Newsletter July 2007

Between Pride and Obligation / Discharge of a Duty - Quality Management Audit in the AdManus Network

This marks the fourth time in a row that we reserved one half of a working day of the AdManus Spring Meeting for discussing Quality Management (hereafter named QM). On April 27th, one representative per AdManus member company joined the working committee gathered around QM-consultant Ellen Schepp-Winter from Siegburg.

In a formatted preparatory list, each company had been asked to take a stand on topics such as professional training, internal exchange of experiences, consultation with employees and communication of the quality objectives to their staff. But fortunately, and similarly to previous years, it became clear that these issues are adequately dealt with in everyday business.

The focus then turned to the delicate topic of "Project Quality Plans".
For all projects with duration of more than ten days, a formatted EXCEL-table needs to be filled out by the responsible consultant, at the beginning and at the end of the project. For longer projects, interim reports may also be required. Project parameters, such as schedules, budgets, and contacts need to be recorded, in addition to self-monitoring among the consultants, in accordance with the four-eye-principle: mutual examination of larger concepts, and assessment of complexity (expenditures, time and effort) or reviews in case of more extensive programming projects.

In order to control whether this is really implemented, 5 random samples were extracted from a total of 38 current plans; in fact, one plan per company. The colleague in question, who was not actually present at the audit, was patched-in via telephone.

Plans were discussed one by one. One of the points of focus was compliance with quality criteria within the project itself. Were the appropriate check-ups/audits actually conducted? Which were the practical difficulties encountered? How were they solved, or respectively, how could they have been solved? Would it be feasible to include another staff member, who is not actually part of the project, for concept-monitoring, client permission assumed? Or is it possible to have the program-review conducted by someone who is not immersed in the topic?

But on the other hand, these discussions are also exemplary: Is the standard form suitable? When should these forms be filled out? One of the decisions made is that these plans shall also be used for strictly consultatory projects.

Last but not least the discussion turned to the 2007 Client Questionnaire. Even if the overall results were again very positive, individual cases showed a downward trend. Appropriate measures were discussed and decided.

This year, for the first time, we had offered a bonus contribution in order to raise our clients’ motivation to participate in the survey. However, this did not result in the desired outcome: the return rate of 50% was the same as the year before,

The motivation on our side to do the client survey is founded on our interest in client-feedback, mainly for two reasons: on the one hand, it allows us to identify negative impressions on the side of the client, so that we can search for improvement opportunities. On the other hand, as predominantly positive these assessments may be, they, and comparison with peers, still offer chances for perfecting details, in the comportment of each and every consultant.

This year’s annual QM-audit therefore concluded with an optimistic "Keep it up!" QM has been and will remain to be a very significant characteristic of the AdManus Network, and we hope that our clients will benefit from the results achieved.

Martin Esch

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