With the advancement of technology, more and more businesses are opting to undergo a digital transformation. It’s understandable, as it improves core business functions by making them more efficient.

However, there’s more to digital transformation than using apps that speed up a company’s processes. Innovation is an integral part of it — everyone wants an advantage over the competition which digital technologies might provide. Still, what all businesses need to understand is that digital transformation is also significant for Quality, and here’s why:

Shared Customer-Centric Focus

The end goal of digital conversion or any other IT initiative is improved end-user experience. Quality Assurance shares this focus as it aims to preserve good corporate reputation. However, that’s not the only goal of Quality Assurance — other than consistently good IT service and security for all users, QA needs to worry about the seamless launching of products and services. Staying ahead of the competition is crucial, but not at the cost of sufficient assurance of quality.

Importance for Innovation

There has been some discussion on what counts as “true” digital transformation. CIOs often merely digitally optimize their business, but they don’t transform it and innovate. It’s of paramount importance to have a good business vision when it comes to digital transformation, which is usually disruptive to the business or industry. Without QA to ensure business outcomes and a high level of customer value, that becomes even harder to accomplish.

Quality Challenges in Digital Transformation

Digital transformation covers plenty of different areas such as omnichannel solutions, IoT, and devices, mobile solutions, big data and analytics solutions, cloud services, etc. QA needs to adapt in all of these areas and provide the best customer value by focusing on eliminating some of the known weak points of each area.

For example, with mobile solutions, quality would have to work on improving the security and performance, while increasing functionality and making it all more straightforward to use than it’s ever been. To do this efficiently, QA would have to be able to test its solutions extensively — and that requires tools and expert staff.

How QA Can Meet a Company’s Digital Transformation Needs

Every QA strategy ultimately focuses on improving the end-user experience, which is what digital transformation is all about. However, working towards the same goals may not be enough. Business would still have to invest more funds into QA for it to keep up with the ever-increasing demands of IT advancement. Security and integration testing need to become a continuous practice, especially during the early stages of developing a system or software.

EQMS as a Way to Improve QA

A right way of ensuring that QA does a consistently good job throughout the entire process is using an eQMS to back up your digital transformation system. Despite the potentially high costs, if an eQMS is implemented well, it could make the process of digital transformation easier and improve your bottom line.

Our very own Intellect eQMS can quickly adapt to your company’s unique digital transformation needs. It’s an out of the box solution that can keep your workflow intact while making it possible for you to smoothly go through your digital transformation process and keep your QA on a high level.

Rapidly changing technologies primarily drive Digital Transformation, but its adoption is dependent on a carefully planned out strategy. Big companies and organizations that adopt digital transformation have their goals and digitalization objectives predefined. It helps the process of digital conversion to be fully integrated into the business process rather than optimizing ad-hoc functionalities.

In short, real benefits of digital transformation do not lie in optimizing individual technologies used rather than the overall integration and dependencies of the whole system.

Quality dramatically impacts all aspects of business such as profitability, brand equity and overall operational efficiency and business performance. Thus, an enterprise quality management system is placed at the core of the value chain of each business, and most medium-to-high level enterprises implement it as a backbone of their business operations.

So let’s lay out a few steps to creating a digital transformation strategy for your eQMS integration.

Assess Your Quality Capabilities - Needs, Strengths, and Weaknesses

As mentioned above, you need to lay out a structure and define what quality management aspects you need improving. Surely there are weak points in your workflow that need addressing both in technical and cultural aspects of your business operations. Digital transformation doesn’t happen overnight, and as with any automation or new technology adoption, your business operational efficiency will be impacted. It will happen either because of new technology integration and it’s compliance with existing architecture, or training and education needed for it to be adopted by employees.

Understand Different Approaches That Can Be Taken

Enterprises try to integrate eQMS as an ad-hoc solution to solving specific pain points of the system such is CAPA and doc control. Again, quality management system should be at the core of a value chain as it affects multiple modules such as CRM, MOM, PLM, and SCM. If ERP orchestrates the business processes, the eQMS plays a role in quality management throughout the whole process chain. If you are looking for a digital transformation of a specific aspect of a business, you should look into different approaches to achieve this. However, in long-term, a well-designed strategy around streamlined architecture backed with an eQMS is hugely beneficial.

