Your Internal Customers

What does your company do to motivate your internal customers? Our company is currently in the process of implementing a company-wide new software system that will allow the entire company to be electronically fully integrated. It’s an exciting time, but as with all software implementations, it will bring with it some new challenges. We tried to come up with some ideas to get our ‘internal customers’ excited about the upcoming changes. We’ve had meetings and training on the new software and they’ve all had a chance to see for themselves the great improvements it will make, but they also are ‘comfortable’ with the system they are now using.

So we started a ‘sign’ campaign to help ‘sell’ the idea. We have made up funny (but positive) signs by the dozen about the software and hung them up throughout the company. We change them regularly and everyone seems to enjoy them. They look forward to seeing the new signs go up to see what they say and have offered suggestions for new sign ‘sayings’. It’s not expensive, we print them in-house on 11” x 17” paper, but it really helps to bolster the idea that this new software is a positive experience for all.

When implementing changes in your company, don’t forget to ‘sell’ your internal customers. If they buy into the changes, the implementation will be smoother, quicker, more effective, and an overall better experience for everyone.

The author, Marge Bonura, is the Director of Sales & Marketing for New England Machinery, Inc. (NEM). NEM is a leading manufacturer of bottle unscramblers, cappers, orienters, retorquers, lidders, pluggers, pump sorter/placers, scoop feeders, hopper elevators and much more. The company has been in business since 1974 selling to the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, personal care, chemical, household products, automotive and other industries. For more information on NEM, visit their website at http://www.neminc.com/.