Impact of Covid-19 on Quality Management

With the COVID-19 Pandemic hit, there has been an unprecedented disruption experienced in the global economy and trade, as both production and consumption slide backward across the globe. Recent research from the World Trade Organization has demonstrated a significant impact on demand and supply chain in the world economy, causing substantial disruptions to the trades.

Governments should realize that the tradelines must remain open, through different means including air and sea freights, to ensure the continuous flow of goods and other essential supplies. Also, they need to take immediate actions against export costs and other tariff barriers blocking the trade of crucial goods, especially medical supplies, at such a critical time.

The spread of COVID-19 has made quality and compliance management even more critical. It has provided every organization an opportunity to change how they organize their quality processes amid all the restrictions of working from home and social distancing. Continuously increasing spread has impacted the supply chain operations globally.

The only solution that can work for businesses now is innovation and increased collaboration. It will help companies recover from the coronavirus’s impact, enabling them to work more efficiently for managing risks and other operational issues.

The disrupted supply chain, shortage of labor and resources, and financial difficulties are not the only problems highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic situation. There are certain aspects of the business that need critical attention for continued business operations and excellence. Those aspects include;

1. Supplier Quality Issues

Supplier quality was always a critical consideration for delivering superior quality products, primarily for the highly regulated industries. The common issues of the supply chain, i.e., speed, and scalability, are highlighted even more during the ongoing pandemic times.

The new normal requires some significant supplier processes changes, including increased supplier qualification, inspection management, and quality checks. It can be acquired easily with digital tools such as cloud-based supplier quality management software, inspection management software, and audit management software. Such solutions help businesses to standardize quality management without any hassles.

2. Embedding a Culture of Quality

With the COVID-19 Pandemic situation, businesses have realized the need for embedding a culture of quality wherein everyone is responsible for quality. The traditional paper-based systems lacked visibility and traceability, which resulted in maintaining sustainable quality.

It would be best if you have a cloud-based, comprehensive quality management software in place to overcome all the challenges, including flexibility, accessibility, traceability, visibility, and security. It enables you to streamline all the key processes to ensure accuracy and consistency. Also, a cloud-based quality system adapts to changes quickly and efficiently. If you also want to align the critical processes with your business quality objectives, an advanced enterprise quality management system must.

3. Flexibility in Managing Quality Processes

Finally, businesses have realized the lack of flexibility in managing their quality processes, primarily when their quality teams work remotely. Communication and collaboration have become more intense in the current business scenario, which cannot be catered by the traditional paper-based quality management systems.

Whether you want to streamline the training procedures or standardize the complaints management cycle, everything needs to be managed in a closed-loop system wherein you can identify and mitigate the issues much efficiently than ever. A robust quality management software can help you succeed by providing more control and confidence in managing all the critical quality processes. An EQMS software, build on a cloud platform, gives you greater flexibility to work the process and product quality without any significant technical challenges. It is, in fact, the most reliable solution for now and the future.

In addition to the aspects mentioned above, you can leverage multiple benefits of upgrading your existing quality systems to next-generation enterprise quality management software. Some of the key benefits are;

1. You can ensure improved communication among your quality teams.
2. You can identify effective resolutions for every complaint by analyzing data and NC trends.
3. You can establish a standardized change management process for hassle-free process and product improvements.
4. You can streamline the investigation and CAPA process to manage quality issues more efficiently.
5. You can reduce process cycle time and overall operational costs.
6. You can improve documentation to meet compliance.
7. You can reduce the number of product recalls and rework.
8. You can significantly increase customer satisfaction.
9. You can create effective training programs to make your workforce more competent and skilled
10. You can manage the equipment calibration and maintenance activities seamlessly.
11. You can control the supplier quality and other related processes more efficiently.

Don’t quality management software sounds like a worthy investment to achieve your business sustainability goals?

But that doesn’t mean you can rely on any quality management software available on the internet. You will easily find numerous eQMS solution. The real deal is finding the right one to suit your business’s ever-growing and changing quality requirements.

