Challenges & Concerns

Quality professionals have many, interconnected challenges related to processes, data and people.

Companies’ top quality management challenge is to maintain a centralized global repository of all documents across the organization. Another key challenge is fully integrating an eQMS into organizational workflows to enable process efficiency and effectiveness. Similar in importance are remote communication, resources to address nonconformances and respond to audits, quality culture, and using data to make decisions proactively.

“[A top challenge is for staff,] especially newer staff, to know where to look [for information]... Everybody wants to be able to access everything very quickly.”

– Consumer Goods, Quality Management

^{Please rank up to three of your organization’s top quality management challenges. (1 = most challenging)

Base: Total (n=260)}

Document respositories and easy to use QMS systems solve important challenges.

A centralized documents repository solves the challenge of organizing vast amounts of documents. It also enables transparency.

We have a large portfolio of significantly more than a thousand products. For every product, we have many, many different documents. To produce every single product, we need raw materials. For all the raw materials, again, we need a bunch of documents. This goes a step further if also we consider site certifications and which customer gets the product from which site. To have all this in one nice system would be really a benefit.

– Specialty Chemicals, Quality Management

Ideally, easy-to-use QMS systems enable a culture of quality. Culture is a central element of quality management because the quality function is only successful when the rest of the organization is on board.

People think about documentations, records and SOPs but that’s maybe 20-30% of managing quality. The rest is the quality culture, the quality mindset that you deploy in the organization so people actually follow the SOPs, understand them and internalize them. The strength of good systems is that they achieve the objective with the right user experience. This drives adoption and builds a stronger quality culture. We have a new system that takes three clicks and you're done. Using this system, people say, ‘I actually want to work with the system’ and ‘I actually want to do the job right because the system allows me to.'

– Consumer Goods, Quality Management

Companies need more effective training for both onsite and remote employees.

Integrating external e-learning platforms and identifying an initial set of training for newcomers are also challenges, as is the time needed to review and approve related documents and training materials.

"[EHSQ] training... is not managed by HR; it’s very siloed... To follow up on the effectiveness is very difficult, because it’s very manual... As of today, we are not able to have a process, a system that makes sure that we train all workers."

– Consumer Goods, Quality Management

"Measuring training effectiveness isn’t something we master completely on the global quality processes... Because I see some failures in this area, my conclusion is that the training we have is not sufficient."

– Consumer Goods, Quality Assurance

^{Please rank up to three challenges your organization has managing employee training. (1 = most challenging) Base: Total (n=260)}

Companies struggle to manage suppliers, so there is significant opportunity for improvement.

Lack of adequate systems and specs compliance are companies’ biggest supplier management challenges. However, there seems to be a lack of consensus about which supplier management challenges are most pressing. Most of the supplier management challenges we asked about were selected as first or second most challenging by roughly the same number of respondents.

Timeliness and maintaining traceability of the supplied materials are among the top supplier management challenges, but communication, nonconformances, qualifying, corrective actions, and audits all face challenges, as well. Only submitting COAs and improving root cause analysis are clearly less critical than other challenges considered.

Maintaining traceability is challenging for more consumer goods and chemical companies than food & beverage companies. Adequate and timely communication and effectiveness of supplier corrective actions are challenging for more food & beverage than consumer goods and chemical companies. Tracking delivery is challenging for more consumer goods companies and food & beverage companies. Timely responses on SCARs is challenging for more chemical companies and consumer goods companies.

^{Please rank up to three challenges your organization has managing suppliers. (1 = most challenging) Base: Total (n=260)}

Challenges managing suppliers revolve around collecting, organizing and maintaining supplier data.

Even though the survey results were inconclusive in identifying top challenges, the in-depth interviews revealed that the connecting thread is supplier data management. Decentralized and legacy processes lead to challenges managing suppliers, as does decentralized data. Processes that rely on email and suppliers that are not responsive are also problematic.

"We are an aggregation of companies [with many] legacy suppliers... Some of them are old and some of them not... The practices on supplier management have changed a lot, and so we have a whole history to catch to make sure that for all suppliers we have a nice and neat and up to date qualification."

