SIA approved contractors scheme #3 - Commercial relationship management
This week my PARiM Workforce Management Software blog looks at the COMMERCIAL RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT part of the SIA’s ACS Self Assessment Workbook Guide
If you’ve missed the first three blogs then these can be found at PARiM Software blog page. As I have mentioned before in this series of blogs, I am attempting to simplify and suggest ways to help your company meet the requirements as laid out in the Self Assessment Workbook Guide.
What has been slightly puzzling me for a few months now is, do the SIA and Government intend for security companies to be both ACS Accredited and Business Licensed? Surely one type of license or accreditation, with different levels (like food safety) would be sufficient, unless the government is intending to double legislate to make more money out of security companies. That is even if they deem some of them not good enough to be ACS Accredited? Anyway, in one form or another business licensing is coming.
The Workbook Guide is all about your delivery processes and your understanding of them:-
Your service delivery processes
Your business continuity or disaster recovery plans
Your process for agreeing contracts with new and potential clients
Your process for agreeing Service Level Agreements with new and existing clients
Your process for recording and monitoring incidents
Your process for interaction with your clients including feedback and service requests
Your Company’s process for reviewing your service and staff
Criteria #3 The Commercial Relationship Management Processes section is where an accredited security provider or SIA approved contractor can demonstrate that the management and staff understand the need to and actually do create robust and transparent commercial relationships with:
Potential Customers
Existing Customers
Consumers
Suppliers
These relationships are based on mutual trust and respect.
So the first part of Criteria #3 is about how you select suppliers and your actual purchasing policy. What considerations you take into account, whether you consider social, ethical and criminal aspects when selecting suppliers? Who has input into the process of selection and who makes the actual selection? Then, once selected, does the company then always stick to the chosen supplier for those supplies or not and if you have a list of preferred or nominated suppliers.
The criteria goes on to state that you should then maintain the relationship with the supplier helping them to maintain or improve the standard of their service or supply. It also covers how you deal with, monitor and manage relationships with subcontractors and if you offer your customers ad hoc or structured regular advice.
How you deal with:
Tender requests
Customer Complaints
Site Visits
New business requests
And how you manage and document customer contact whenever it occurs during the delivery of the service.
As you can see I have just skimmed the outline principles of criteria #3 above. If you want to see my blog on the ACS and helpful hints in full then please subscribe.
You may also find useful:
ACS Accreditation criteria #1 Strategy
ACS Accreditation criteria #2 Processes
ACS Accreditation criteria #4 Financial Management