Since W. Edwards Deming and the quality revolution, numerous quality management software systems have emerged during the past several decades. However, the quality software market in general has been ill-defined, making it difficult for quality professionals to discuss the space and compare vendors in a formal way. With so many different vendors offering quality management software that cover a variety of functionalities, industries, and technology delivery models, the software space can quickly become confusing. Consequently, understanding and then selecting a solution can be quite a challenge.

To address this, LNS Research has published its Solution Selection Guide for Enterprise Quality Management Software (EQMS). The guide aims to both inform quality professionals on the EQMS market and facilitate the complex selection process. LNS Research’s believes this guide will serve as the first stop for all executives interested in an EQMS solution. It provides the needed information and insight for making a shortlist of vendors.

Below is a brief summary of the EQMS market and specifics about how to use the guide. 

EQMS market overview

Ensuring the production and delivery of high quality products is an ongoing issue in industry. To overcome these challenges, companies have traditionally developed point solutions for point problems. Although these disparate mechanisms improved business performance in many cases, the improvements were often localized, lacking long-term vision for scalable, interoperable, collaborative, and integrated systems.

EQMS software delivers the ability to centralize and standardize product, production line, and plant information, facilitating the task of assessing, monitoring, and executing quality management initiatives at the global level. The software provides users with a set of targeted tools for managing quality in an end-to-end manner throughout the product life cycle. Increasingly, it is being used to globally manage operations in leading companies.

With the rapid maturation of the EQMS market, vendors have gone from offering targeted solutions for targeted problems to offering global systems for managing quality. Out-of-the-box functionalities, such as corrective and preventive actions (CAPA), compliance, audit management, and document control are stronger than standalone solutions offered in the market less than a decade ago.

Using the EQMS Solution Selection Guide

Because this market is growing in complexity, it’s important for companies to take an analytical and comparative approach to selecting the right solution. The guide offers a snapshot of each vendor as well as a brief analysis. It also has individualized tables for each company, providing an extensive overview in a single location. The tables cover the following areas:

• Industries: Lists industries as well as various subverticals served by vendors, e.g., life sciences, automotive
• Functionalities: Lists the quality management functionalities offered by vendors, e.g., CAPA, supplier quality management (SQM)
• Company size: Lists the company sizes targeted by vendors, e.g., small or medium-size enterprises
• Geography served: Lists the regions covered by vendors, e.g., North America, Asia-Pacific (APAC),
• Technology development platform: Lists the platforms used by vendors to develop solutions, e.g., Java, .NET
• Technology delivery model: Lists the delivery model options offered by vendors, e.g., on-premise, cloud

With the information listed in each vendor profile, an executive considering an EQMS implementation can match his or her needs to those offered by the market. Based on numerous criteria, the guide breaks down 18 of the space’s top vendors, including:

Making the right selection

Once a shortlist of vendors has been created with the information in the EQMS Solution Selection Guide, decision makers should work with their teams to build a request for proposal (RFP) that can be sent to prospective vendors. After getting feedback, a cross-functional committee comprised of executives and plant managers across the value chain should make the final decision.

The EQMS Solution Selection Guide is available exclusively at the LNS Research website. For more information on the EQMS market or the selection process, please feel free to visit the LNS Research Library or contact us at info@lnsresearch.com.