Why use Single Points of Contact (SPCs)?

Have you ever participated in a scavenger hunt? If so, then you know what it’s like to go from place to place and have to find the various items on the list- all in hopes of getting them all before the other participants do.

This is what it can be like sometimes for busy professionals who need things – information, parts, photographs or whatever the need be.

That’s where having an organizational “single point of contact” can really help manage the project’s flow of needs and help the project meet the deadline.

How so, you may be asking?

Well, think of it like the old time grocery delivery boy. In those days, someone who was either too busy to shop for themselves or perhaps infirmed and couldn’t leave home still had to eat, right? So, grocers offered a service to customers allowing them to phone in their grocery lists and a few hours later a delivery boy would be knocking on the customer’s door ready to exchange the sacks of groceries for cash. (I know; that’s a service that went the way of doctors’ house calls and the Dodo bird. But it makes a great analogy to the single point of contact.)

In today’s world there is a glut of information deeply embedded in bureaucracies that one has to wade through to get it. Employees could spend hours or even days just locating the right person to talk to about something – particularly when interactions go across business units or companies.

Hence, it saves both time and budget dollars to flow things – as much as makes sense, at least – through single points of contact. Doing so will allow your employees to “one stop shop” as much as possible and get back to what you’re paying them to do. They simply call, email or IM the appropriate single point of contact, tell them the need and get back to doing what they do best. The single point of contact takes the search process from there. When they have the item(s) requested, they simply flow them back to the appropriate requester.

Sounds logical, doesn’t it? It works. Trust me. I’d encourage you to try it – I think you’ll enjoy the many benefits of the concept. I've "done this for money" myself and I've also worked other projects involving SPCs. It's a wonderful project management  concept to employ.