Developing Communication at eSett Oy. Diana Welander

My thesis was a development project for the company I am currently working in and it presented the development of communication in an expert service company operating in the B2B market. The aim of my thesis was to give an overview of the development in addition to keep developing the company’s communications in ever-changing situations. The goal was to help the company, first, to understand the meaning of communications, and secondly, to perform planned and systematic communication activities and to show their impacts in overall strategy work. The thesis was meant primarily for the company to evaluate the quality and the effectiveness of the communication to find out where the company stands, as well as for a tool to develop a communication plan for the company to use as guidelines to ensure effective delivery of the news and information to the market at all time, regardless of which employee distributes the news.

I chose to use a quantitative approach for my thesis, which included content analysis and an analysis of two customer satisfaction surveys that were carried out in 2019 and 2020. The content and structure of my thesis was built around my research questions. To narrow down the topic, I concentrated only on external communication and internal communication was left unstudied. The literature sources in the theoretical part helped me to apply the knowledge gained from the research in a theoretical framework and to map out the company’s key stakeholders. The theoretical part of my thesis described first corporate communications and included topics like strategic corporate communication, strategic messaging, the changing media environment due to digitalization, and crisis communication, which was followed by presenting stakeholder theory and stakeholder communication in the second part. The surveys gave me insight in how the stakeholders perceive the company’s communication and communication channels and helped me map out were possible improvements need to be considered and implemented.

My research shows that the company already started evolving from a non-planning and reactive communication approach to a more systematic a proactive way of communicating, and that many approvements was already made during the process of the research. This proves that development is naturally being continuous. The communication plan introduced in my thesis will be used as guidelines to the external communication through different channels. For the communication plan to remain functional, it will need to be updated regularly as both the information included in the plan as well as the company will change over time. The communication plan can also be modified to contain project-related topics in addition. Alternatively, bigger projects could get their own separate communication plan to be used for the communication associated to the specific project. The communication plan contains practical examples that can be used to improve and enhance external communications at the company.

The results of my research indicates that the company has evolved from previously having a non-planned and reactive approach to now take a more systematic and proactive way of communicating. The outcome of my thesis shows that there have already been many improvements made in terms of stakeholder engagement, tools, tactics, and the measuring of communications. As it should be, the company has now started to view communications less as a separate minor supporting and marketing function, and more as a part of the strategy. Cultural, language and communications resources are still a bit of a challenge to make all stakeholders extremely satisfied with the company’s communications, but on the other hand, it has the benefit of agile change and development.

I have found working on my thesis to be a great learning experience that applies to both the academic work process as well as the deepening of the basic knowledge of communication in my profession. I believe that my thesis will also help my colleagues as well as other MA-students recognize the importance of well structured, well planned, efficient, and pro-active approach on stakeholder communication.

I believe that by writing this thesis, I have gained tools for analyzing and pinpointing many problems in the company’s external communication that I have sensed for a while, and I now have the tools and facts to support this. I feel that my thesis highlights the importance of effectively planning communication, so that the company nowadays takes this topic more seriously. I look forward to keeping the communication plan updated for the company and to broaden the view for effective communication also for other persons in the company or from the media field.