming to
- enhance customer satisfaction, and
- achieve continual improvement of its performance in pursuit of these objectives.


​

That was exactly the same web-site I was going to refer you to...if you read further down the page, they say:

"The vast majority of ISO standards are highly specific to a particular product, material, or process. However, the standards that have earned the ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 families a worldwide reputation are known as "generic management system standards”.[/COLOR]


They go on to define a "Management System"...

"Management system" refers to the organization's structure for managing its processes - or activities - that transform inputs of resources into a product or service which meet the organization's objectives, such as satisfying the customer's quality requirements, complying to regulations, or meeting environmental objectives."

This has been a great repartee (It's not my intention to cut off this discussion) ...thanks for taking the time to write...I have to sign off for the day...Have a great week-end.

Patricia

 

[Helmut Jilling]

One of the mistakes done my many quality professionals involved with ISO 9001 is to “sell” it for something it is not. ISO 9001 is NOT a business management model. There are MANY aspects of an organization that ISO 9001 doesn’t even come close to addressing.

I suppose if we all agreed with each other, this would be a boring forum, so I have to voice my disagreement with the preceeding statement.

ISO 9001 is very much a Business Management Model. You're right in saying that it doesn't come close to addressing many aspects of an organization's functions - it doesn't deal with marketing, advertising, market research, research and development or financial functions, just to name a few.

However, the standard requires that you identify your KEY PROCESSES - customer-, support-, and management-oriented (not your Product Realization processes alone) and determine the sequence and interaction of all of them. The fact that ISO doesn't specify any requirements for those functions (and hence, no specific requirements to audit), doesn't mean you can ignore them...and I can't imagine why you would. Would you set up a separate methodology to manage these "unmentioned" functions?

ISO 9000 is most definitely a Business Management Model, and for the overwhelming number of companies that have implemented it, it's the only model to which they subscribe. A prudent company would monitor and measure the performance of ALL processes, implement corrective & preventive action and continual improvement per the same methodology mandated through the ISO standard.

Additionally, when you are faced with adding on the requirements of other standards and requirements (customer-specifics, Sarbanes Oxley, ISO 14001, etc.), they should all be built into the same Business Operating System, thereby creating a totally integrated system, with a minimal number of documents.

When I get a chance, I'll add references for some of the many web-sites which support this view.

Thanks for the opportunity to respond,
Patricia

Two days in a row that I agree with Patricia - you nailed it dead on again! I agree entirely. It can encompass as many processes as the company wants to include and make it a full business management system. Many of my clients even include IT support as a defined support process... with criteria, metrics, and objectives.

 

[Helmut Jilling]

If you're a manufacturer and you only have objectives for sales and rates of production, then you're missing the point of having a quality system, but what if your business is sales? Real estate agencies, brokers, or auctioneers might want to establish sales objectives to try and improve the quality of service to their clients:

- improve sell prices as percentage of assessed value
- reduce time on market
- improve number of sales/number of prospects

Would a simple objective to "increase sales" qualify as a quality objective for these kinds of businesses? Increased sales probably would improve customer satisfaction.

Since we're discussing defining all the processes of a whole company, increas sales could be an objective for the Sales process, while improve quality to 10 ppm would be a real good manufacturing objective, and improve training and reduce overhead could be an objective for the HR/Training process, and so on. These objectives should be by process, not company wide, if we are following a process approach. I would think this reflects a common approach I've seen many times. On a side note, it might solve some of these complaints that top management doesn't buy in. They will buy in better if you package it in a way they can relate to, and I have seen many reluctant CEOs buy into this approach.

 

[krishkaar]

Is "sales Growth" a Quality Objective

Further on this subject, it is interesting to recall the provisions ISO 9000-1:1994, Guidelines for selection and use, Sec 4.2. This section calls for the Quality system to satisfy five stakeholders and the investor 's expectation and satisfaction is guaranteed through a sustained growth of the business.
Hence, the various objectives are not separable but have to be considered together.

