It is always great to read success stories and achievements from my contacts on LinkedIn. Recently I have seen a few people posting about great results in their food safety compliance process. One thing I have spotted is that most of them always give credit to “a great team”. It reminded that just like many other tasks, compliance is a lot about teamwork. It’s not just about the quality manager, but also the team behind them, the management, and the rest of the organisation.

What makes teamwork key?

Throughout my career building software solutions for manufacturing companies, teamwork is always a key part of every solution. If the solution does not help users and teams communicate better, then it will certainly fail. With regards to compliance management, I have been involved in solutions for managing GDPR, data security, food safety, health and safety, anti-bribery, and more. In all of these the collaboration is essential in the following ways:

• Allowing more than one person to work on different areas of the process. Normally the job is too big for one person and delegation is essential.
• Ability to assign users to specific roles. Every stage is then linked to a role.
• Allowing users to share information, discuss, and notify each other within the application, rather than relying too much on emails.
• The solution should clearly show information relevant to the current user and role.
• Building a workflow that fits the process. The solution helps drive the process forward and avoids dead time and confusion.
• Clear audit trails of who did what and when.

How BRC Gap Analysis encourages teamwork

We have recently launched a solution that helps food manufacturers do a gap analysis for the BRC Food Safety standard. It also manages corrective actions and keeps track of policies and documentation. Here is how collaboration plays a key part in our software:

• Easily allows different people do a gap analysis on different sections of the standard.
• Allows corrective actions to be raised and assigned to different users.
• Provides the ability of having an approver/verifier to review the sections and corrective actions.
• Allows discussions and note taking within the application, linked to actions and sections.
• If you work with an external auditor or food safety consultant, they can be invited to collaborate, review, and give feedback on the gap analysis and corrective actions.
• Provides audit trails and history logs to easily see how different users have worked on actions and sections.
• Provides reports that clearly visualise compliance, completion (progress), and users’ workload.

What now?

We are offering a 14 day free trial, so why not take advantage of it? You can invite as many colleagues as you want, to collaborate with you on BRC Gap Analysis. Start your free trial here.