Finland maybe a small country, but its innovations have made a huge impact on the world. Think how much time Matti Makkonen – AKA ‘the Father of SMS’ has saved you. This Nokia engineer first pitched the concept of text messaging in 1984. Now trillions of text messages are sent every year. Then there’s Erwise, the world’s first internet browser with a graphical user interface invented by four Finnish students in 1992, leading the way to swifter internet surfing. And let’s not forget the simple dish draining closet created, in 1940, by Maiju Gebhar who estimated the average household spends almost three and a half years washing and drying dishes over the course of a lifetime.
Quality control is crucial yet complicated
Now Finnish ingenuity is saving time controlling the quality of the millions of products produced every day. Quality control is underpinned by an insanely complex set of quality control standards. In 2017, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) listed 21 991 standards in its catalogue. Needless to say, quality control is as complicated as it is crucial. And there’s one thing that makes this titanic job infinitely more complex and time-consuming: paperwork.
Why paperwork does a bad job
By default, quality control means tons of paperwork. Manuals to read, reports to file, forms to fill. Even the most attentive people struggle to ensure everyone has the right version of instructions and that follow-up is done correctly.
With quality control, most people only see the form being filled. However, the people responsible have to keep track of the information collected. Then, if a quality control case is opened, even more people need to get involved. Keeping track of the paper trail of this process can be excruciatingly hard. Even today, though a tiny 64GB USB flash drive can safely store millions of documents, quality control professionals often receive instructions in thick binders, which need to be kept up to date. At best, they have Excel spreadsheets to keep track of their work.
QualityFirst throws out outdated ring binders and makes IT work for you
Thankfully, help is at hand for the brave men and women who have to deal with this mind-numbing burden. QualityFirst, our revolutionary software, was created not only to help businesses work more efficiently, but to enable our customers to focus on the actual purpose of quality control administration: distributing always up-to-date and approved documentation.
Now, even the most intricate organizations can ditch their ring binders. Concerned parties can follow up on cases, participate with analysis and contribute their thoughts about best practices on a single screen. This leads to both enhanced institutional knowledge and better documentation.
What’s more, QualityFirst slots right into most companies’ IT infrastructure by making use of Microsoft’s widely recognized SharePoint platform. Thanks to SharePoint’s APIs, it’s easy to integrate with almost anything. Because it’s the Microsoft stack all the way down, it can even run inside your company or on Office 365.
And the most useful integration of them all? QualityFirst activity takes place through the user’s company login information, which can feature strong, multi-factor authentication. Consequently, what the user reads on their screen can be trusted as the genuine guideline. Access control to documentation also thwarts opportunistic attempts to grab company secrets.
Wave goodbye to folders forever
QualityFirst makes life easier for the people that make the modern world run smoothly. We’ll look more closely at its many benefits in the coming weeks – but for now, if you’re one of the unsung quality control heroes of 21st century life, rest assured that our SharePoint creation will make your life a whole lot easier. To find out more, and to finally wave goodbye to folders, head on over to our QualityFirst info page today.
