What to Include in an Audit of a Sales Office?

A

andrewg

#1
Hey all,

My company has two sales offices within Europe (One in France and One in Germany). During our certification audit, our auditors have never expressed an interest in auditing these sites. We feel that this is a weakness and as such we are going to subject both sales offices to internal audits, carried out by staff from our main manufacturing site in the UK.

I would be interested to see what areas you would all look at should you be auditing these sales offices for the first time. I would welcome any ideas and suggestions you have.:thanx:

With Regards,

Andy
 
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M

madannc

#2
Hey all,

My company has two sales offices within Europe (One in France and One in Germany). During our certification audit, our auditors have never expressed an interest in auditing these sites. We feel that this is a weakness and as such we are going to subject both sales offices to internal audits, carried out by staff from our main manufacturing site in the UK.

I would be interested to see what areas you would all look at should you be auditing these sales offices for the first time. I would welcome any ideas and suggestions you have.:thanx:

With Regards,

Andy
Hi Andy,

I would be looking for conformance to local/corporate documents, and also how they feed into your Complaint and CA and PA systems. For example if they recieve a complaint from a customer do they have procedures to follow in reporting that complaint. Is it communicated effectively to the manufacturing site. Also locally how they deal with stock control, ordering and traceability of what was sold.
Without knowing what is sold (i.e. what your product is) if you perform installations or servicing and how well this is documented. If they keep the installation/service records in good order for the DHR (Device History Record).
How they track their performance (KPI's) and what improvements they have put in to either stretch or improve on their results. What they do with customer feedback that is a suggestion/observation rather than a complaint.

How they deal with shortages, do they operate an OTIF (On Time In Full) process?

What is their knowledge of local regulations for sale in their countries (languages/labelling etc).

Training... What training do the sales people get on the product, how is this recorded, how is it approved and controlled, who delivers... what happens for new products or product upgrades.

Just a few thoughts not sure if it's what your looking for... let me know

cheers Nigel
 
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#3
Hey all,

My company has two sales offices within Europe (One in France and One in Germany). During our certification audit, our auditors have never expressed an interest in auditing these sites. We feel that this is a weakness and as such we are going to subject both sales offices to internal audits, carried out by staff from our main manufacturing site in the UK.

I would be interested to see what areas you would all look at should you be auditing these sales offices for the first time. I would welcome any ideas and suggestions you have.:thanx:

With Regards,

Andy
Andy:
It really depends on what your organization has them responsible for as 'Sales'. What processes do they follow? Does you current quality management system include them in the scope or are they stand alone? Do they 'mirror' what the local sales processes are?

In my experience, sales organizations can be responsible for a lot of activities from simple order entry, to complex product configuration odering, as well as quoting, handling complaints, feedback etc.

What do yours do?
 

Jim Wynne

Staff member
Admin
#4
Andy:
It really depends on what your organization has them responsible for as 'Sales'. What processes do they follow? Does you current quality management system include them in the scope or are they stand alone? Do they 'mirror' what the local sales processes are?

In my experience, sales organizations can be responsible for a lot of activities from simple order entry, to complex product configuration odering, as well as quoting, handling complaints, feedback etc.

What do yours do?
Yes. It's a matter of ascertaining (A) what management expects Sales to be doing; (B) whether Sales understands those requirements and (C) whether those requirements are being met. Note that sometimes "B" is overlooked, often because the requirements aren't properly documented.
 
#5
Andy:
Since this is an internal audit, it is important that you do as much studying of their processes and performance issues are possible, to ensure you don't do a simple compliance audit. Nigel's comments are , IMHO, the sort of thing an external (CB) auditor would ask, without knowing too much about what the sales offices actually do - to take such an approach would, (again, IMHO) probably leave them confused. If they haven't been audited before, then you must expect to have some adverse reaction and having anything but an approach based on their defined process(es) will potentially go badly for you.

Spend a lot of time in consultation with them, planning the audit - not least of which will be the logistics etc. Study their processes, issues, managements' focus, customer base needs and expectations. Go in to the audit like you knwo what they do, it builds confidence in them that you know what you're doing.
 
V

vanputten

#6
What docuemnt(s) are considered to be the legal contract between the customer and your organzitaion? Once this is determined, ask all of the standard 4.2.4 questions.

Are e mails used? Are they an accpetable document to define the contract bewteen organizations?

Also, how are orders verified in terms of the data within the order? How are orders translated from the customer's PO into your organziation's system without error.

When there is a problem, what corrective aciotn process do they use. What preventive aciton process do they use to prevent possible errors?

How is the awareness of the Sales staff determined, maintained, etc. Ask all of the 6.2.2 questions.

And then, ask all of the customer facing questions since the Sales staff is an integral part of all customer facing processes (5.2, 7.2.3, 8.2.1).

If you are a publicly traded company that is subject to Sarbanes Oxley, then sync up with the finance auditors and do one audit.
 
P

Phil Fields

#7
Hey all,

My company has two sales offices within Europe (One in France and One in Germany). During our certification audit, our auditors have never expressed an interest in auditing these sites. We feel that this is a weakness and as such we are going to subject both sales offices to internal audits, carried out by staff from our main manufacturing site in the UK.

I would be interested to see what areas you would all look at should you be auditing these sales offices for the first time. I would welcome any ideas and suggestions you have.:thanx:

With Regards,

Andy
Andy,
Are the Sales Offices within the scope of the certification?

Phil
 
B

Bill Pflanz

#8
When people hear sales staff they immediately assume the sellers. If you include the order entry people and the billing staff you have lots of opportunities for auditing.

The order entry people would be gathering information that may include customer requirements and then must have a process for relaying that information to operations. There are times when problems begin here even before manufacturing has even started. After the shipment, there is nothing worse than to get the order filled correctly and then bill the customer wrong resulting in a customer complaint. The customer complaint system is probably managed by this staff also.

Depending on what activities the sales staff are responsible for, you should be able to trace back what effects the customer and delivering the product correctly.

Bill Pflanz
 
J

JaneB

#10
Andy:
It really depends on what your organization has them responsible for as 'Sales'. What processes do they follow? Does you current quality management system include them in the scope or are they stand alone? Do they 'mirror' what the local sales processes are?

In my experience, sales organizations can be responsible for a lot of activities from simple order entry, to complex product configuration odering, as well as quoting, handling complaints, feedback etc.

What do yours do?
Yup, couldn't agree more. I've seen 'sales' departments who were simply order entry/processors through to THE main (only) conduit to the client and included gathering of complex requirements through quoting, complaints, and almost everything else.

Without knowing what yours do, can't provide useful input.

I have noticed that often sales are driven and measured only on $ and sales achieved, and often are ignorant (not provided with or didn't listen to) anything else that didn't impact directly on those metrics. Makes sense - what you measure is what people pay attention to. We have some hefty legislation in our country forbidding anti-competitive behaviour as well as not making false representations/claims... some organisations only started implementing measures to ensure those were taken care of when their audits pointed out the risks to them as an organisation of failing to do so. ie, 'yes, I want you to make those sales... but I also want you to make them in compliance with our policies and procedures'.
 
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