THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING A "Q"

The Quality issue has been talked about a lot and it’ll keep happening until there’ll be no need to talk about it as an element as necessary as the beds of a hotel or a telephone in a travel agency. Today, everybody talks about quality of food, cars, medicine, accounting and services in general. Our services and products are from a great quality, guaranteed quality, the biggest quality at the smallest price; we have been working and we’ll keep on working to provide the maxim quality to our products…these are slogans being repeated constantly in the media, in official speeches, in universities or, in a more general way, in all economic activity.

But why is there now a bigger emphasis given by products and services companies on the Quality issue?

Because there are millions of products and an increasingly global offer, which leads to the idea that to compete, companies need to sell a quality product or service, otherwise companies won’t be able to obtain a market share and, without it, they won’t survive.

The interlinking among Quality, Productivity and Competitiveness is one of the most relevant factors in the current economy. Like Deming and Juran taught us, if companies area able to raise the quality, the productivity will increase and, consequently, the competitiveness, or rather, the capacity of a product or a service to stand out from the competition, whether is by its price, whether is by the product or service specific features.

At a time when we watch a tertiarisation of the portuguese economy, it matters to remember that the human factor is fundamental to obtain a quality service. This doesn’t mean that the other factors are secondary, because when we talk about quality, nothing is secondary, however, what happens is that in services, the human resources need to have not only a good working skill, but also a good predisposition when facing the demands of the client.

Therefore, it matters that the entrepreneur has the capacity to organize, keep up, train and motivate his team, because these actions are the key to the quality of his services, at a time when having the “Q” symbol is becoming more and more a differentiating and an added value factor.

In this respect, the entrepreneur has to be conscientious about the consumers, whom are increasingly demanding and informed, relating the “Q” symbol to quality and good service; consumers are now aware enough to admit that the company that got the certification made an effort to obtain that “Q”, which will lead into a real benefit for the company.

However, to the entrepreneur is not enough to just obtain the quality certificate to succeed in his ventures; besides, he needs to keep his promise, he should worry about a regularly measuring of the level of satisfaction of his clients and human resources, in order to get to know his shortages and defects.

Assuming this attitude, the entrepreneur will improve on the product or service that satisfies the client’s demand through a quality-price ratio that will enable him to please the client as well as to obtain business results, that will be achieved in a company prepared to satisfy the needs of the clients, in other words, a company that is able to maintain itself competitive.

Thus, don’t leave the opportunity to adopt a suitable quality system at your company, as a fundamental contribution for its differentiation in the industry where its activity is being developed.