How To Avoid A Change Control Breakdown

By Adam Huang

There are many industries that require businesses to meticulously track and record their change control processes, which is why many of those businesses are turning to change control software to help them streamline their procedures and avoid the breakdowns that can damage the company's returns. If you have the right software integrated in your system, though, those breakdowns don't have to happen to you.

Communication is central to change control processes. However, company communication about change control processes is not always the best. For example, a company decides to use a paper-based system. This company wants to save money and to avoid the hassle of looking for effective change management software. The company does manage to save money at first, but its employees also spend more time doing the work.

These employees will spend their time trying to find the right people or gather the necessary materials for the creation, routing and approval processes. As they run around, moving documents by hand, SOPs can be left around and cause confusion over which documents are the most recent. Then there is a definite lack of accountability among the employees, and it can all lead to a serious breakdown in processes.

Consider another company that uses change control software. They can control the entire process online and still meet all the FDA, ISO, EMEA, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance regulations. All of this company's change control procedures will be connected so that their CAPA, audit, training, and customer complaints applications will work seamlessly together. This is how companies can automatically take care of their creation, routing, and approval processes.

There are also training procedures that are connected to change control documentation and regulations. These training procedures can affect every part of the company. If there is a company using a paper system, it can take hours of manual labor to get the documents to the right people and secure the right approvals before anyone has a chance to implement the new training.

Then, when the employees receive their training documentation for new procedures, they may forget to dispose of old SOPs or fail to locate them. That can cause a lot of confusion because employees might forget which document is the most up-to-date, which parts of the training they need, and whether or not there will be an exam later.

If another company were to choose change control software, they can automatically route and get approval for the final SOPs by the people specified when the system was set up. It will also inform the right people about outdated documents and any updating that needs to happen. It will also specify when and where the training will occur, and if there will be a test later.

It's really no wonder that some companies are handling change control with ease. They are the ones with access to change control software. Start searching for a flexible change control software solution for your own company and save yourself lots of time and even more headaches. - 32544

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