Business Communication Trends In business today, communication is very important. Communication holds the business together. With technology increasing in today’s business environment businesses are losing that one on one relationship with their customers. Technology is taking over where years ago the businesses had a face-to-face interaction with businesses. What will happen if these trends keep evolving will no one in business have anymore face-to-face conversations. In my business environment we must communicate all the time without communication, we could have a disaster.
Everyone in the business environment needs to be involved in the communication they need to know what is going on, what we are doing wrong, and what our customers’ needs and wants are of their products. Therefore, being a detail planner I need to keep all the supervisors updated on what products we will be running, and what products will be going on backorder. Most of the time if a product is going on backorder I am normally waiting on purchased parts to come in house.
I need to keep in touch and communicate with the purchasing agent to find out when they will be available for me to pack.
Our purchased parts come in and depending on the part, some of them may have to be tested and they go on test I need to make sure that these parts are available at the time I need to run the job. Therefore, I need communicate with incoming so they put the parts on test as soon as they come in the building. I also need to communicate with the engineer to make sure that all the blueprints for the product and all tools needed are ready and available to run. In my type of business, I am communicating all the time with many people of the business.
When communicating I use E- mail a lot to give everyone one a heads up on what I need to run the lot. When needing answers right away I use same time, which is similar to instant messenger so if the person is at their desk we can get an answer right away. This means of communication comes in handy so you do not hold up the production lines. Trends in Current and Previous Workplaces Since I have been at my job for 27 years, I guess I will have to go with the trends in my workplace. Since I have started at B. Braun in 1983, we did not have much of any technology we did all inventory by hand and by using, excel sheets.
As years went by, we now have all our inventory system in SAP. SAP generates our orders all the way down to sub assemblies. This way each Master Planner knows when to schedule their order so the full product will be ready to ship by the due date. This technology has increased production about 80%. We also all have E-mail our own computers and are able to access SAP anytime of the day. Our systems are also connected in all our other plants such as Malaysia, Germany, and the Dominican Republic so we can converse with our major companies.
We do not actually use a video cam with these companies but we definitely have phone conferences with them. Our Sales representatives still go out to the hospitals to show our products and talk to the doctors on sight. We also have training personnel that go on sight to train the doctors and nurses on the right way to use are products. Since I started at B. Braun, we have come a long way with Technology. We do not do physical inventory anymore we do things called cycle counts all through the year to make sure that our inventory is accurate.
The other thing is every process that we are doing is now becoming automated we are using more machines for our processes to eliminate the people needed for the manufacturing floor. We still have many processes that are not automated but they are telling us that down the road they are expecting everything to be automated. Message types from these Trends I figure that eventually technology will take over the business there will be fewer workers and more machines to do the job of humans. Many people will be out of a job with technology taking over.
There will also be less human contact with customers and customers will feel that the company does not care about their business and go elsewhere for their products. In business even though technology is one of the biggest things, we still need that face-to-face interaction with our customers. Businesses need that one on one relationship to keep them as customers. However, technology is good but only to a extent keeping that interaction with your customers helps to generate more sales. Word a mouth is the best advertising that a business can have and helps to improve your sales.