If you are in an industry that sets a high standard for the products you offer, auditing the supplier is part of the quality control procedure. You also would continuously raise the bar for yourself, conducting internal audits regularly.
Simultaneously, the competition in any industry is getting fiercer, and the challenge is to maintain (or even grow) the quality of your products and services while cutting costs.
Here are 5 tips how to half your time doing audits:
- Have a system to manage audit templates
- Have all the audits you need scheduled
- Automate feeding the data into your system
- Automate the creation of your report
- Automate the sending of the reports
Firstly, if you don’t know where your templates are, or don’t have any, you’ll spend loads of unnecessary time looking for them.
Secondly, use a calendar with notices to schedule when to conduct the specific audits. This will bring you a piece of mind and make sure you don’t miss anything.
Don’t do the same thing twice. This is important. Conducting the audit on site, and then doing the same thing in the office, is not a good use of time. Moreover, you usually would use a similar report, so at least, use a template for this. Even better, if it’s generated automatically.
And lastly, never forget to send the attachment to the right people in time. Most software systems have a live dashboard with the key metrics, so you can forget reporting all together.
Cutting costs
Whoever conducts the audit, is a trained professional. Trained professionals want to do the work that makes a difference and brings value to the company. However, if, after they have done the audit on site, they take as much time writing a report and putting the findings on the system, they are wasting everyone's time.
Doing the same work twice would make anybody irritated. We know how productive and perceptive irritated people are, don’t we?
Having a software system in place, that automates your reporting and data management will save the company money, and the auditors' nerves. (For a free specific estimation for your company, contact me.)
Boosting reliability
Making sure all the forms are filled, all the boxes are ticked and everything is done by the right date is important. We trust this responsibility to educated and experienced professionals. However, they (yes, even you), believe it or not, are human. And as human, prone to human error.
For everybody to sleep better and not to worry and stress if everything was done, it is smart to use software tools to remind you. Google calendar memos and to-do softwares are widely used, and so are specific solutions with these qualities. When you have a good software solution you are automatically embarking on strategically implementing VUCA. Read more about the term and how applies to your job in VUCA - The Beginning.
If you want to sleep tight without waking up with cold sweat and the anxiety of not being sure every box was ticked, don't hesitate contacting us for more details - we're here for you.
If you are looking for a real life example of how the Falcony | Platform changed the life of a company, read the Fortum Case Study and read how they optimised their security audits, with the service.
We are building the world's first operational involvement platform. Our mission is to make the process of finding, sharing, fixing and learning from issues and observations as easy as thinking about them and as rewarding as being remembered for them.
By doing this, we are making work more meaningful for all parties involved.
More information at falcony.io.
