Everything you need to know when looking at an eQMS - webinar

Hi everyone. Thank you very much for signing in to have a look at this webinar that I'm going to do. So what I'm going to focus on today, as you may have seen, is everything you need to know about EQMSs. Okay. So what I'm particularly interested in helping you guys to do is understand that process from when you think you need a new EQMS solution and how to go about finding the right one. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to share a presentation with you and talk you through it and try and give you as much insight as I can as to what we've learned in Q-Hub working with customers who want a new EQMS and also with working with our customers, we've understood EQMS systems they've had in the past and what they did like and didn't like. So I'm going to get started on that and I hope you enjoy the presentation. So, I'm just going to start by sharing my screen and we're going to get straight into it by explaining what we're going to be covering.

So, today what we want to do is look at why you may need an EQMS in the first place and especially what you should consider when you're going through that process. We're then going to look at what you actually need it to do. Okay, it sounds obvious, but it's quite important how you go about doing that. Then how you choose a system. Um so I'm going to give you some tips on what to ask when you're in a demonstration where you can go for guidance on a good EQMS and then we're going to look at how to avoid common mistakes when setting it up. Okay? But we're going to mainly focus on the first three. So I'm going to go straight into it. Just let you know we are going to drop some presents on the way through. Um, so we've got some things that you can download as we go um or we can send them to you after to help.

So the first thing is why do you need an EQMS either as a small business or as a large organization? There's common sort of reasons why people start looking for them. So the first ones that we see are corporate alignment. Um it's quite a classic example. Maybe you're in a business that is buying other businesses um and now you want to amalgamate systems to make it simpler to manage and standardize it across a group. It could be that you have an old system and that it's no longer supported um or it's just too outdated to be useful anymore. Um it could also be that the business is having some real pains around certain compliance elements or quality management system sort of things and activities that you need to do. Um, funny one, but we see this quite a lot. You may have just got into a bit of trouble in an audit. Um, and now you want to find a solution that's going to help you avoid that sort of awkward conversation on your next audit. We've even had some people with the risk of losing accreditation and they desperately need a system to help them get out of that. Uh, then we've got people that just want to digitize the business. So let's imagine you've got an accounts department maybe going to an accounting software. You have HR that may have just bought HR software to digitize that. And now naturally the business is looking at how can we digitize engineering quality, health, safety, environmental, all of the QHSE activities. Um and something that we don't see enough but it is a really good reason to get an EQMS is when you want to leverage new technology. So, you may have an ISO system, you may have a QMS in place, um, but you may want to look at what's on the market to see if it can give you a step up in um, automation, if it can improve your quality, or if it can just be a new tool that you want to use.

So, now we've looked at some of the reasons you might be looking into a new EQMS. I want to focus on a couple of factors um that you need to consider before you really start digging into googling all the different EQMS platforms that are out there. So data security is an obvious one. Um if you're going digital you need to understand the data security. If you have something like ISO 27001 or maybe if you've got Cyber Essentials, Cyber Essentials Plus you definitely need to think about the data security element. Um the obvious one is your compliance requirements. So when you move to an EQMS, you're changing your management system. So you need to understand how that's going to impact your next audit. Um is the management system going to cover your compliance requirements? Um sounds obvious, but it I've seen it missed a few times. Um we call it implementation sacrifice, which is the next one. So implementation sacrifice is talking about the amount of time or resources you're going to sacrifice in order to implement something new. So that's really really important and we'll talk about that a bit more later. Um something that is obvious you need to think about the effort to manage but how that actually looks and whose responsibility it is to manage different elements comes into play. So for example, is it an EQMS platform that your IT team need to manage and the quality managers just use or is it a platform where your IT team just maybe needs to supervise and your quality managers have the main scope of control because there's quite a big difference in those two types of system setup. Um support and feedback is another important one. So, it's all well and good having the support to set it up. But what happens six months down the line when you've got the new EQMS in place and then you have a problem, you pick up the phone, you drop a ticket in and you get ghosted. Um, it's really important from a contractual point of view and just from a customer feedback point of view to know what the EQMS platform is offering you there and what support you can have. So, those are sort of like the big scary ones. Um, a lot of the time people forget the other ones on the screen. So, people readiness, your organization may not actually be ready for a new EQMS. To be honest, I've seen this um where certain departments or managers really really want an EQMS, but the shop floor or maybe the operators um in a warehouse or wherever you're working um they may not be ready for an EQMS. So, it's not to say don't get one, but you need to address that.