Determine the Gaps in Functionalities and Invest in IT Architecture

We’ve already mentioned some of the main obstacles when adopting new technologies and making integration to existing business operations and workflow. The effect of this can be dampened by reevaluating the whole business operation processes and pointing out gaps in architecture and operational efficiency that could be improved. Investing in IT architecture of one medium-to-large enterprise can present a considerable expense; however, if planned out correctly it gives a proportional ROI.

Your Next Step

Regardless of industry or organizational complexity a great eQMS is defined by five essential elements - process integration, flexibility and extensibility of the system, centralized monitoring and management, compliance enablement, and culture and quality compliance. Most organizations today build their own QMS solutions or push ERP to their limits because they fear their business operational efficiency will be negatively hit throughout the transition period of digital transformation.

And this is where Intellect eQMS comes into play. We’ve built an out of the box eQMS that is compliant with most industries or business verticals. A solution that can be highly customized to adapt to your business processes and enable a smooth transition to digital transformation of your Quality Management without damaging your workflow.

What business doesn’t want to speed up decision-making, assure quality, and improve collaboration thanks to enhanced visibility? Because of the digital revolution, all those things are achievable. However, before companies can get to that point, they need to embrace change, let go of outdated processes and undergo a digital transformation.

The transition involves leveraging digital technologies to enhance business models, processes, and activities. The change brought on by a digital transformation means letting go of old approaches and adopting a new IT system, letting go of legacy operations that are no longer effective or close to becoming obsolete.

Workflows become automated, resulting in improved efficiency which increases productivity and profitability. Your company will enjoy enhanced accessibility as digital processes become available anywhere via connected devices. And with quicker access to up-to-date data, your leaders can make better decisions faster.

Here are some more ways that a digital transformation will help optimize your business.

Better And Deeper Capabilites

Digitizing your company also means the capability to leverage software and tools that revolutionize the way companies operate; these solutions include Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, Business Process Management (BPS), and Quality Management System (QMS).

Better Quality And Performance

To ensure excellence in products and internal processes, quality management cannot be stressed enough. Quality management is what allows organizations to identify their weakness and areas that need to be fortified.

The quality of a product is based on a number of factors: durability, reliability, and performance. Quality is what businesses can ultimately use to differentiate themselves from their competitors. It’s what keep customers loyal and satisfied. QMS eliminates defects, ensuring you’re consistently creating quality products and services that meet expectations.

Putting Your QMS Solution To Work

A QMS solution allows your business to effectively manage and approve quality, risk, governance, and compliance. Without QMS software, companies wouldn’t have a formalized system that effectively documents policies and processes to ensure they are compliant and meet mandatory FDA regulations.

The right QMS solution optimizes your business, saving your company money, improving quality, safety, and compliance. By executing a QMS, the frequency of quality issues is decreased, allowing you to save on costs that would be lost due to multiple errors that outdated systems are prone to.

The right QMS also helps train employees who must understand their roles in the quality management process. It creates a standard that results in fewer errors and improved response time to obstacles that prove costly if not approached immediately. And with a feature that measures data points, you are in a better position to manage risk as well as analyze existing risks.

Ultimately, your business’s digital transformation and adoption of innovative software and tools such as QMS mean the ability to automate business processes that lead to operation optimization. The whole process radically changes your business, allowing you catch up with competition who adopted innovative practices early on. Not only are you saving costs by effectively managing risk and reducing errors, but you’re also increasing revenues because you’re consistently producing quality products that your customers love.

All companies, regardless of industry, are responsible for ensuring that their policies and processes are designed to comply with applicable laws and regulations. Because of the complexities of regulations and requirements, many companies struggle to secure compliance.

Companies who compliment their efforts with technology have found that staying compliant has become far less challenging. In the past, businesses had no choice but to rely on Excel sheets and Word docs to keep track of all their people and processes. It meant exchanging numerous emails and risking communications getting lost. Innovative software means the end to duplicate reporting and copying data repeatedly.

