Integrity Matters
By Steven K. Bryant, PhD, AMP Past President
These are tough times for CEOs. Corporate and individual greed seems to have taken over, and "accounting irregularities" and other executive indiscretions have put all of us who are, or were, in charge of a business in an unfavorable light. These actions of a few have caused me to think about the values we hold at AMP and what this means to our clients and prospective clients. You see, just making money has never been the first goal at AMP. Certainly, we have strived to achieve a fair profit, but our organizational emphasis has always been, and always will be, on putting quality and service first.
By doing business with AMP, you can count on several things in today's uncertain environment:
A contract is a contract. When we provide prices for our services and enter into an agreement to deliver them, there will be no waffling on the contract price, even if we have underestimated the work to be done. In more than 20 years of doing business, I can truthfully say that AMP has always delivered the services for which a client contracted at the agreed upon price, without exception. While estimating the cost of measurement and association management projects is not an exact science, you will find that once we provide a cost estimate and sign a contract based on that amount, there will be no quibbling or last minute cost "surprises."
We deliver the "bad news." While none of us like the mistakes that sometimes go along with this business, when a difficulty occurs in a client program, no organization responds better than AMP. Even though it may be tempting to put a positive "spin" on the human errors for which we are sometimes responsible, you will find that your AMP program director or management executive will frankly discuss with you what has happened and how it occurred, even if it makes us look bad.
Over the years, I have found that when disaster strikes, "telling it like it is" has served the company and its clients very well. Only by knowing all of the facts about some difficulty can we determine the best corrective action. Therefore, at AMP, we encourage our staff to be honest in all respects when they have contributed to a problem, with the emphasis on preventing similar situations in the future. We don't enjoy delivering the bad news when a mistake has occurred, but you may be certain the information we provide accurately reflects our understanding of the situation.
We take responsibility for quality. At AMP, we have never been about being the largest testing and management company, only the best. Our staff has been carefully recruited and trained to expect to succeed and to demand the highest level of performance from themselves and their co-workers. I have called this expectation "AMP Quality," which is defined as the best products and services that we can deliver for you, our clients.
Of course, being human, we sometimes fail to live up to our expectations and unforeseen difficulties occur. When these are our fault, you will find that we admit it freely and that AMP will willingly take responsibility for correcting the problem to your satisfaction, at our expense. The times during which our service level disappoints you (and us) are the times that you will find AMP's organizational integrity coming through, providing absolute proof that quality service, not profits, is the primary goal of the company. We will resolve the difficulty to your satisfaction, no matter the cost to us in terms of extra work or expense.
We provide financial statements you can rely upon. One of the things you want to know about your testing agency or management firm is "does it have enough resources to stay in business and provide the services expected?" An accurate response to this question may depend upon the accuracy of the financial statements the company issues. With AMP, you may be sure that the financial picture provided of the company by our annual financial statements is as accurate as we can make it. An independent accounting firm audits the internally prepared financial statements of AMP each year and issues an opinion as to the accuracy of the statements. Each year, this statement has been an "unqualified" opinion that the financial statements reflect a fair and accurate assessment of the company's financial position.
You may also be sure that AMP strives to be conservative when reporting and recording any financial transactions. With a certified public accountant as our chief financial officer, AMP has the in-house expertise to produce financial records that meet all of today's accounting standards and withstand external scrutiny. During its more than 20-year history, AMP's financial records have been examined during routine, random IRS business audits without any resulting adjustments or taxes due. While an IRS auditor's visit is the last thing most of us would hope for, the fact that our financial records have come through these intense reviews with flying colors is additional documentation that you may take the accuracy of AMP's financial statements "to the bank."
I hope these few paragraphs give clear indication of AMP's primary business commitment: quality and service come first. As my successor Gary A. Smith puts it, "our word is our bond," and I personally believe this makes all the difference.