You know that old saying “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it”? Unfortunately, that is the thought process many executives adopt around quality management. It is not necessarily that their quality management systems are broken, per se, but the challenge of having disconnected quality systems and data sources has grown to become so normal that it has become just something they “deal with” or “make work.” In a perfect world, however, these resources should be enablers of ever-improving quality.

There is a gap in the ability of many organizations to effectively deliver quality products and processes, and our research during the past several years has revealed that building closed-loop quality processes with enterprise quality management software (EQMS) is the bridge. EQMS transforms many of the traditionally siloed quality efforts that are causing roadblocks to improvement today. However, because this is a relatively new and emerging software space, some have found it difficult to figure out how to approach such an investment.

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