Building a SharePoint QMS application is underrated. It can also grow your reputation as a company that continuously tracks and improves its business processes.
Additionally, a QMS helps improve internal as well as external communication. It also helps create an environment of predictability through an established and formalised set of systems and processes. In this blog, we will discuss how you can combine the strengths of various components on the SharePoint platform to create a helpful SharePoint QMS Solution for your company.
How to start building your own SharePoint QMS Solution
SharePoint combines a wide range of tools and features that users can utilise to create a robust SharePoint QMS Application. We can discuss these features and tools in more detail. Depending on your unique needs, you can follow the following steps ( in no particular order) entirely or as per your organisation’s specific needs.
Step 1 – A place for all the documentation
You can leverage the document management features in SharePoint to create a central repository for documents like policies, work instructions, procedures etc. These can be easily categorised using the metadata feature. The inbuilt document libraries with the Version History and Check-Out feature will help you achieve this. In addition, you can add conditional formatting like colours for various documents to track their expiration or review dates easily.
Step 2 – Organise your audit information
Suppose the main purpose of setting up a SharePoint QMS Application is to get through a quality audit. In that case, the most basic requirement will be to create a document library to manage the files related to each audit. You can use Document Sets or Lists and configure the document library accordingly. Furthermore, you can add the audit-related metadata to it to have separate folders for each audit. You can use Sharepoint’s Version History to keep track of the various document updates and revisions. Versioning is a default feature that can be used to track both major and minor versions of the documents.
Step 3 – Enable a security setup for information access
Not all information available within the QMS must be open to every user. Just like in any hierarchical structure, in a QMS, some users will have full access to information, whereas some will only have a partial view. On SharePoint, you can set up the security features for sites, documents, folders, document libraries etc., using the customised security and permissions setup features. This can be done at various levels and is highly customisable based on your organisational needs.
Step 4 – Corrective and Preventive Action (CAPA)
Users can leverage Microsoft Forms and custom lists for tracking them in the SharePoint QMS Application. This helps eliminate non-conformances and is handy while taking Corrective and Preventive Action (CAPA) to improve internal processes. Many customisation options are available for users to make them more user-friendly and aesthetic. The views, formatting, and metadata can be customised, and all these features can be tied in Power Automate.
Step 5 – Document acknowledgement using Power Automate
Power Automate allows users to add automated approval and acknowledgement features in the SharePoint QMS Solution. This ensures that team members constantly work with the latest procedural updates, SOPs etc., to get the proper business outcomes. You can easily create a workflow and log the responses in a custom list or Excel sheet.
Step 6 – More customisations with Site Pages
Beyond the regular organising of files and documents, your team might also look for features that let them display detailed process diagrams, related work instructions, SOPs, procedures etc. This is where you can leverage Site Pages to create page templates that ensure consistency and uniformity for diverse files and information. Add metadata to this mix, and you have infinite possibilities for your knowledge base.
Step 7 – Communicating internally & externally
Communication and customer feedback are the other key components that form the backbone of a robust SharePoint QMS Application. You can use Microsoft Forms to collect relevant customer information and store it in custom lists on a SharePoint site for easy access. This data can be readily analysed using Power BI and presented as custom reports and dashboards to the relevant stakeholders.
Internal communication also forms a big part of this system, as keeping employees informed of the various updates and policies is essential. SharePoint can be easily integrated with Yammer, Outlook Mail, Microsoft Teams etc., to effectively communicate QMS information with employees and ensure everyone is on the same page.
Features that go beyond quality management
Globally, companies predominantly use SharePoint as an effective document management system and/or intranet portal. It has many inbuilt features make it ideal for both these use cases. For companies using Sharepoint as their QMS, it becomes a seamless transition when they require an intranet or document management system for their employees. This is true the other way around too, where organisations that use SharePoint need to deploy a QMS quickly and effectively.
SharePoint’s continuing growth as a diverse and vibrant platform helps companies leverage its versatility to simplify their internal processes and drive productivity. It is also connected to a large and active global community that is always there to help fellow users with tips and tricks for improvements and troubleshooting. As the platform has continued to evolve, it has also resulted in an extensive database of components and accessories that even new users can leverage to create better applications with relative ease.
Conclusion
Building a SharePoint QMS Application is one of the best ways organisations can leverage SharePoint to drive compliance and long-term efficiency. SharePoint has strengths and advantages when looking at the wide range of platforms available for enterprise application development. SharePoint’s user-friendliness and feature-rich interface make it easy for companies to quickly develop applications like QMS and deploy them without taking their eyes off their core business activities.
If you want expertise in developing a SharePoint QMS Solution for your company, please contact us at info@neologix.ae or +971-521043226. Our team will be more than happy to help answer your queries and get you started on building a QMS system that can deliver excellent results for your company.
