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HOW ASSUMING DIGITAL MATURITY IS KEY TO QUALITY, COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE, AND INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGY. BySueMarchant
According to MasterControl's 2022 Digital Quality Maturity Study conducted by Cicero research, the majority of quality organizations are going digital, have plans to go digital within the next five years, or believe this is where they need to go to achieve compliance and remain competitive. However, a high number of companies still design quality management systems around manual, paper-based, or hybrid processes which are error-prone, disconnected, and cause delays. Believing that most of their competitors are more digitally maturethan they are, and that they need to digitally transform to get ahead, companies still hesitate to implement software solutions.
Regardless of their size, the primary barrier that quality organizations face is the belief that the cost of an advanced quality management system (QMS) outweighs the benefits that come with it. Unfortunately, this is the costliest mistake that companies can make at a time when industry leaders are conţinu ing to invest in software solutions, especially those that su pport emergent technology, which is a dramatically and rapidly changing industry itself. Pharmaceutical companies, for example, are investing in more patents related to artificial intelligence (Al) [i] and hiring more talent skilled in Al to prepare for, develop, and monitor this technology than any other sector.fii] Mentions of AI in pharmaceutical company filings increased 105% between 2016 and 2021.[iii]
Companies that delay digitization will pay more down the road and will also be delayed in their ability to leverage intelligent technology. Simply stated, the combined rates of inflation and technology innovation will make it more expensive to acquire and more difficult to implement in the future. By that time, digitally mature competitors will have exponentially outpaced their peers. The latest CNBC Technology Executive Council su rvey reveals tech leaders consider technology not as a cost center, but rather a business driver - even in downturns.[iv] Further, these companies are actively investing in cloud computing, machine learning and artificial intelligence, and automation. These investments make sense when you consider the cost of poor quality (COPQ). COPQ can increase tenfold for pre-release remediation and jump up to 100 times the original cost of quality for post-release remediation.[v]
Quality personnel need visibility into their system data...