A Businesses Lack of Communication

Recently I have been working on a project with quite a large firm. This project is mainly building a website for them and then trying to get them higher up in search engine rankings by improving their SEO and by explaining to them how the web works and how to be successful on the World Wide Web.

At the start of the project everyone was brimming with confidence and we were all set for a deadline in a month. There were two weeks to get a design drawn up and then shown to them, in which time they would be writing up the new content for the website. The remaining two weeks would then be spent making the design they wanted and then adding the content they had given us to the design. However communication started to slip…

Why Is Communication So Important?

Having good communication within a business can lead to many benefits;

• Decisions can be made quicker and better information can be used, meaning that keeping up with competitors and staying ahead is much easier.
• Change is easier to bring-in as everyone within the business knows what is going on, as they have been informed using communication, this can save money and keep motivation high.
• Carrying on from the above point, motivation is much higher as employees feel more involved in the business.
• Objectives will be easier to follow as they will be in peoples heads, communication will remind people what they need to achieve and keep them on track.

The Projects Problem

As communication had started to slip, less was being done. Our end of the project was completed, the website was finished and all we needed was the content, but it never came, every day we would check our emails to see if any thing has arrived and then every few days we would email the company to ask how they were coming along and that if we received the content we could finish the whole project in a matter of days and they could then put it on their server and from it, gain extra business.

Whether this message went throughout the different departments in the company I do not know, but I can say is that communication was affecting this company greatly. At the start of our relationship we were told that the website is the company’s number one priority, as they know how important an online home is in today’s world… You can’t compete without one. However, as time went on it seemed less and less important and from this they were losing business as their website wasn’t up to standard and also it was creating a negative image on ourselves, which is never a good thing to do as we are the people who are likely to spread the word about the company, good or bad.

Why Was Communication the Problem?

I came to the conclusion early on in the project that communication was a real issue within the business. At first we were emailing through a number of different people and it would take days to hear back from them, despite the fact that they worked on computers from 9-5! Yes, I know in a business people are very busy, but when something is a number one priority, you would think that they would communicate with the people who are making it happen.

The website was finally handed over about 5 months behind deadline due to the content which they had to write coming through to use about every other week, so not only did it mean they had their website late, it meant that we were always waiting around and couldn’t continue on with our business for a number of months as we just didn’t know how much work we would be doing each week.

The Solution

If communication was a lot tighter within the company, between themselves and us, I feel that the website could have been finished on time and getting them more sales.

Businesses have a lot of work to do, so adding more work like making a website can be a very tough job to introduce. It distracts from the normal working day and means extra work has to be done, so it is understandable if communication was just poor through to us because the business had other priorities. I don’t know the story from within, only as someone who has worked with them, so I could be wrong.

On the other, what I really wanted to point out in this article is that even if there is more work than usual and you are finding it hard to keep up with emails, post and other messages then you need to try and find some time to keep up with these communications. In this example it took about 4 months longer than planned to complete a project, this meant that for 4 months the company in mention would have been thinking about getting the website done and wasting time on this thinking. If they kept up with communication in the beginning it would have put them a bit behind on other work for that month, but then there are 4 months saved which can be sued to catch up and also use the website to expand.

Communication needs to be good!

If you have had any similar experiences, then please use the comments section below.