Customization. Um, I find it crazy that in this day and age, especially when you look at the ISO standards and how focused they are on continuous improvement, that you would get an EQMS platform that does not give you the ability to improve itself. So, let's say you get an audit and the auditor thinks it would be a good idea if you start tracking X, Y, and Z in your non-conformances. Does the system allow you to change it in order to now align with that improvement? um because if not you're stuck. So cost and contract doesn't need an explanation. Everyone sort of normally asks what the price is um and should look at the contract especially over time frames. Can you scale it? So this one has got a question mark because you don't always need to scale a platform. If you're just a small um or well established business and you have no plans to sort of expand into alternate sites, that might not be as relevant. If you are a high growth business and you're acquiring new businesses, that's a really important one. Okay. Can you get the reporting and analytics? Um, data visibility and the ability to export that data is essential. Um, in terms of software, it should be fundamental. It should be easy for you to generate reports and analyze the data. Can you integrate? You don't always need an integration, but integrations help connect other things in the business. So, can the platform do that? And an interesting one is, do you actually have the in-house tech? For example, um I worked with a customer before. We were just about to sign and then they explained to me when I asked them, "Okay, so how many tablets do you have?" They didn't have any tablets and one of the core things they wanted to do is to be able to report issues from the shop floor. So straight away they had to go speak to the IT team and figure that out. So it's not sort of high priority in the sense of um it's not easily solvable. You just go buy tablets, make sure your IT team's on board. Um but people often overlook it.

So we've actually got a um EQMS factors check sheet. So that's the sort of first little present. So if you want to have a look at that or you want to download it, just drop a message in um or we can send it to you after or you can email the resources um inbox. And depending on the different sort of reason that you want an EQMS, so the ones that I showed you earlier, different factors um may be of more or less interest to you. Okay, so I've got some examples. Let's say you are a group quality manager and you want to know how to look at an EQMS that is going to be used across an entire group of companies. So I'm not saying that the graded out ones are not important which is why I made this little note. It doesn't mean ignore everything else but these are things that you should really make sure you know. So is the data security going to be there? If you're at a group level and you're buying different organizations, it's going to be quite important because your risk increases with the amount of devices and endpoints and people. If you have implementation sacrifice, so the more people you're trying to roll it out to, especially if you're acquiring, there's more variables with every implementation. So there's different people, different setups, different currencies. So that's a really big one to understand. And if you're at a group level, you really need to make sure you understand the effort to manage it on an ongoing basis. Um, how much autonomy are you going to give the individual companies over the system? And does the system even support the ability to segregate companies? Does it support the ability for company A to be able to change things, but company B needs to just do the fixed model that you've created? That type of thing. Um, people readiness. So that's important across a corporate alignment because different companies can be really tech-savvy. Other companies might be stuck in the stone age. Um but it's important that you consider both this in this scenario scaling um scaling a system needs to be important. Uh you need to make sure that as your user base grows it's still easy to manage and you can do that with clever tools in a software if it's set up right. Obviously you want reporting and analytics. If you go from a corporate level, you need KPIs. You want to make sure that data can be rolled up or drilled down into correctly. And the across the in-house tech one here is important because different companies that you might have at a group level may be at different stages in terms of the technology they have available to them.

