Maintaining quality the right tools for the job

The Scottish Quality Management Centre (SQMC) has been at the forefront of Quality Management Systems (QMS) training, consultation and implementation for over 25 years and utilising advancements in business software solutions is helping to keep them there.

When SQMC Director Karen MacKenzie attended a management systems seminar at Napier University hosted by Aberdeen-based software developers Mandos Software, she discovered that owner Peter Fraser’s approach to organisational mapping and business process management was exactly in line with SQMC’s – firstly identifying how a company operates and then fitting ISO and QMS standards around this.

By following this approach, Peter and Karen agree that businesses can maximise the efficiency within their management chain and, ultimately, their output.

Peter is the creator of author software, a business process management tool that helps organisations create an online integrated management system. In essence, it helps businesses define what they do, how they do it and who does it.

The author software helps users to create simple flow charts that are excellent illustrative tools and can be used to help firms implement Quality Management Systems.

Peter explains: “author takes a common sense approach to business mapping and helps identify best practice, helping companies simplify their processes to ensure consistency, capture operational knowledge and improve performance.

“The release of the new ISO 9001:2015 standard will be significant and is an ideal opportunity for organisations to understand, manage and improve their processes as required by the standard. This is something that has not always been addressed successfully before now.”

Responsible for the visual design and user-friendliness of SQMC’s products, SQMC Director of Operations Kenny Hannah explains: “Traditional flow charts can either overflow the confines of an A4 page or cause the fonts used to be so small in order to fit everything in that they’re hard to read. When Karen began using Mandos’ software for SQMC’s internal process maps, I was very impressed at how presentable they became.

“The author software is now an integral part of SQMC’s training courses, giving our students the chance to see a visual representation of their organisation in easy-to-use flow charts.

“SQMC is also a strong advocate of the author software through our syllabus of Quality Assurance and ISO 9001 auditing courses, and we use the software as an easy, flexible and effective tool to promote best practice when developing a Quality Management System.”

“Particularly nowadays, as procurement officers may request a copy of a firm’s Quality Manual as part of their tender, having a published, clear and concise manual could be a deal clincher. author’s innovative approach can help tremendously with this.”

To make business process mapping more accessible, Mandos released author STARTER in February 2015 as a low-cost way to begin the process-mapping journey aimed at individual consultants, managers and SMEs. It allows companies to easily create simplified business flow charts in printable file formats, helping to define processes that everyone can understand. Peter believes this will help organisations to become more efficient and, ultimately, improve their bottom line, whilst being upwards compatible with the other author software editions.

Peter continues: “the STARTER edition of author has been designed specifically to make it easy and affordable for anyone to create a complete set of process maps in a consistent, comprehensive and understandable format.”

Mandos Software

Mandos Software was founded in 1999, when Peter decided to create a more practical way to define business and quality processes for organisations in every sector.

For further information on author, please visit the official Mandos website.