Companies from Bangkok to Boston are now taking more stringent steps to meet customer requirements and adhere to international quality standards than ever before. The good news is they aren’t doing it without some help. Operational managers within industries around the world are increasingly taking advantage of new technologies that streamline standard operating procedures (SOPs).
According to the Quality Control Forecast, the global quality control market is now generating nearly $37 billion in profits; it’s even expected to grow at 6.18% CAGR through 2025. As global competition continues to increase, so does the pressure to maintain uniform commodity and service standards, earn consumer trust, and implement foolproof systems that keep teams organized.
In this quick article, we’ll review the benefits of quality control mobile apps and what to prioritize when assessing app options. After reading it, you will have a better understanding of how to enforce SOPs that ensure your products and services are always delivered with the same level of quality.
Why Use Quality Control Apps?
Quality control apps enable managers to perform quality control audits and assess the different areas of your business’s processes. Put simply, they can provide the convenience of overseeing the entire inspection process electronically without the burden of paper stacks, clipboards, and other hard-to-track audit trails. The results obtained by stronger standard operating procedures and inspection reports can absolutely make a difference to your organizational productivity, efficiency, brand reputation, and capital management.
Here are the primary benefits of using quality control apps:
- Enhance operational excellence: Quality control apps allow you to provide products and services in a consistent manner. This improves the efficiency and effectiveness of your business operations.
- Improve business reputations: Receiving certification for meeting industry standards helps position your business as reputable and trustworthy. It helps to build your brand.
- Minimize mistakes: Even minor mistakes during quality inspections can be costly to the business. Quality control apps ensure a methodical approach to inspections and therefore minimize the chances of errors occurring.
- Access important data and insights: Quality control apps will capture important data that may be overlooked during manual inspections. This will enable you to perform an in-depth analysis and make informed business decisions. You will also be able to identify recurring issues.
Other benefits of using quality control apps include reduced spending on hardware and faster transmission of results. With that said, the apps sometimes pose some considerable disadvantages. It’s not uncommon for companies to purchase quality control apps without really understanding how much work will be involved in team training.
However, this problem can be avoided by selecting a quality control app designed for mobile-first. Since nearly every employee owns a smartphone and is familiar with navigating intuitive apps, it’s reasonable to expect quick adoption with little to no training when using an app like MaintainX.
How to Assess Quality Control Apps
As you might expect, there are many factors worth considering when sourcing quality control apps. A good app will improve overall product consistency, enhance SOP compliance, and improve team communication. If you’re feeling unsure about what matters most, here are some things worth considering:
- Industry experience: Unfortunately, there is no size-fits-all solution when it comes to quality control apps. Depending on your industry, you might want to prioritize apps catering to specific quality guidelines. For instance, Keep Truckin’ makes an excellent app to keep truck drivers in compliance with the law, although much of what their software does could technically be done on a Google Spreadsheet. However, don’t assume an app marketed specifically to your industry is always your best fit. Some newer, more generalized quality control apps are miles ahead of industry options in terms of usability, functionality, scalability, and smartphone compatibility.
- Flexibility: Quality control apps come in the form of licensing, hosted solutions, subscriptions, and cloud offerings. When sourcing your next app, prioritize cloud-based subscription plans that can accommodate future company growth. The good news? These SaaS options cost significantly less than traditional software options. Monthly subscription plans are often charged per user and cost anywhere from $10 to $150 per month.
- Communication: The number one cause of production mistakes made on the clock? Poor communication between workers and upper management. You can reduce the likelihood of employee miscommunications by utilizing a quality control app with chat functionality. MaintainX is the only quality control and work order software app on the market that includes instant messaging. Conversations can be organized by individuals, groups, teams, and topics.
- Integration capabilities: No one wants to overhaul entire business processes for the sake of using a single app! Read the fine print to determine if it will complement existing technological processes with APIs or integration tools like Zapier.
- Data analysis: Finally, a great quality control app will do more than provide a checklist template, scheduling, and asset management functionality. It will also synthesize work order data into meaningful reports that can be used to make informed business decisions and improve output. The usefulness of your reports will depend on a). The availability of comprehensive data you have, and b). How efficiently that data can be accessed.
Get Control with MaintainX
In summary, utilizing the right quality control app can save your team significant time, energy, and money. We hope this article has given you a better understanding of what to consider when evaluating your options. As previously mentioned, there is no one-size-fits-all application for every business. The most important questions to answer when choosing the right option for your organization are:
- How easy will this app be for everyone to use?
- Does it have the features we need to be successful?
- Can the app scale with us as our company grows?
A good quality control app will help your company increase efficiency, enhance your reputation for reliability, and build team camaraderie. If you’re ready to take your organization’s quality control program to the next level, we invite you to download MaintainX.
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