Many organizations have decided to automate their quality management system (QMS) or upgrade their currently automated QMS. Quality management tends to involve significant numbers of documents, which automated systems are especially efficient at creating, accessing, tracking, updating, and reporting. Because QMS requirements are often similar from one organization to another, a number of QMS software products are commercially available. 

In general, acquiring a commercial QMS is less expensive, less risky, and takes less time to implement than building your own QMS software. Those who have experienced or seen others experience software development know how difficult it can be. Even mature software development organizations frequently find that developing software fails to deliver expected benefits, despite when—as so often happens— it also takes longer and costs more than estimated.

Moreover, more organizations have reduced or gotten out of doing software development. Consequently, they no longer have the technical and management capabilities to develop their own QMS. Many follow a strategy of relying on third parties for some or all of the software they need to run their organizations.

Within such a strategy are several important variations. At one extreme are organizations that simply buy and use existing software products “as is.”  That’s the simplest approach, but it might not be the most reliable. If or when an organization buys an existing product that doesn’t satisfy the organization’s specific requirements, additional cost and effort are likely needed to adjust the software to how they do business—and that effort may never actually get the job done the way they need it.

At the other extreme, an organization might choose to custom-develop a QMS to fit its unique requirements. If the organization doesn’t have or doesn’t want to burden internal software development capabilities, it can engage a third party to do the development. To reduce the development effort, the organization could start with a commercially available QMS software product and then customize it. Regardless, development takes time and resources, and it’s risky. Applying more effective planning and engineering can reduce risks (but never entirely) and often requires increasing time and expense.

The missing piece

What often is overlooked when acquiring QMS software is how it will be operated. Historically, many organizations ran their software applications in their own data centers. This involved installing and operating mainframe computer(s), which were  expensive and complicated. Consequently, only larger organizations typically had the wherewithal to create and run a data center—and the software development capability to create the programs that ran in it.      

Some larger organizations used their own systems to also process for similar but usually smaller organizations, for a fee. Others formed and operated data centers as “service bureaus,” basically selling raw computing power to clients without the operating capabilities to run their own software. Such clients usually had the responsibility for their software, relying on either internal or contracted external technical staff.

In the early days, organizations developed their own software applications or used ones sold by computer manufacturers as a way to sell equipment. Increasingly, software applications shifted to being developed and sold by vendors that were mainly focused on selling software rather than computer hardware. As a kind of middle ground, some service bureaus took the opportunity to widen their market by installing and operating software applications for their clients. Thus, software as a service (SaaS) emerged, where the SaaS vendor both provided the software application and operated it in its data center.

SaaS business model

SaaS has obvious advantages for buyers. They can quickly get processing capabilities without incurring the time, cost, and risk of developing software or operating it. SaaS vendors can increase revenues on their often-sizable data center investments without correspondingly increased costs by also selling (usually more profitable) applications services. Moreover, SaaS vendors can spread initial and ongoing costs among multiple clients, so each client gets processing for relatively lower fees.

Of course, it doesn’t happen by magic. SaaS vendors often find their marketplace extremely competitive and struggle to stand out. Initially it was sufficient for SaaS vendors to offer fairly generic capabilities, sometimes simply operating the same commercially available software products used by other SaaS vendors as well as organizations doing their own processing. 

Increasingly, though, software application functionality has become the overwhelming SaaS differentiation factor. If a prospective client can’t get specific capabilities from one SaaS vendor, it might be able to get them easily from a competitor.

Thus, in order to be responsive to multiple clients’ different needs, software for SaaS usually is built to offer a far wider range of options than likely would be found in software for sale or internally developed. Moreover, SaaS software is made to be tailored, that is, configuring each client’s unique version by simply selecting specific processing methods from a set of prebuilt optional choices. It’s like getting a meal in a cafeteria. The isoTracker QMS base product offers many standard customizations out of the box, and specialized capabilities can often be added for only a nominal one-time fee.

In contrast, modifying a software package to have similar functionality ordinarily would require custom programming, which usually takes longer, costs more, and incurs more defects than tailored products. It’s like having a chef prepare each meal to order. The question is how close the set of tailoring choices can come to meeting a client’s overall set of specific needs and preferences.       

For example, most QMS manage nonconformances. Each QMS software package probably has a specific set of categories to describe a nonconformance, such as severity. An SaaS version might allow clients to choose from several severity ratings. For example, low-medium-high might be scored 1-2-3, 1-3-5, or 1-5-10. 

Let’s say, though, that a prospective buyer of SaaS instead wants to rate severity as a dollar amount cost of quality. That would require customization, which the SaaS vendor could decide not to offer, or offer for a possibly high fee because only that client would use it. Or the vendor might offer the function for a possibly lower fee if it felt that doing so would be advantageous for all clients.

SaaS can be an attractive approach for many QMS buyers, especially those that want to avoid the hassle and expense of computer operations. There are many SaaS QMS products and services, including isoTracker. They’re by no means identical, so buyers should select carefully, starting by identifying their requirements.  In general, it’s best for buyers to identify possibly unique requirements before contracting for a SaaS QMS.