– Specialty Chemicals, Quality Management

"We [lack] centralized non-conformance management. For example, we have three factories in France; each factory manages non-conformances with the supplier. But in fact, we have the same supplier in three factories, so we don’t have this vision on a corporate level."

– Specialty Chemicals, Quality Management

To qualify a new supplier, our regulatory group must collect information from the supplier. Namely, things like safety data sheets, technical data sheets, examples of the CMA, and examples of other types of documentation. Right now, that is completely an email process. We ping the supplier and say, ‘please send me this information regarding product XYZ.’ We might get it, we might not. Nothing ties that activity back to a supplier scorecard and how that supplier is servicing us.

– Specialty Chemicals, QHSE

The pandemic has increased the urgency to manage risk and move forward with digital transformation.

Additionally, the pandemic has made adding headcount less important. There may be opportunities for companies to move funds budgeted for headcount toward digital transformation and QMS. According to the in-depth interview participants, remote auditing is also particularly important during the pandemic.

For almost all the pandemic impacts included in the survey, the percentage of respondents who said the pandemic made the impact a higher priority was larger than the percentage of respondents who said the pandemic made the impact a lower priority

^{How has the pandemic impacted the importance of the following? Base: Total (n=260)}

"I would’ve never been able to have my quality team fully remote had I not had Veeva... Everybody picked up a computer, went home... Had we not had that, we would’ve not been able to maintain stock and inventory 100% efficiency the way we have."

^{– Consumer Goods, Quality & Compliance}

KEY TAKEAWAY:

The pandemic has increased the urgency to manage risk and move forward with digital transformation.

KEY TAKEAWAY:

The pandemic has increased the urgency to manage risk and move forward with digital transformation.

Is this key takeaway something you are doing in your business?

Yes, absolutely
We'll try, but might need support
I don't think so

Planned investments in digital transformation and QMS will address multiple pressing challenges.

The top future challenges related to regulations, standards and industry expectations relate to product recalls, supplier management and complexity, followed by remote audits and meeting business demands. Investments in digital transformation and QMS will help alleviate multiple anticipated challenges. Supplier quality management is another common investment priority in the coming years, which is to be expected given the range of supplier management challenges companies are dealing with.

^{Thinking about new regulations, standards, and industry expectations in 2021 and beyond, please rank up to three quality challenges are you most concerned about. (1 = most concerned) Base: Total (n=260)}

^{What financial investments in quality management are you planning to make in the next 12 months to help overcome these challenges? Select all that apply. Base: Concerned About Some Quality Challenges (n=257)}

SPOTLIGHT ON

Consumer Goods

Consumer goods companies differ from other industries in their practices, maturity and challenges. Using data to be proactive and make data-driven decisions is the top challenge for consumer goods companies.

76% have a dual quality and EHS role.
86% are at one of the top 2 maturity levels
72% use 3rd party cloud-based software tools
Top training challenges: Training effectiveness for onsite employees and ensuring training compliance
Top supplier challenge: Compliance with product specifications

^{Please rank up to three of your organization’s top quality management challenges. (1 = most challenging) Base: Consumer Goods (n=98)}

SPOTLIGHT ON

Food and Beverage

Food & beverage companies differ from other industries in their practices, maturity and challenges. Maintaining a global repository of documents is the top challenge for food & beverage companies.

81% have a dual quality and EHS role.
71% are at one of the top 2 maturity levels
88% use 3rd party cloud-based software tools
Top training challenges: The time it takes to review/approve associated documents and training materials
Top supplier challenge: Adequate and timely communication

^{Please rank up to three of your organization’s top quality management challenges. (1 = most challenging) Base: Food & Beverage (n=84)}

SPOTLIGHT ON

Specialty Chemicals and Crop Science

Specialty chemical and crop science companies differ from consumer product companies in their practices, maturity and challenges. An easy- to-use eQMS to enable efficiency and effectiveness of process is the top challenge for specialty chemical and crop science companies.

63% have a dual quality and EHS role.
77% are at one of the top 2 maturity levels
69% use 3rd party cloud-based software tools
Top training challenges: Integrating external e-learning platforms with corporate training offering
Top supplier challenge: Lack of adequate systems to support supplier management

^{Please rank up to three of your organization’s top quality management challenges. (1 = most challenging) Base: Chemicals (n=78)}