Quality Excellence for Suppliers of Telecommunications (QuEST)
Quality is important to AT&T, and as a result the AT&T Supplier Diversity Programs are TL9000 registered. We are a founding member of the telecommunications industry's international Quality Excellence for Suppliers of Telecommunications (QuEST) forum. This forum was established to develop a consistent set of quality system requirements and metrics, that when implemented, would provide telecommunications users with faster, better and more cost-effective services. These quality standards, known as TL9000, help QuEST members, which are most of the major service providers and their suppliers, improve the quality and reliability of telecommunication services. Many of AT&T's diversity suppliers are part of the vanguard establishing QuEST TL9000 standards and hold leadership roles in this forum.
AT&T also co-chaired a principal subcommittee to develop guidelines for supplier diversity as a best practice and fully integrate supplier diversity into the concept of telecommunications quality measurements. Supplier diversity was accepted by QuEST as one of their first TL9000 best practices. Today, 37% of QuEST forum members are implementing Supplier Diversity Excellence.
Another product of this work is the Supplier Diversity Excellence Best Practice and Maturity Assessment Scale. This self-assessment tool was developed to assist QuEST members to better meet customers' supplier diversity requirements and to incorporate "best practices" into their own Supplier Diversity Programs. It is consistent with the QuEST TL9000 standards and is available as part of the QuEST web library.
To learn more about QuEST visit www.questforum.org.
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