The ROI Behind a Hosted QMS – Is it Worth it?
By on April 16, 2018
Is it worth it? This question is on the minds of many people evaluating Compliance Management Software as a solution to compliance challenges. In one recent webinar, Chris Heartsill, the Quality Manager for the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s office explained why using Qualtrax within his organization has been an excellent return on investment.
The Tarrant County office is a full service medical examiner, toxicology and forensics lab, serving 3.1 million people in 4 different counties, as well as providing medical & legal work for police, sheriff, and DA offices. This is a significant operation, and making sure the office maintains its ISO 17025 accreditation and its accreditation through National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME) is critical to its success. He says that Qualtrax “has absolutely been worth it.”
During one component of the webinar Chris explained specifically why Qualtrax is even more valuable now that his organization is hosted in the cloud– rather than having a local instance on their own servers.
Based on how IT is structured with Tarrant County, Chris was able to avoid a great deal of “hassle” by going hosted. His IT support is not located in the same building as him and has the responsibility of servicing all departments that are part of Tarrant County, not just the Medical Examiner’s office. Chris mentioned how hesitant the IT department was to add any software to their server, due to concerns over security, and therefore were much more receptive to a cloud-based application.
Beyond the ease of interactions internally, Qualtrax hosted has also resulted in quick and easy updates and maintenance. Chris described how our team provides better troubleshooting and allows for updates to be made “seamlessly and automatically”.
Chris shared insight that your Quality Management System needs to be accessible at essential locations–having it hosted in a cloud environment is the ultimate in accessible. It was fun to hear Chris describe the many places he has been able to access Qualtrax, now that they are hosted. He has utilized Qualtrax while at home, overseas, while in airports and even on an airplane — talk about visibility and accessibility!
For those in forensic labs or with a role that requires going out in the field, Qualtrax hosted ensures you have access to policies and procedures no matter where you go, as long as there is internet access. That is a powerful reason to pursue a hosted environment for your Quality Management System–it ensure whether in or out of the office everyone has access to the most up to date version of documentation.
A final benefit that many people don’t consider is how a hosted instance of Qualtrax gives you the ability to streamline audits. With Qualtrax hosted, you can give access to auditors and assessors before they are even on site and they can take a look at your policies and procedures. This reduces the amount of time they have to spend on-site with your team–and also reduces the amount of time you have to spend running back and forth between a printer and your audit, as the documentation is at the fingertips of the auditor already and access can be granted within the product, rather than by printing.
Multiple factors must be considered when evaluating options for a software selection that will impact the health–and in some ways happiness– of your organization moving forward. One feature of a Quality Management Software solution that we feel is a “must” when considering choices is a cloud-based product.
So is it worth it? Listen for yourself to hear Chris’s confidence in his decision to manage compliance with Qualtrax hosted. Watch the full webinar below.
Categories: Compliance Management, Medical Examiners, News
