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The software syndicate

As Stephen Davies' article illustrates, the onward march of software development is unremitting these days. Software can be found in all aspects of business and with its increasingly sophisticated technology we are becoming more and more reliant on it. As well as driving innovative new artificial intelligence solutions for auditor training, advanced software packages are helping many quality professionals and their organisations reap the benefits of migrating from a paper-based quality management system (QMS).

Such software solutions aim to help companies take more proactive and preventative steps, rather than analysing their failures after a problem has arisen. But with the selection of products available growing at a rate of knots, quality management software purchasing can be a mind-bendingly complex area. Here's a round up of the aspects businesses should consider before buying, and the different kinds of areas in which software can help.

Before you buy

• consider the costs. If you think your paper-based QMS doesn't cost anything, think again. How much time does it take for the quality manager to write out new procedures, photocopy information and distribute it to colleagues? Lowest cost should not be the key consideration - not all software offers the same functionality
• all systems, quality or otherwise, need to be developed to support the core business processes that are necessary for the company to operate effectively, and should never be developed in isolation
• ensure that the IT department is on board from day one
• ensure you understand the facts and present a clear case for change to the decision-makers, whether these are IT managers or finance directors
• make a gap analysis to determine what needs the company has
• as a minimum a software product should:
  • be simple to understand and maintain;
  • increase efficiency; provide a return on
  • investment within a satisfactory timeframe;
  • enable compliance to standards
• research the software management system market before you buy
• consider getting impartial advice from similar sized organisations in your sector which have recently implemented a software management system
• decide on a system which can happily integrate with existing software
• prepare a checklist and ensure each software solution fulfils this criteria
• consider external support in the short-term to get the selected system up and running as quickly as possible
• discuss current and future potential requirements
• conduct an internal review with potential users of the new software to determine all requirements
• keep the end user in mind throughout the decision-making process
• once the choice has been narrowed down, bring the potential software providers in-house for a demonstration and allow future users to have a go

What do you need?

Ask what you will need software for, and what capabilities are necessary. Here are some characteristics of current software:

• document management - you will need to ensure: ease of maintenance; versioning of documents to identify updates; revision history; archiving of previous versions of documents; approval before publishing; review before and after publishing
• graphics with hyperlinks
• links to supporting applications and databases
• audit scheduling, reporting and analysis recording
• non-conformance reporting, analysis and fault recording
• corrective and preventive action recording, reporting and analysis
• suggestion recording for improvements
• customer complaints - satisfaction index monitoring and reporting
• risk-assessment
• action register - who needs to do what and when
• action tracking with personal risk task
• knowledge management - retention of information
• health and safety modules - accident and incident, environmental impact, control of hazardous substances
• strategy - driven from management through all levels of the organisation
• performance measurement - analyse weekly data, monthly, quarterly, annually stored in all associated modules
• compliance - links documents within the system to individual clauses with your relevant standards
• training record maintenance
• calibration record maintenance
• general: security and editing rights; robustness/stability; multi-site connectivity; online help facility; multi-tier structure for documents

Don't be daunted by the magnitude of the market. Examine your company's current and long-term needs, working out costs and considering when and how it should be implemented - and get IT's support.