So to give you another example, let's just say you got your butt kicked at an audit. Um here's something to think about. Does the new QMS actually cover your compliance requirements? So, you could say yes, every QMS should cover the quality management system. It should cover ISO 9001 top to bottom for all the clauses. But let me tell you for a fact, they don't all do that. Okay? They don't all do it. So, it's really important to check. You don't want to get an NCR against organization um or let's say you don't want to get an NCR against non-conformance management and then buy a QMS that is poor at non-conformance management. Okay. Implementation sacrifice again um if you've got an NCR and people are scrambling around is there going to be any resource available to implement the improvement? If there isn't, can you afford to buy that resource in or hire the company to do it for you? And then once you go into managing it, who's going to be responsible to manage it on an ongoing basis? Um people readiness, again, same principle there. Customization options. Um I see for smaller businesses, customization is often more important than for a large business. Larger businesses, um sort of like the butterfly effect, a small change has a big big impact. But in a smaller business where there's less room to go, they want to be able to change and be a bit more dynamic. So customization is really important to look at and always for me reporting and analytics um should be a key thing. Okay.

So most commonly overlooked factors. I touched on it a little bit at the beginning but implementation sacrifice. Think about how much effort it's going to take you to set it up. Um actually ask the company you're interested in how much effort this will take to set up. If they give you an ambiguous answer, ask for more information or ask for specific examples, ask to talk to another customer that's done it. Um, if they give you if they come back with maybe a question of, well, what do you need? That's a good indication they're not just going to give you false hope of a three-month implementation if you're a 25 site company. Um, think about the time it's going to take you, how much support you'll need in terms of tech. Um, do you know what you even need to know? So sometimes you don't know where to go. You don't know how to implement it. And that's okay. A good QMS provider should be able to help you not just with the digitization, but they should have enough awareness of compliance and QMS systems that they can guide you in the right direction. Really think about the effort to manage. Um if you've got to maintain an EQMS yourself, so if it's a self-hosted one, that is adding more work to IT team to your infrastructure to maintain. So the hidden costs go up. You've got your direct cost, which is how much you're paying. The hidden cost is how many people you're employing to keep it. How much time does it take of them? All of that stuff. The hardware and what happens if there's an issue. So, if you can't just very quickly ask for help and get a response, um, that's a problem. Support and feedback I really think is underrated. So, again, like I said, six months later, what happens? Will they actually listen to your suggestions? So if you ask them to make an improvement, have is there even the facility to do that to start with? And have they got any demonstrable examples of where they've done this? Um so just a good place to start just say what support options do you have? What help options do you have? Um and again like I said before in-house tech make sure people have email accounts if it's sort of a single sign-on platform. Make sure that people have computers where they need them, have tablets, that the tablets aren't too old that it won't support new software. You know, these are often overlooked. Um, especially if you're a quality manager, health and safety manager, environmental manager, um, you may not be as sort of in the know with some of the technology that you might need these days to run, let's say, a browser system or to run a server system. So, it's important, you know, just ask your IT team to help get them in on the demos as well. um that's just going to it's just going to take away any unnecessary hurdles.

Okay, so we've looked at what you might need and gone into a bit more detail of that. Now it's really important to understand what is the system going to do. Um something that I used to say often in my old job and I've carried it forward with me, specific problems get specific solutions. Okay, it sounds cliche um but people often have a vague idea of the problem they have and then they end up getting a very vague solution. So it doesn't solve the problem that they had in the first place. So what we're going to do is focus on how you can understand what you need to do, how you can understand what your use cases are. So a use case is something that you need to use the platform to do. what do you need the EQMS to do and go from there and develop that in depth and identify the pains you have with the current way you're doing this. Then the next thing you want to do is prioritize and pick the use cases that are most important that you need to get implemented first. Um so we actually have a guide that really breaks this down in a lot of detail um like a work pack. So again if you're interested in that we can send that across to you as well. But to give you an example of where to start because we want everyone who watches this to come away and now be more informed and have a better ability to make a good decision on an EQMS.

