11 steps to help you choose the right quality system

Investing in a quality system can quickly become an extensive process. Imagine, for example, that you buy your dream home. Eventually you also choose to make other updates and changes. It is the same way with a quality system.

The management becomes primarily important in the involvement in such a process from A to Z. This is important so that a person does not sit alone and make decisions on their own, decisions in which a management group should be involved.

Some would call this a management system, and therefore the leadership role becomes important ahead of the acquisition of a quality system.

To help you and your business, we give you 11 tips to get you started when choosing a quality system.

Notifications for audits, incident handling or other tasks are important. Setting this up should be easy for a super user, and should be able to be changed after the amount of information is sent out.

Good functionality gives you a simple overview of your own tasks, documents, responsibilities and favorite searches. It must be easy to set up the solution and, not least, be able to follow the organisation's changes along the way.

You first choose modules according to your own needs. It is recommended that you expand the modules once the quality system is up and running well.

Therefore, choose 3-4 modules that are important such as: Document management , Deviation management , Risk management and digital checklists.

In the next round, an Annual Wheel, Competence mapping or Maintenance could be put in place. Be careful not to proceed too quickly with regard to training the employees.

Most companies think about processes in their organisation. The quality system should have a good visual process map that can be easily navigated to other sub-processes.

A process map is divided into management processes, which are the company's governing documents that tell how the organization is structured, which policies are governed by and the company's goals and strategies.

Support processes are supporting documents for the execution of the company's management processes and value chain. Examples of this are procurement processes, employment processes or ICT. The value chain is the process for creating value in the company. This is often set up with process arrows to visualize a process from the receipt of raw materials to the delivery of the finished product to the customer.

More and more people are requesting integrations with other subject systems. A quality system should have good functionality for this. Map this well with your IT department ahead of a meeting with a supplier.

Get an overview of what is needed, and feel free to include a requirement specification so that the supplier can come up with an exact price offer. The same also applies to system changes that must be adapted to your company.

Now we must choose a supplier, and the service agreement must be signed. Here it is important to read carefully.

Get an overview of what is included in the different prices.

Questions you must ask yourself are: What is included in the annual operating cost? How is access to support? How long is the response time for support? What is the notice period? Ownership of data and export of data after termination of the agreement? Uptime and response times? Data backup?

Get a Data Processor Agreement. This is required in relation to GDPR and privacy. Get an insight into which data is protected and how the provider processes it.

Implementation and training are the penultimate step in the process. Have a pre-meeting where this is well planned and set up in a diagram.

Set a goal to get the solution fully implemented, and feel free to ask for an acceptance test after the implementation. The supplier must also be able to demonstrate a training plan and implementation of the training.

By choosing a system where the superuser builds up the system and settings, (even after a training together with the supplier) will be able to provide a saving in costs for implementation.

Remember that most of the time it is not the building of the system itself that takes time, but the work at the front of mapping the processes in the company. Do this together with an adviser at the supplier.