So you’re in a process of selecting an electronic QMS to improve your quality and make your processes more efficient. There are many solutions out there and everybody promises the best system with great best practices and industry expertise, so how can you choose the right system for you? Here are 10 questions you can ask yourself and the QMS vendor to make sure this is a right fit for you:
1. Does it offer a full quality solution?
In many cases, companies choose to implement different solutions for different areas of their quality. It usually decreases the visibility and makes the users switch between systems to get the full view. Using one system for managing all your documents together with the employees’ training, quality events, CAPAs, and other areas of your quality program makes it easier to find the data you need in seconds.
Simploud is an all-inclusive system, it includes all the quality processes, document and training management, asset management, environmental health and safety, LIMS, and more.
2. Is it using the latest technology?
Cloud systems have changed the way companies are managing their data and critical business processes and reduced their need to deal with IT and cyber security in addition to their core business. When you want to choose a QMS, make sure it uses the latest technology allowing you to focus on your business and let the vendor deal with the rest.
3. Will it increase collaboration between our employees?
Collaboration between employees, external suppliers, partners, and regulatory authorities is critical for running a business in a compliant environment. When you select a system to manage your quality, make sure it offers built-in collaboration between all stakeholders, internal and external.
Simploud offers embedded collaboration tools between internal employees, external parties, and regulatory authorities.
4. Is it intuitive enough?
Bad user experience is more than frustrating – it wastes time and encourages manual workarounds, which hampers data collection and impairs process visibility. Choose a QMS that is so intuitive for an occasional user to simply log in and get their work done.
Simploud offers a similar experience no matter where you are in the system allowing to execute most common actions from a single screen.
5. Is it flexible enough to put me in control of our company’s quality?
Flexibility is crucial, you want the software you choose to align to your existing quality program and not the other way around. Most solutions build their systems around a generic, best-practice approach that cannot be amended without a considerable investment in time and cost. So unless you want to spend a significant amount on tailoring the solution to your needs you’re forced to adapt your existing processes and practices to the solution, rather than the other way around.
6. Does it support risk management?
A modern QMS should have embedded risk management tools to guide and support quality management activities. Risk-based thinking is done on every aspect of our lives to get the best outcome. The concept of risk has always been implicit in quality management guidelines and is now built into the whole management system.
A proactive risk-based approach ensures better results. Select a system that establishes a systematic approach to risk, rather than treating it as a single process of the QMS.
Simploud offers an embedded risk management tool allowing to identify and mitigate risks related to any process.
7. Can it be scaled when we grow?
Your company may be small now, it’s likely you’ll scale in the coming years, your system should support your future business needs. It means that the system should be scalable both from the standpoint of number of records it can handle as well as the number of users that can use it concurrently. It is common for companies to continually digitize more areas of their QMS over time after having implemented the system for one particular area of pain.
Simploud is built on top of the Salesforce platform and supports tens of thousands of simultaneous users globally so you’re covered.
8. Can I impact the product roadmap and technology direction?
On-premise or cloud systems that update infrequently fail to keep up with today’s regulatory, supply chain, or corporate complexity. Any new system should update multiple times a year and be flexible enough to meet new business needs as they arise. When you select a system consider the long term goals of this system. Choose a vendor that continues innovating their solution based on these ever-changing business needs and updates to regulatory requirements.
Look for QMS providers that consistently measure and improve their product’s performance, have a strong implementation record, and judge their performance based on your success.
Simploud releases major updates every 3-4 months to add improvements and capabilities to the system. During the past 3 years, all releases were on time and more than 50% of the capabilities added in each release are based on customer feedbacks.
9. How easy it is to implement the system and what is the cost?
Once you purchased the system, the important part begins. The system should be implemented in your company. This is the point where most software projects fail.
Many QMS vendors are offering their best practice to save you time and money on the system implementation. Small and medium size companies are taking this approach to reduce the total cost but they are required to adjust to a new way of working that may be different with what they actually need/do/ . If you can find a system that gives you the best practices but still allows you to adapt it to the way you work, yet does not require any additional cost then you got your answer
Simploud is the only pure subscription QMS and it offers industry best practices for all quality process with unlimited flexibility to adapt to any company need without any additional cost.
10. Can the system integrate with other systems?
Regulated companies are not operating in silos. Whether it concerns lab or trial data, financial systems or quality systems, the possibility for interactivity, collaboration and cooperation are essential for making the right decisions based on the most updated and accurate data. It is therefore of great importance that the QMS you choose can be integrated with other systems you currently (or plan to) have in the future. That’s why integration capabilities not only draw data from systems, but are also able to send data back to those systems and perform different actions programmatically rather than using the user interface.
Simploud can integrate with any other system with 10 different APIs allowing to solve any integration requirement in addition to out of the box tools allowing to easily setup common integrations with point and click configuration.