Okay? So, especially if you've been asked by your boss to do a project and you you want to find a new EQMS system, um don't start looking if all you have is this. We need a new EQMS. That that is not enough to go to a software provider for. um you can obviously do it but don't. So an example use case um is like we want to manage performance we want to manage document change those are a little bit more detailed and um it's good to list them out. So you might use the standards, you might use um your internal requirements or business procedures to give you a list of use cases. For example, non-conformance, document management, supplier approvals, training, org structure, those types of things are things you need the platform to do. But go deeper. Look at the specific pain points that you're that you're currently experiencing or that you want to avoid. For example, have something like this in mind. We need to be able to give departments access to specific documents so that they can trigger a change and automatically send it to the right people to review and approve it. Then it should automatically notify the relevant people the document has changed. We then need to be able to easily get these changes when we're being audited. That is a better statement. Okay, that's what you want to be able to go into your demos or do your research with so you know specifically what you're looking for.

Um, a good way to do this is just answering these three questions for each use case. Okay, so it doesn't have to be a crazy 10-week project to do this. Um, this can be over a couple of days look at some use cases that you have for an EQMS and write these things down. What must the system do for this use case? So for example, non-conformances, it must manage non-conformances by doing what? So it must help me categorize non-conformances by health, safety, quality, engineering. It must be able to send people reminders and notifications of NCRs. We must be able to export the NCR data. We must be able to make KPIs. Okay, it would be nice to have a system that can automatically do KPIs, automatically detect trends. It should be easy for people to see what non-conformances they have, identify any trends. It should be easy for people to raise a non-conformance from their phone. Those are now giving you some real specific requirements. Okay, I've got a little example here on the right of a we call it a system worksheet. So, what's the vision for the system? What are the frustrations? What must it do? What would it be nice for it to do? What would it be easy to do? Okay. So, again, we can we can send that if you're interested or you can just scribble it down on a piece of paper. Okay.

As you're thinking of these use cases, um it's really really important to know your current state. Okay. Understand where you are. There's a really really good expression I love, which is if you can't measure it, you can't improve it. Um so, think about when you're listing your use cases. Again, I'll stick with the example of non-conformances. How do people feel about non-conformances currently? Yes, for me, how people feel is something you can measure and you should look at when implementing a new software. Do they like the system? Do they like non-conformances? Are they frustrated? You can do that sort of qualitative data. What data do you currently have access to? So, is it only what's on the Excel spreadsheet? Can you analyze that data very easily? How long does it take you to analyze that data? How many NCRs have you had? How much work is currently done? How many NCRs per month get closed? How many document changes per month get reviewed? How many documents are not reviewed each month? You don't have to have um every element of your EQMS managed and a KPI on every single thing, but as you look through the things you need it to do, you'll start to immediately think of things um or data points that you can measure. Even if it's just sort of a finger in the air assumption, it gives you a little bit more to go on. Um it could be how long things currently take you. How long on average does it take you to close down an NCR? How much does it cost you? Is it um hidden costs or are you trying to make a bottom line improvement? For example, we spend X amount on our EQMS currently. We want to know if there's a cheaper option. Still a reason to look for a new EQMS. And once you get these problems very well understood, um it helps you to understand if you've actually improved them. So then you can understand does it take us less effort? Do we get better data? Have we got more engaged people? Have we saved any money? And have we saved any time? It's really difficult to know these things um if you can't actually measure it in the first place.

So once we've got a clear picture of what we need it to do, why we're doing it, then start looking. You can look as you go. You can of course start googling and getting some ideas of things you want it to be able to do of course but try not to skip these first two steps. Finally, how are you going to choose a system? So you can ask experts like consultants or and maybe even on your next ISO audit ask if they've seen any good systems anywhere that they'd recommend or any systems they would not recommend. Um ask AI say what types of systems are out there. Um it's just another way of looking it up instead of searching on the internet. So you can Google it. Google EQMS Google document management problems. Google document management system. Um book demos. Always book a demo. if they don't have the ability to give you a demo. For me, that's a red flag. Um, ask your colleagues if they worked in a company before where they had a really good EQMS. Again, same question. Any EQMSs to stay away from? Ask the people you work with. Um, go to an expo and find out what's out there. So, in particular, um, we like asking experts, ask colleagues and booking demos. Um, anyone can optimize their SEO. Um, anyone can write trillions of articles, but you can't fake an expert's opinion, and you also can't fake seeing it. Okay, so these are important, but they're not everything.

