When communication between your company team and external stakeholders like clients, architects, engineers, and other non-company team members is not optimal, you’ll end up missing deadlines and glossing over important project details, both of which expose you to legal risks and ultimately mean less money.

In this article, we’ll tell you how to streamline your external communication with people outside of your company so that you can reduce risks, stay on budget, and protect your bottom line.

Types of Communication with Stakeholders

Communication with stakeholders outside of your company include clients, subs, vendors, suppliers, architects, engineers, and anyone else outside of your company with stake in the project.

Here are a few modes of communication that can occur with stakeholders:

• Contracts with clients
• Contracts with non-company team members
• Bids
• Change Orders
• Client Selections
• Transmittals
• Submittals
• RFIs
• Invoices
• Takeoffs (plan sharing)

The Importance of Clear Communication

External communication provides transparency between your team and stakeholders outside of your team, which is crucial for making sure everyone is on the same page and mitigating risks, from project start to completion.

In a lot of ways communication within your company team is just as important as external communication, but in some ways the stakes can be even higher when you’re dealing with people outside of your business, because that’s when there is a greater potential of legal issues due to communication failures.

In our many decades of experience working with contractors around the globe, we’ve worked with hundreds of thousands of construction professionals whose lack of adequate documentation has exposed them to being sued by their clients, and in many cases the deal breaker in court was who had the documentation for proof and who didn’t. So, when it comes down to who's right and who’s wrong, it's really about who has the written proof and who doesn’t, which goes to show the importance of external communication.

3 Risks of Poor Communication

When communication between your team and outside sources is lacking, you and your business are at risk of inaccurate information being exchanged and important data falling through the cracks, both of which can lead to costly litigation issues.

Even if communication within your team is great, it doesn’t matter unless your team is able to clearly communicate with the other stakeholders who are not a part of your team, most importantly the client and any non-company team members you may be working with on a project.

Some of the more common and costly risks include the following:

1. Inaccurate Information

Without an organized way of handling communication with clients and non-company team members, you risk spreading inaccurate information to the very people who are expecting clear information from you. For instance, maybe your client had different expectations about scope of the project and is unsatisfied with the final product. Poor communication leaves plenty of room for error in terms of finances, expectations, timeline, and a lot of other preventable issues.

2. Risk of Litigation

Lack of good external communication leaves your company exposed to potential legal issues that are often caused by things like misaligned project expectations, undocumented budget changes, and more. 

For instance, if you and your client have a dispute about budget changes due to a change order, you risk legal trouble if you don’t communicate those budget changes to the client as soon as possible and you don’t have written documentation showing that everyone has signed off on the changes.

3. Bad Reputation in the Industry

One thing that hasn’t changed in any business is that people do business with people, and if you do bad business, the word is sure to get around which can cause serious damage to your company’s reputation. According to word-of-mouth marketing statistics, it takes about 40 positive customer experiences to undo the damage done by 1 negative review.

Having good communication with your non-company team members is one essential way you can ensure your reputation in the industry remains in good standing.

By maintaining strong communication both within and outside of your team, you can avoid the serious risks that come with faulty, inaccurate, and inconsistent communication.

3 Ways to Streamline Communication with Stakeholders

When it comes to communication, there’s always room for improvement both within your company and with those outside of your company. Whether it’s the modes of communication, the delivery of communication, or even the frequency of communication, something could always be better and more efficient.

Here are some strategies you can implement that will vastly improve external communication between your team and outside stakeholders: 

1. Centralize Communication

When you’ve got some emails over here, some contracts on that computer back at the office, and some change orders floating around different departments, you’ll waste a lot of time and potentially money trying to hunt down which document you need.

Having one central place to keep up with all of your documentation ensures everyone who needs access can find what they need without having to search far and wide. With tools like ConstructionOnline™ 's ClientLink and TeamLink logins, you can control which information clients and non-company team members should have access to, which makes externalized communication much easier and more centralized.

2. Be Consistent

Lack of consistency in communication can lead to external team members being confused about the details and progress of the project. If people are expecting weekly or biweekly communication and you end up going a week or a month with no contact, it starts to look like you forgot to communicate, are intentionally not communicating, or are just too unorganized to communicate on a regular basis.

Consistent communication with clients and non-company team members maintains a good reputation for your business, and makes sure everyone is on the same page at all times, including when unexpected events happen during the project. With tools like our GamePlan Task Lists, you can send out consistent email and text reminders to team members about upcoming deadlines, overdue items, and things that will affect the budget, and you can even control the frequency of these notifications.

3. Create Repeatable Systems

Repeatable systems for communication are essential to having repeatable success for your business. It’s one thing to communicate well in one project here and there, but to have a system in place that lets you and your team communicate with ease every time is what really sets you apart from the competition.

With project management tools like ConstructionOnline, you can easily create repeatable systems of communication plus a lot of other tools like scheduling, managing contracts, uploading files and photos, project tracking, daily logging, and more!

These are some of our essential tips and tricks for improving communication with stakeholders outside of your company so that you can prevent costly mistakes and legal risks.

If you’re looking for a project management software that can help you improve and centralize communication both within and outside of your company, learn more about our communication and connectivity, which has online tools like instant messaging, inbound emails, call logs, detailed documentation and contracts, and so much more.