Any organization that has faced an FDA inspection or ISO audit would realize how critical it is to have an optimal quality system that makes your life easier by reducing duplication and risks. During an audit, the main concern of any agency is to find out if a business has quality at the heart of its operation and that every process is followed per the quality manual. In the current competitive market, various companies recommend using an electronic Quality Management System (QMS) to achieve savings in time, and long term costs. So, whether you currently own an automated QMS or not, it is important to understand what you can gain if you maximize your electronic QMS. Some of the immediate benefits an optimum quality system can offer any business include:

• Quick return on investment
• Significant administrative time and cost savings
• Increased chances of market success
• Solid infrastructure for a robust system that supports quality related tasks and processes throughout the organisation

Five Ways to Optimize Your Quality Management System

• Integrated Solution for Quality Management

Every business faces the challenge of ensuring the entire quality system is well connected between departments and teams. One of the sure ways of optimizing a quality system is to have all quality processes connected through a central system and removing silos of information throughout the company. It’s a common occurrence that during an audit or survey, a change in the process or non-conformance is highlighted. A process change may impact three to four departments, therefore, having a centralized system that triggers a required action, based on an identified issue, would save man hours in transcribing the findings and then communicating to each stakeholder separately.

• Analysis and Reporting Capability

It’s often said that what gets measured, gets done! Through reporting and analysis tools of an automated quality system, it is easy to generate audit reports, training plans, resolve issues quickly through issue resolution trends analysis, and analyze the performance indicators of your quality system. Through built-in and customized reporting facilities, it’s simple to first get a bird’s eye view of key management information and then drill down into details if necessary.

• Take a Process-Based Approach to Quality Management

When operating under a formal QMS, whether influenced by external quality assurance requirements or not, it is necessary to provide clear and complete set of operational process maps defining the entire organization. Such process maps tie specific procedural supporting documents and forms to each process step, are dynamic to allow changes, and are easily accessible to all staff. A process-oriented quality system can yield quicker returns through marked improvements in the effort and time it takes to find, review, edit, and communicate any information change.

• Training as an Integral Part of Your Quality System

Regulatory authorities require every employee to demonstrate they are competent for their role and are being continually trained to fulfill growing job requirements, or any changes in their work processes. The quality systems enable managers to match personnel competencies to the skills and then trigger any training needs for an employee wherever there is a mismatch, or change of role.

• Scalable and Flexible System

If you are new to an automated Quality Management System, it is natural that you would like to take a stepped approach towards rolling out your quality system throughout the organisation. As an experienced user of an electronic quality system, your requirements may grow with business expansion. Having a system that is flexible and can be expanded as your needs grow is a proven way to maximize your quality system.

Electronic QMS is a proven method of achieving ISO and FDA compliance, but it’s important to optimize your software investment by choosing the right solution and expanding it for your business.

Kanupriya is a copywriter for Proquis. Proquis offers web-based compliance management and process mapping & analysis software. Proquis software provides enterprise-wide automation of processes, complete audit trail and an efficient document change management. Visit http://www.proquis.com to request a live demonstration of Proquis software.