Top tips for when you're on a demo. Okay, this is a really good one. So, ask clear questions on how the platform is going to cover the specific use case and how it helps you to achieve your goals, which forces you to make sure you know that in the first place. you need to know what the uh what the system uh what the problems are with the way you're doing things currently to know how this platform is going to solve it. And if they can't specifically show you how it works or how they do something or they don't offer you a trial to show you or they don't arrange another call to to show you in more detail, um personally that's a a big warning sign for us. Um avoid that avoid that situation if you can. Uh then we've got um some questions to ask. Okay. So when you're looking at all these different EQMS platforms, I would definitely say do not skip these questions. So I'll spend I'll spend a little bit of time on each of them because I think it's really important when considering a new EQMS and to be honest when considering most platforms whether it's an EQMS, whether it's a integrated management software, a QHSE software, health and safety software, it all applies. Okay? So ask them to show you how customizable it is. For me, it's almost number one. If you can't change it, if you can't control it, and if you can't control it, you can't be compliant totally. Um, especially if you if you don't want to have to force a certain way of doing things on your company if you'd rather a software that evolves or adapts to your business's way of doing things.

Um, a really really good one is ask them to show you recent examples of improvements they've made based on customer feedback. If they can't, that says it all for me. If they're not improving their own platform, um if they're not listening to feedback, you're in a pretty scary place. Um to me, that's exactly the same as saying it's unsupported. Just fixing bugs is not good enough. They need to be improving the system. If they're expecting you to continuously improve, they should be continuously improving. Find out how they plan to use AI or if they're already using it. AI is cutting edge technology. um it's been around for a while but now it's being sort of made more available. So definitely worth asking how they use AI. In sort of parallel to that, ask them what platforms or what road map they have for the platform, not just what's next. It's easy to write a road map of what's next. Ask them to show you what they improved last year or six months ago or last month. Okay? It's really easy for them to say, "We're going to do this, this, and this." Okay? Show me what you've done then in the last five years. Um, check reviews and social media. Obviously, it's a good place to look for feedback. Look for customer testimonials. It's an obvious one. Um, you can even ask to speak to customers. Don't be afraid to say, "Give me a customer that I can have a Teams call with." Um, they should have someone that will say yes to that for you. Ask them how long it normally takes. I've touched on this already, but ask them how long it normally takes to implement it. If they give you a blanket answer without first understanding what you need, be very very very careful. Um because I don't believe there's any way without knowing some level of detail of what your current system is, how it works, who's involved that they can say one month, three month, two month, however long it might be. um that that response to that question you asked them should give you an indication of are we just focusing on a sale or do we want to make sure you have a good product find out what support they offer again I said six months before but even five years down the line what's going to happen if you've got an EQMS you don't want to be changing it every year definitely don't want to do that you're going to stick with it three to five years minimum um so what's the support going to look like across that time what are the improvements going to be I like this one personally Um, I like when I'm asked it. I've seen other customers or other customers have told me quite funny examples of when they've asked other providers or competitors this question. Ask what the worst feature is and the biggest challenge their customers face. Their response to that is going to tell you a lot about one what they know about the platform and also sort of yeah just give you a taste of how honest they are. There's like no there's no problems. It's just not true. There's no perfect system. Okay.