These centralized technology tools meant having confidence in your compliance and meeting regulatory requirements. Compliance workflow automation gives you the ability to audit multiple tasks into one process and schedule these processes to run on a regular basis automatically.

While the technology has been revolutionary, it still doesn’t relieve compliance teams of monitoring people, processes, and anyone else who must meet compliance obligations.

One of the crucial steps to ensuring compliance is streamlining workflows to ensure that only employees who should have access to specific data have relevant access. The purpose of a workflow is to divide processes into smaller steps which are passed to different people with the company.

Because of the multiple exchange of hands in documents, there could be numerous submissions for review and need for amendments. All the necessary steps should be taken into account and control processes must be enforced, and verification of information should be ensured.

Here are some tips track and monitor workflows to ensure that they achieve compliance, and nothing is overlooked or goes missing:

1. Identify Legal Obligations

What are all the compliance obligations and how do they impact your business? Once you have identified what these are, interpret them into specific compliance requirement statements.

Each of these requirements should be organized according to underlying regulations and codes along with common requirements such as policy development and monitoring requirements.

2. List All Parties Subject to Audits

List everyone who will be held responsible for meeting compliance obligations; this includes people, vendors, 3rd parties, sites, and processes. Because this will likely be a comprehensive list, be sure to organize them in department folders.

3. Evaluate Level of Risk

It’s impossible to monitor every aspect of your business at all times; instead of attempting to do so, focus your attention on where risk is highest. Identify who you would consider as compliance risks to your business based on criteria that evaluate the levels of risk.

4. Determine of Level of Attention

Set up your system to conduct audits regularly. Audit frequency should be established based on the level of risk. For obvious reasons, high-risk people, processes, and parties should be audited more frequently than those that are considered as low-level risks.

While the right software can help you achieve workflow compliance, the reality is that your employees are the risk that you will have the least control over. To become fully compliant, it’s important to not only streamline your processes and systems but also regularly review your people.

For businesses to keep up with the competition and respond to the change in consumer demand, they need to let go of outdated interfaces and practices. But before a company can make the digital transformation, it needs to decide how ready they are.

Beyond adapting to new IT systems and equipment, business culture will also be transformed. Not only will leadership need to establish a digital transformation strategy in relation to systems, process, and technology, but it needs to manage any resistance from employees who may worry about being replaced by new technology.

As you prepare for your digital transformation, alleviate the fears of your employees by empowering them with knowledge through updates and training. Your compliance team should also be involved in the early stages of your digital transformation to ensure alignment and keep all departments on the same digital page with regards to conducting business in full compliance with all laws and regulations.

In preparation for the transition, establish where your company is currently and what your goals are. You also have to determine if your organization has the resources and expertise to get you there. There are three main categories that your company is probably currently in:

Legacy system -  A legacy system refers to old method technology or an outdated computer system. These systems do not integrate with IoT. And without the ability to connect via IoT, a company with a legacy system will be out of sync with real-time operations. These systems will not be fit to meet the demands of today’s digital environment.

Web-enabled – While not ideal for digital transformations that are data-intensive, web-enabled platforms provide some data interaction. They also have a more user-friendly interface.

Digital ready – Your digital transformation will be hindered if your company doesn’t have a digital-ready culture. Digital-ready cultures are those that are highly innovative and whose decision-making is data-driven. If digital ideas and solution are your default option, then your organization has a digital-first mindset and are, therefore, digital ready.

In preparation for a digital transformation, your company must have a digital-ready culture and systems. One of the crucial first steps towards your digital transformation is deciding the right type of cloud that meets your company’s specific needs. Choosing between public, private, or hybrid will depend on your budget, scalability, and how much control you want to maintain.

You will also have some decisions to make on services within the cloud itself such as Software as a service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Each comes with their own pros and cons.

The next step is data migration. It’s a chance for you to eliminate the unnecessary data that will only clutter your new systems, slowing down the migration process. Think of data migration as an opportunity to start fresh with only the relevant data you need. Remember that as you migrate to a completely new system, you need to rethink best practices. What worked in the past won’t be as effective.

Remember that adapting to your new system will not happen overnight and means developing a plan that will keep your business running as changes take place. As your company embraces digital transformation, leadership must champion the change to help align employees.