This 4 minute video blog shows adding a new draft policy to Claromentis Policy Manager, one of the 3 applications in our Quality Management Solution.

This is a first in a planned series of short videos on the use of the Claromentis Quality Manager Solution to improve compliance and gain efficiencies when working in a quality controlled environment. If you have any feedback or content requests please just let us know.

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Quality ISO18001, ISO9001, policies and procedures, quality management software

Where your primary requirement is Quality Management Software we offer a portal framework – which provides information management, access, permissions, user management and the interface customized for your company – combined with several QM solutions focusing on Audits and Policies.

Entry solution

Smaller companies can use Process Manager for controlling audits and the document management solution in our permission based framework for managing version controlled Policies.

This provides a low cost entry solution for companies that need an appropriate environment for compliance, but where the size of the policy information is not large and audit requirements are not extensive – perhaps only one external audit a year of only one site.

SME solution

If policy life cycle management is required, or the number of policies is substantial -  the Policy Manager product is the preferred solution.

Policy Manager allows specialist teams to participate in consultancy and ratification phases before policies are distributed. It provides specialist views of policies and procedures to the end users – including lists, category views and A-Z views. Master lists of policies are managed in the Administration Panel.

As a guide any company that has dedicated Quality Management staff, but no Audit Managers, will find this solution set appropriate. For this reason SME companies can still manage smaller scale audits using Process Manager.

Corporate Solution.

If a company has a requirement to run multiple audits across multiple sites, or to track none-conformancies against specific clauses in any legislation such as ISO 9001:2008 and ISO:18001, then the Audit Manager product should be used working seamlessly with Policy Manager.

Audit Manager can work with any external legislation as well as bespoke audits, with multiple audit teams and sites and offers a complete solution including root cause analysis.

Enterprise Solution.

For larger companies with thousands of procedures, perhaps across multiple business units, Policy Publisher can be used either alongside Policy Manager – or as a replacement solution.

Policy publisher replaces completely the need for application files such as PDFs to contain policy information. Instead the entire information set is moved online.

The principle advantages are :

•    Business Unit branding is applied by the framework, so there is no need for multiple copies just to present information in different branding.

•    Polices and procedures can automatically update themselves when included information changes.

•    Online flowcharts that hotlink to other supporting URLs can be used to create a genuine online quality management system.

Summary

The Claromentis Quality Management Solution offers a complete range of benefits to ensure that your company can commit to improving quality and compliance with complete confidence that the supporting infrastructure is in place.

Further Information

Product Data sheets are available on our site :

Overview of our Quality Management solution
Policy Manager
Audit Manager
Policy Publisher

In addition there is an online tour of Policy Manager here

Next Steps

We would welcome a chance to understand your requirements, and if we offer a Quality Management system that matches your needs we provide individual webinars and site visits to further demonstrate our approach.

Prod-Quality ISO18001, ISO9001, QMS, quality management software

Ekurhuleni West College (EWC) one of the leading Further Education and Training Institution in South Africa. Spread across 6 geographical location with 550 numbers of staff, EWC offers training and development programme in Engineering, Business, ICT, Finance and Community Services

It is the second Public FET Collegae in Gauteng to obtain SO 9001: 2000 certificate from the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) in 2008.

In order to continue maintaining high standards EWC has chosen Claromentis Quality Manager solution. They have developed a Quality Management web portal, which can be easily accessed from all campus location, and it has become a one-stop-shop system to find up-to-date policies and procedures. EWC also uses InfoCapture application to track and manage non-conformances.

Read more about Quality Management  Solution or take the tour

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Quality, Solutions Case Study, ISO9001, quality management software

As a company that is ISO9001 certified, and also provides web based software specifically to assist in this area, it is great to get the chance to experience our own QMS software as a user – we have our own very genuine needs and its interesting  to put our own software through our own hoops – instead of everyone else’s.

We actually only have 10 policies – one of those – our core “Specifications, Development, Testing and Delivery” process does have 4 flowchart based procedures, the others are perfectly well represented as application files and version controlled inside Quality Manager itself. We don’t even need the complexity of storing those in the main document management system – another cost saving for an SME client meeting the stringent demands of any QMS framework like ISO9001.

In our case we use InfoCapture to control our audits, as we don’t have multiple sites or multiple legislation – or teams of auditors and quality managers – so the efficiency gains of using Audit Manager as a dedicated and powerful QMS application are just not there for us as a user. It’s a truly great application for larger companies – but we just don’t have the requirements so why use it just because it is free for us!

We do however store the primary flowcharts of our core “Specifications, Development, Testing and Delivery” process in our ‘Process Diagram’ album in image gallery. This gives the designers the ability to work on them as we refine the process, and also makes them available in smaller resolutions for presentations to interested clients and partners.

Importantly whereas 9 of our policies are maintained as version controlled application files, the flowchart based process is totally online within Policy Publisher. This is a single policy with automatic inclusion of the latest version of each of the flowcharts – keeping the main policy up to date is therefore completely automatic – if a lead developer changes the process, the policy is automatically kept up to date.

Summary

We ourselves are very typical of any SME company that has some flowchart based procedures, a set of policies, and a requirement to schedule and manage internal audits, with in our case one additional external ISO9001 audit every year.

Of the 5 applications we could use from the Claromentis framework to meet this need:

• Document Management
• Policy Manager
• Audit Manager
• InfoCapture
• Policy Publisher

We as our client actually only need to use 3. Policy manager ( there is a new policy manager tour available here ) provides its own version controlled document management specifically for policies, and InfoCapture is great for scheduling audits, managing non conformancies and moving each audit through the appropriate stages towards a successful conclusion.

For our core development processes we maintain those online in Policy Publisher, removing the need for any application files and allowing us to maintain and present the relevant flow charts and showing how all these processes relate.Since each process chart is maintained as its own procedure, the policy will auto update whenever any chart is changed, as we continue to evolve our own processes.

As a final conclusion we made fast access buttons on our intranet home page to both Audits and Policies just to make sure we are all aware of everything, and nothing is more than a couple of clicks away.

All in all I can honestly say we are a very satisfied user of our own QMS software, and I believe we are a typical example of an SME company that has a real need to get proactive value out of compliance – in our case with ISO9001.

This software is helping us break down the barriers between the intent of the legislation – improving quality – and actually achieving that goal with minimum administration and maximum returns.

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Quality intranet software, ISO9001, quality management software

Increasingly we are taking on clients whose search for a quality management system is not primarily from their own need, but rather dictated by their clients.

More and more companies are having to mandate that their suppliers adhere to a quality management system – because that helps them maintain their own certification.

I suppose that in many ways this is a good thing, but I worry about the cynical attitude it sometimes comes with.

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Quality ISO9001, QMS

I am very pleased to say that Claromentis has received ISO9001 accreditation for Quality Management.

This includes the audit of our bespoke and core code processes, which are end to end from specifications to sign off.

It ensures that we :

• Have a set of procedures that cover all key processes in the business;
• Are monitoring processes to ensure they are effective;
• Keep adequate records;
• Are always  checking our code for defects, with appropriate and corrective action where necessary;
• Are regularly reviewing individual processes and the quality system itself for effectiveness; and
• Are facilitating continual improvement.

Thanks to everyone for your help with the work we put in over the last 6 months to gain this important certification.

Prod-Quality ISO9001, Quality