So, we've covered why you might need it and what you should consider, what you actually need to do. So, getting your use cases together, how you look at a system and choose one, how you um on a demo, what you can ask, what you can look for. Let's say you've selected an EQMS. How can you avoid big mistakes when setting it up? Okay, so I really love this managing change model. Um, I've used it in the past. I show it to my customers. I we sort of help our customers go through this um at times with our onboarding. So it's really important that you've got the vision for the product and what it's going to do. You've got the skills to implement it. Um that there's positives to the platform that people know about. I think this used to be called incentives. I prefer positives. You've got resources available and you have a clear plan of what you're going to do. If you don't have it, you will not succeed in implementing an EQMS. Okay. And these are really, really good. It's a really powerful image. Um, often if you don't have an action plan, so people just like, "Yeah, yeah, let's get an EQMS in. Sign, deal done." Okay, where do we start? I don't know. False start. Frustration is when you know what to do, but you've got no one to actually go and do it. Um, or if people don't know why you're implementing it or what the benefit is, the company is not going to want to do it. And it really, really slows down and it's really something you can do a lot about. Um, and I'm going to touch on that in particular. Okay. So, I've got some more examples here of all the different sections. If you want the pack afterwards to go through this, you can do it or maybe just you can screenshot this slide. It should help you. Um, we've even given you like an example action plan and we have got resources if you'd like them on how to implement a new EQMS.

Right. Just remember implementing a new software isn't just a new computer system that people that's going to be put in your business. What you are asking people to do is change their behavior. You're asking people to come away from what they currently do. Maybe it's filling out an Excel spreadsheet. Maybe it's writing on a piece of paper. And you want their behavior to change so that they use the new platform. Okay. Why you need to give them reasons to change? Well, if you just talk to them about the benefits to the company, okay, so it's going to help the company save money, it's going to help the company to see the data better, it's going to do this and that. Um, we often see this mistake and it leads to poor engagement which leads to problems in onboarding and a delay of the benefits from an EQMS. Um, so you need to explain how this is going to help the interested parties or the stakeholders. How is it going to help your quality team? How is it going to help the shop floor? Anyone who's going to touch the platform, um, try and communicate to them how it's going to be easier than what they're currently doing. If it's going to remove any duplication or manual admin, highlight that to them before you put it in place. And help them to understand that with the time that we're trying to free up with an EQMS, because that's what it's there for. Improve your quality, improve your compliance, save you time, save you money. Okay? it you can help them to understand that this is going to help them focus on more important things that they want to do for the business not just more important things for the business that they want to do for the business um and it needs to help your people then it will help your business okay so that's the bottom line we have covered everything we think you should know to get started with on how to select a new EQMS obviously if you're you're watching you probably haven't selected an EQMS yet but This should definitely help you have some things to think about, have some actions, have some things to go away with and look at.

Um, so what should you do next? Well, if you would like this presentation pack um along with all the other resources that we have available that we've mentioned. So it could be our um our implementation guide, it could be our use case check sheet. Um just put a message in the chat um or leave an email at the email on the screen and we'll send that across to you. If you are interested in an EQMS demo with us, um just comment on the chat demo or if you're watching this later on YouTube or LinkedIn, just direct message um the platform and put demo in. You can email sales or if you just paste the link at the bottom, it will take you through to have a demo. If you have enjoyed this video or you found it helpful, if you see it later on any social media platforms, um please like, please, please share it. I sound like a blogger, but um it does help. It helps. We want people to know how to get a good system in place whether it's ours or another platform. Um please try and help share the message so that people can implement good systems. If you've enjoyed this um and maybe you do want to know a little bit more about our platform personally um if you want to know a bit more about Q-Hub then we have some additional master classes that we're running. Um we have one about some of our features. We've done one already earlier this month. Um so maybe maybe come along and have a look at what we do before you go for a demo. Um and we will be doing additional master classes and webinars um in the future as well. So if you if you want to drop your email in the chat um or email the resources team after we can add you to our newsletter that lets you know about all of the resources that we have available and also all the webinars that we have as well. I hope you enjoyed uh this EQMS session. I hope it was helpful and I hope to see you again. Thanks guys. Thanks for joining.

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