Claromentis A web platform for your business
Recently we’ve developed an attractive way to read a policy online. Some of the blog reader might be familiar with ‘Bookshelf’ one of application from Quality Management Product that allows you to create and publish policies & procedures online (as web pages).
Bookshelf user can now choose from standard available themes, read in full screen, changing font-size in real-time, ease of navigation.
In this informal interview I try to explain what Claromentis offers for the management of Policies and Procedures
I try to summarize what different types of companies might be looking for, and what solutions we offer in both our standard intranet product and in our Quality Management suite – specifically Policy Manager and Policy Publisher.
Please let me know if you like this kind of video post and format!
As Claromentis continues to expand the range and depth of our Quality Management solutions, new clients are confirming our strong belief that Quality Management applications should indeed be part of the web platform that supports a business – previously known as ‘the intranet’ – and not yet another island of data and processes.
This is partly of the increasing power of web applications which means clients increasingly work in the intranet, rather than just look for accurate information.
In addition, again and again we find that certain types of information are required for different applications, and at different levels of detail, across the business. The only central place such data should be stored is the company web platform – accessible to all web apps that need them.
An example at a meeting today was Training Records. These are fundamental for HR, who needed to track the training that staff undertook over time. But it was also required for Health and Safety – where people could review certificates and check that training was in place to meet legislation.
As if that was not enough training records are fundamental to Quality Management – as the level of expertise of an employee has a direct level on the supporting documentation to get a task done to acceptable quality.
Such a simple concept of training records needed to be available for different reasons, and to different staff with different permissions – they needed to be updatable by some applications and readable by others.
Simply put such fundamental data should only be centrally managed, all software companies use is web based – or should be – and the corporate web platform is where that data needs to be because that is increasingly where the work actually gets done.
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.
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.
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
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.
Policy Manager and Policy Publisher
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.
Flowcharts and online policies
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:
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.
Fast acces links to our Quality Management
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.
A short video explaining how SME companies can use Claromentis InfoCapture to manage non conformancies that arise from internal and external audits.
For smaller companies the complexities of the powerful quality management applications from Claromentis are sometimes simply not necessary – the video shows how InfoCapture and of course version controlled document management for the actual policies can supply an ideal solution in these circumstances.
Interestingly we are now working to extend the Quality Manager application in the area of requests and approvals of new policies and procedures, and in enabling a consultation process where comments are received from authorized users, before the policy is approved and formally issued in the Bookshelf application.
Our challenge here is actually how to understand what needs are generic, and which ones are specific to an individual company works. This requirement has always been acknowledged and understood, it is great to finally see the work start. We will need to make the configuration very flexible, so that smaller companies without for example a formal consultation process for new policies are not forced by our software to adopt one. It may even be that for some companies only certain policies and procedures need such workflows and consultation, others can just be created by quality managers.
Claromentis Intranet & Extranet manager provides several ways to collaborate and share information within an organisation. We have application called ‘Documents’ (Document Management System), ‘Publish’ (Content Management System) ‘Wiki’, and our new member of the family ‘Bookshelf’ (online policies & procedures).
In early phase of intranet deployment we frequently being asked by our clients, “Which tool is the best to share and collaborate a piece of information or should we just stick with an existing company shared drive?”.
There isn’t one solution to all problems
The good starting point is to be aware of the pros, cons and applicability of individual tool available. Unfortunately as an Information Architect we always says “There isn’t one solution to all problems”. The idea is by having the right solution (with right technology) to a specific problem, we can make everyone’s lives easier.
Let’s start with…
Typically before an organisation deploys an intranet they have existing growing unmanageable shared drive(s). Shared drive is relatively easy to setup but it suffers from these issues:
Claromentis document management system is designed to address all of the common issues with company Share Drive. The heart of it is the application called ‘Documetns’ It provides built-in version control, searching & indexing, permission layer, easy access, and many enterprise features.
What are the Cons?
Using publish, users with no web publishing skills can collaborate & create web pages easily.
It may sound like a good idea to convert all documents into publish pages, but there are several points to consider:
A wiki is designed to enable everyone with fast and volatile collaboration. Claromentis integrates with Media WIKI, one of the most popular open-source wiki software. Wiki focuses on fast and real-time collaboration by minimising complexity in content creation. There are several issues to remember here:
Bookshelf is the application behind Claromentis Quality Manager; it is the latest addition to the information layer suite. Bookshelf is designed specifically for managing Company Policies & Procedures. It allows online procedures creation making sure that there is one version of the truth across entire organisation.
Summary
These are just a few of the tools available in Claromentis Framework. There isn’t one perfect solution to all problems but at least you can choose ‘the best kit for the job’.
Any comments and feeback welcomed.