How would you go about choosing the right quality management software for your business?

Here are some key considerations that will help you select the right eQMS software for your business;

1. Go for a Software with Intuitive Interface

While some companies overlook the advantages of having enterprise quality management software with an intuitive interface, it could mean a lot of difference for your quality teams. If they are given software that’s difficult to use daily, they are more likely to resist the technical solutions. It will also cause slower processes, increased compliance issues, and lowered productivity over time.

It would help if you got a powerful eQMS software with an intuitive interface to improve organizational productivity and profitability. Also, it gives your teams more confidence and control to manage quality processes efficiently than ever.

2. Go for a Software that Requires Minimal Training

The ease of the platform is the quickest way to know whether your team will adopt the change. An eQMS software that requires minimal training is likely to be used by your quality teams more often. The more you will focus on lowering your employees’ struggles, the higher the employee engagement will be. Also, you can save a fair amount of training costs.

The best solution would be an easy-to-use and user-friendly quality management software. Your team can quickly get familiar with such software, unlike a complex platform that may lead to inefficiencies.

3. Go for a Software with Quick Set-Up

Implementing an enterprise quality management software is itself an investment. But if it will come with additional expenses like new systems, resources, and staff, you may not find it worthy enough. The majority of the businesses would like to invest in software to help them gain value from their quality processes sooner.

But it is not possible with traditional quality systems. You need to upgrade to a cloud-based eQMS software that requires no additional infrastructure or storage space requirements. All you need is a seamless internet connection to manage your quality processes from anywhere across the globe.

4. Go for software that Offers Flexibility and Scalability.

One of the critical functions you will want your eQMS to serve is creating and managing the necessary documentation, which may become a challenge with paper-based systems. You may experience difficulties like storage space, security from physical damage, theft, and much more.

On the other hand, using eQMS software simplifies things for you. A cloud-based document management system offers flexibility, security, traceability, and accessibility to share, manage, and track the critical documentation while improving overall communication and collaboration with your quality teams: the advanced security controls and ease to scale make cloud-based document systems a worthy investment for modern enterprises.

5. Go for a Software that Fits in Your Budget

Many business owners think that upgrading to a technical quality solution is an expensive deal. The reality is far different from this perception. A web-based quality management system saves many costs that businesses generally spend managing paper-based document management and quality management systems.

You can easily find a quality management software within your budget and get it configured to your business needs so you can quickly gain value from it. It is always preferable to consider the total cost of quality than one-time savings when looking for a budget-friendly enterprise quality management software.

6. Go for a Software that Can Be Easily Configured

A quality management software that can be configured to suit your business needs is the real smart investment. It allows you to align your critical processes with quality objectives without any hassles. It tends to make your quality journey smoother when your employees adapt to newer technologies and tools quickly.

The cloud-based software like Qualityze EQMS suite gives enterprises a clear advantage over other solutions with configurable workflows to streamline the key processes and create a closed-loop quality system to foster a culture of continuous improvements. With configurable workflows, it becomes easy to standardize the processes while reducing the cycle time.

Bonus Tip

An enterprise quality management software has become an inevitable need for modern businesses to pace with the ever-changing customer and compliance requirements while mitigating the operational issues. Cloud-based software provides you more control and confidence in managing the quality processes in a standardized, efficient, and consistent fashion.

It will not be wrong to say that your eQMS selection enterprise can make or break your enterprise’s quality management processes. It can help you make some significant improvements in the product and process quality, supplier quality, customer satisfaction ratio, or a complete failure in meeting customer and compliance requirements. That’s why; it is essential to select the best eQMS system carefully, logically, and strategically.

Before finalizing your selection of quality management software, you’ll want to get insights into different platforms and analyze their performance for your business process alignment. You can begin your research with a quick demo of Qualityze. You can check out all the features and functionalities in real-time for absolutely no costs. Get in touch with our customer success team to know more.