Internal communication of the purchasing process

This thesis was performed at Scania’s purchasing department of non- automotive products in Södertälje, Sweden during spring 2007. The management of the purchasing department of non-automotive products believe that their internal customers might not have full understanding of what the purchasing department does. This is a problem because the internal customers might not use the contracts negotiated by the purchasing department or they might not involve the purchasing department when making purchases. The purpose of this thesis is to examine if and how the internal customers’ perception deviates from the purchasing department’s perception regarding the task of the purchasing department. And also to create a communication package with the purpose of increasing the internal customers understanding of what the purchasing department does. The research strategy of the thesis was a survey and empirical data was collected by using questionnaires and interviews. The communication package was designed with the result from the gap analysis, information from interviews, relevant communication theory and information from Scania’s intranet. The gap analysis indicated that the internal customers might not have complete understanding of the work which the purchasing department does regarding the supplier base and activities concerning the supplier base, i.e. how the purchasing department finds and evaluates suppliers. The analysis also indicated that the internal customers did not want the purchasing department to be involved to the same extent as the purchasing department itself wants, when finding and evaluating suppliers. The gap analysis also indicated that the internal customers possibly lack understanding of the fact that the purchasing department has to consider the total cost imposed on Scania when evaluating quotations and choosing supplier. Furthermore the internal customers did not want the purchasing department to be involved to the same extent as the purchasing department itself when evaluating quotations and selecting suppliers. In order to bridge the gaps and to increase the internal customers understanding of what the purchasing department does, a communication package was produced. The communication package consists of a power-point presentation, instructions and a suggestion of implementation. The power- point presentation was tested in a pilot on a group of internal customers. Input for improvements was received when interviewing the internal customers participating in the pilot. The selection of internal customers in the survey questionnaire was a problem because no available information covering the whole population of internal customers was available. The method of selecting internal customers was kept in mind when analyzing the empirical data. If another selection of internal customers would have been chosen the empirical data would probably have been a little different. However the conclusions would most likely be the same because only the large gaps were considered in the analysis.Validerat; 20101217 (root