Investment

Last year, companies’ most common quality management investments were in digital transformation and QMS.

Investment levels will generally stay the same in the coming years but will increase for some.

^{What financial investments in quality management have you made over the past 12 months? Select all that apply. Base: Total (n=260)}

Financial investments made in the past 12 months differ by industry to some degree.

More chemical companies (53%) than F&B (36%) and consumer goods (30%) companies invested in risk management.
More chemical companies (45%) and F&B companies (43%) invested in improving existing product and/or service quality than consumer goods companies (29%).
More F&B companies (29%) than consumer goods companies (16%) invested in more headcount, with chemical companies (27%) in between.

Additionally:

More mature companies are more likely to have invested in risk management, whereas less mature companies are more likely to have invested in headcount.

Going forward, companies will invest in data visualization tools, a global QMS, and automation.

The second tier of investments in quality management comprises employee training software, improving software systems integration and extensions to the company’s supplier community. Fewer companies will invest in AI and Internet of Things (IoT). Almost every company, regardless of industry, plans to make quality investments this year

^{In what areas is your organization planning to make financial investments in Quality Management in 2021? Select all that apply. Base: Total (n=260)}

Our strategic focus is customer experience. You can't have a good customer experience if the processes designed to deliver that in a timely manner are not developed. You can have a great front end, but if it's going into the same email / spreadsheet approach, then processes will still take a long time and still won’t be tracked. This means they are not going to deliver a great customer experience.

^{– Specialty Chemicals, QHSE}

Companies that are less mature are more likely to invest in a global QMS solution.

More mature companies already have the basics covered so they are less likely to invest in upgrading to a global QMS or improving integration compared to immature companies that have not yet taken the same steps. More mature companies are more likely to invest in analytics visualization tools. Immature companies are less likely than others to invest in AI and IoT, presumably because they need to address the basics first.

The eQMS is going to solve the most issues. It’s globally tying departments together. It’s going to fix a lot of horse and buggy activities.

– Consumer Goods, Quality Control

^{In what areas is your organization planning to make financial investments in Quality Management in 2021? Select all that apply. Base: Immature or Starting to Mature (n=56) Reaching Maturity (n=101), Fully Mature (n=103)}

Investments in Quality Management

	Immature or starting to mature	Reaching maturity	Fully mature
Data analytics visualization tools	36%	36%	53%
Upgrading to a global QMS solution	52%	48%	31%
Automating more processes	30%	45%	45%
Employee training software solutions	39%	33%	42%
Improve integration of software systems	41%	45%	23%
Extending to supplier community	34%	36%	27%
AI	9%	25%	20%
IoT	7%	20%	15%
No plans to invest	2%	1%	0%

QMS delivers ROI via cost savings that can be quantified and cost avoidance that cannot.

In-depth interview participants do not have formal or informal ways to measure ROI. Participants did identify several metrics that can impact return, but noted they are difficult to quantify, especially when talking about cost avoidance vs cost savings. Despite these challenges, all believe investment in a QMS is the right decision.

A software solution provides efficiency gain. If we implement the cloud-based Veeva solution, we can release workers from administrative work that doesn’t add value and put them on other more important topics. We can measure this efficiency gain, and we probably will.

– Consumer Goods, Quality Assurance

Not having a recall because you did quality management right is something that nobody will ever see.

– Consumer Goods, Quality Management

Metrics related to ROI mentioned include:

QMS organization adoption / compliance
Cost of quality
Right first time / perfect order percentage
Supplier performance
Efficiency / productivity gain
Reduced headcount
Reduced non-conformances
Expedited change control
Fewer product recalls
Materials cost reduction
Reduction in waste / breakage

One of the main returns on investment is the cost of quality. Having an automated system means our data is accurate. It's comprehensive. Reports that would normally take a supplier three months to generate manually can now be generated within a few minutes. The human error that you see with manual processes goes way down. It's fully automated so the cost to maintain the same quality of product in the field goes way down.

^{– Consumer Goods, Quality & Compliance}

SPOTLIGHT ON

Consumer Goods

Integration with other enterprise tools and being cloud-based are the top QMS requirements for consumer goods companies. The most common area of financial investment in the last 12 months among consumer goods companies was digital transformation initiatives.

The objective is to come to one global system of truth. We record quality data across various systems, so we don't have a perfect picture. Bringing it to a global platform allows us to do more analytics and generate more insights, more understanding of what drives our quality performance.

– Consumer Goods, Quality Management

^{If there was a solution to centralize your quality system globally, which of the following requirements would be critical to meet current and future objectives? Rank up to three, in order of importance, with 1 being most important. Base: Consumer Goods (n=98)}

SPOTLIGHT ON

Food and Beverage

A supplier portal is the top QMS requirement for food & beverage companies. The most common area of financial investment in the last 12 months among food & beverage companies was quality management software.

"The digitalization of the customer and employee experiences has emerged as a critical mechanism to ensure business continuity."

– Food & Beverage, Quality Control

"[Due to the pandemic,] digital transformation went full swing."

– Food & Beverage, Quality Control

SPOTLIGHT ON

Specialty Chemicals
and Crop Science

A supplier portal is the top QMS requirement for specialty chemical and crop science companies. The most common area of financial investment in the last 12 months among specialty chemical and crop science companies was risk management.

"Everything is in one cloud, so you increase efficiency... We have many employees working with documents, with SOPs, with audit reports, with follow-up of CAPA and so on and so on. If we have that all in one system, potentially including performance management, this makes it much easier. The workflow should be easier, and we really gain efficiency... You can follow up all the things which are software-based in a much easier way."

– Specialty Chemicals, Quality Management