 

[M Greenaway]

What if I choose to go beyond the requirements of ISO9001, and adopt a management system based on ISO9004, the scope of which is not just satisfying customers, but all stakeholders and interested parties ?

Also with the objective of increasing sales, it is also important that we stay in business in order to keep our customers satisfied, surely pursuing more sales supports this ?

 

[Helmut Jilling]

What if I choose to go beyond the requirements of ISO9001, and adopt a management system based on ISO9004, the scope of which is not just satisfying customers, but all stakeholders and interested parties ?

Also with the objective of increasing sales, it is also important that we stay in business in order to keep our customers satisfied, surely pursuing more sales supports this ?

Highly Recommended! I recommend ISO 9004 to all my clients. A far superior standard!

 

[Patricia Ravanello]

I haven't dealt with any companies that haven't included "profitability" or "shareholder satisfaction" in their Policy Statements (although I also discourage them from calling it the "Quality Policy Statement", since I typically integrate the requirements of ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 17025, MMOG, and other requirements into one system, and hence only ONE "Company" Policy Statement which captures Quality, Environmental, Health and Safety, Materials Management, Corporate and Business Objectives, etc., precluding the need for multiple "Policy Statements).

Typically, I see statements like,

"Our core vision is to achieve a balance between being recognized as a world-class supplier by our customer and supplyng a satisfactory return on investment for our shareholders, while providing a safe and healthful workplace for our employees..."​

or...

We will meet this mandate by...
Respecting the interests of all stakeholders in the realization of a facility which is at once, a safe and healthful workplace, an enhancement to our community and a source of satisfaction for investors..."​

These types of Policy Statements dictate that these stated policy elements are deployed through the Business Plan, that objectives are defined and performance subsequently monitored per the same methodology as customer and product objectives.

If you respect the ISO 9001 Standard in letter and in spirit, it's hard to exclude these aspects.

Patricia

 

[M Greenaway]

OK

Next related question regarding communication of objectives - who should the sales growth objective be communicated to ?

Sales staff or all staff ??

...and why ?

 

[Patricia Ravanello]

Drill Down the Objectives

RE: Next related question regarding communication of objectives - who should the sales growth objective be communicated to ?

Sales staff or all staff ??

...and why ?​

In the world of the Metrics Hierarchy, Senior Management, through the Business Plan, defines the Sales Objectives (or changes to Sales Objectives), and all stated objectives should be communicated or drilled down through the organization to:

1) The person(s) who own or are champions of the metric.
2) Anyone who has the ability to impact on the metric (marketing dept., sales department, sales persons, individuals in production whose activities can impact on sales...from production managers to operators/assemblers).
3) Typically Sales objectives are also communicated to shareholders through shareholder meetings or publications.​

To answer WHY?

Per 6.2.2.d The organization must... ensure that its personnel are aware of the relevance and importance of their activities and how they contribute to the achievement of quality objectives..​

Thereafter, the results of the monitoring and measurement of sales performance against objectives must be communicated to the same group of interested/involved individuals (as well as any plans for corrective/preventive action or continual improvement).

Patricia

 

[David Hartman]

OK

Next related question regarding communication of objectives - who should the sales growth objective be communicated to ?

Sales staff or all staff ??

...and why ?

Sales objectives should be communicated to all personnel at all levels. As an example: I worked for a company that designed, manufactured and sold catalog items (with options - tens of thousands of varieties). It was company policy to take every employee through a 2 week training program on what our products were, what they did, and hands on what they looked like. The biggest portion of this training was on how to use the catalog. This was done in order that anyone answering the phone, could help a potential customer and make a sale.

The result: Everyone had a sense of pride in our product, and even the janitorial personnel were capable of selling the product (many sales were actually accomplished after hours while visiting with friends and family).

If you are in a business to sell a product or service, it is always benefitial that everyone within your business knows that sales are the reason they have a job - without making a sale there will be no business (quality or otherwise).