Ensure more Traceability with A Standardized Audit Management System

An audit is an inevitable part of quality assurance since it helps the organization to verify the best practices at every level. With the regulatory bodies getting more stringent, the audits are now more accountable. The audit findings provide quality teams more insights on the process performance so they can make appropriate changes and align processes with their quality objectives.

However, going through an audit can be a different experience for every organization based on their regular business practices. For example – the companies that are following best practices and can demonstrate them through in well-documented and recorded form may find it easy to pass an audit. On the other hand, the companies having no proper documentation can find audits tedious and time-consuming process.

Audits matter for accountability, traceability, and visibility of the data every organization produces regularly. A company needs to take audit recommendations seriously if it wants to improve its process and product quality. Audits also drive continuous improvements, which is an essential regulatory requirement for organizations striving for consistent excellence and compliance.

Having an Audits Management System, helps organization to drive multiple benefits, regardless of its industry focus. Five key benefits of conducting regular internal and external reviews are:

• Eliminating Inefficiencies

Regular audits help quality teams to identify the process and product inefficiencies by verifying the best practices followed in the organization.

The most common habit that often leads to inefficiencies is creating a process and then continuing with it without any review. However, the current cutting-edge business environment demands more tweaks in every process to achieve goals within the specified time.

There is a need for change in our perception of inefficiencies. For example – if our goals evolve by the time, we must ensure that our processes and system also evolve. It is rightly quoted that

“You can’t get different results by doing things the same way.”

Also, you should measure every component of your business operations through detailed audits to keep a check on inefficiencies, including documentation and communication, to ensure everyone is on the same page.

• Improve Credibility

Audits confirm the worthiness of the processes that drive continuous improvements. They are an integral part of workflows and reassure that all the processes are aligned well with the quality objectives.

The regulatory audits are thorough than internal audits. They provide reassurance about the organization’s commitment to the best practices to achieve customer and compliance requirements. The verified companies tend to gain more credibility in the marketplace, gaining more customer confidence.

Keeping your processes regularly audited ensures that your organization follows best practices to produce and deliver the best quality products consistently.

The credibility could mean more business for you since it reflects the perfection in the way you manage the business process even if it is handling customer complaints. Credibility is the confidence that backs you firmly in the competitive marketplace.

Related Article : Traceability in EQMS: Why It is One of The Critical Requirements

• Better Planning and Quality Improvements

Audits enable timely planning of the quality processes in the organization so to ensure efficient utilization of the resources. It also includes identification of risks, the scope of improvements, value-adding steps, and the gaps that should be effectively managed to achieve desired results.

Audits help evaluate every aspect of process performance based on the indicators and metrics defined so that you can plan the new activities and audits accordingly. And if you will be able to plan the audit frequency for different types of audits such as IT audit, Process audit, System audit, and more, you will be managing the inefficiencies more effectively.

Audits also help drive quality improvements in the organization by efficiently tracking the ongoing process and activities.

Related Article : 8 Effective Steps to Perform an Internal Audit Successfully

• Maintaining compliance

The main objective of performing audits is to check whether the processes designed in the organization are aligned with the compliance requirements defined by the regulatory bodies.

Audits determine if the documentation is up-to-date, tools are upgraded, the work instructions are communicated well, the working environment is safe and suitable, and maintenance of records to reassure preliminary compliance guidelines. However, third-party audits can be more comprehensive based on the specific requirements.

• Increased Traceability

Audits and traceability are closely connected, especially when it comes to business success.

Audits helps to trace product and process performance right from the beginning – be it supply chain process, an inspection of raw materials, production, or quality checks. It maintains a trail of what, when, and who for quick assessment of processes.

The increased traceability further works as a risk-management tool for the organizations that helps to prevent the delivery of faulty or unsafe products to the market. To put simple, a streamlined audit process helps managing product recalls much more effectively.

Opting the Software as Solution for Regular Audits

The traditional audit management system are no longer efficient in tracking the issues and driving process-level improvements. Instead, you miss a lot of growth opportunities. Your audit team will spend most of its productive time in manual data entry, which is hard to track, manage, and evaluate.

In addition to the collection of data, many other audit processes require an ample amount of time from the planning till execution, like creating checklists, managing audit findings, reducing audit cycle time and costs, etc. while fostering continuous improvement.

The data records being generated every hour adds to the complexity of conducting manual internal audits. The best solution to escape all the complexities involved in the manual audits is implementing a cloud-driven audit management system that can manage operational and compliance risks with end-to-end process management of internal and external audits.

The Audit Management Software system, like Qualityze, is the next-generation solution to identify and eliminate inefficiencies from the system. It is a cloud-driven solution that features an intuitive user interface. It comprises capabilities like digital signature, audit trail, email approval, audit calendar, scheduler, and much more to achieve audit excellence while meeting compliance.

You can create a checklist library with customized audit checklist templates, do audit planning effectively, improve overall audit program efficiency while reducing cost, manage audit findings, drive continuous improvement, offer greater visibility of audit results. You can conduct offline audits too.

Related Article - Sourcing with Integrity: A Complete Guide to Conflict Minerals Regulations

From creating an audit plan till closure, Qualityze Audit Management System Software helps you standardize all the processes to ensure consistency. You can also leverage automatic tracking of audit activities, set the evaluation criteria, uniform tracking methodology, and corrective action tracking tools through this powerful audit solution.

Would you like to streamline and standardize the audit management processes in your organization to drive significant improvements?

Get in touch with our customer success team on 1-877-207-8616 or email at info@qualityze.com, and we will help you in making audits workflows streamlined.