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Since Deming and the quality revolution, numerous quality management software systems have emerged and flourished over the past several decades. However, the quality software market in general has been ill-defined, making it difficult for quality professionals to discuss the space and compare vendors in a formal way. With so many different vendors offering quality management software today, which cover a variety of functionalities, industries, technology delivery models, and so on, the software space can quickly become confusing. Consequently, understanding and then selecting a solution can be quite the challenge.
To address this challenge, LNS Research is helping to formally define the market by publishing its Solution Selection Guide for Enterprise Quality Management Software (EQMS). The guide aims to both inform quality professionals on the EQMS market and facilitate the complex selection process. LNS Research's vision is that this guide will serve as the first stop for all executives interested in an EQMS solution. It provides the needed information and insight for making a shortlist of vendors.
In this blog, we'll briefly discuss the EQMS market as a whole and then dive into the specifics of how to use the guide.
Ensuring the production and delivery of high quality products is an ongoing issue in the industrial setting. To overcome these challenges, companies have traditionally developed point solutions for point problems. Although these disparate mechanisms improved business performance in many cases, the improvements were often localized, lacking long-term vision for scalable, interoperable, collaborative, and integrated systems.
EQMS software delivers the ability to centralize and standardize product, production line, and plant information, facilitating the task of assessing, monitoring, and executing quality management initiatives at the global level. The software provides users with a set of targeted tools for managing quality in an end-to-end manner throughout the product lifecycle. Increasingly, it is being used to globally manage operations in leading companies.
With the rapid maturation of the EQMS market, vendors have gone from offering targeted solutions for targeted problems to offering global systems for managing quality. Out of the box functionalities, such as Corrective and Preventive Actions (CAPA), compliance, audit management, and document control are stronger than standalone solutions offered in the market less than a decade ago.
Because this market is growing in complexity, it's important for companies to take an analytical and comparative approach to selecting the right solution. The guide offers a snapshot of each vendor as well as a brief analysis. It also has individualized tables for each company, providing an extensive overview in a single location. The tables cover the following areas:
With the information listed in each vendor profile, an executive considering an EQMS implementation can match his or her needs to those offered by the market. Based on numerous criteria, the guide breaks down 18 of the space's top vendors, including:
Once a shortlist of vendors has been created with the information in the EQMS Solution Selection Guide, decision-makers should work with their teams to build a Request for Proposal (RFP) that can be sent to prospective vendors. After getting feedback, a cross-functional committee comprised of executives and plant managers across the value chain should make the final decision.
For more information on the EQMS market or the selection process, please feel free to visit the LNS Research Library or contact us at info@lnsresearch.com.
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