Companies holding ISO 9001, IATF, ISO 14001, and ISO 45001 certifications are required to document the audit process of their organization in accordance with the requirements of the implemented standards.

Traditionally, this process has most often been documented using paper-based audit forms, which significantly limits effective communication of the importance of audits and makes it difficult to implement nonconformities identified during audits—especially those requiring the involvement of multiple participants across the organization. As one of the first providers, we launched an Audit Module for our customers as early as 2010. Being fully aware of how challenging it is to draw process owners’ attention to the importance of audits and corrective action reports, we digitized this process and continue to improve it. As a result, employees at our customers’ facilities have constant access to the status of ongoing audits and are notified by email about the status of corrective actions assigned to them.

Implementing the Audit module means that concepts such as audits and nonconformities are no longer terms used once a year—"on the eve" of an upcoming external certification or surveillance audit—but instead become a permanent part of the organization’s daily operations. For the person responsible for maintaining management systems, the Audit module is a powerful tool that ensures continuous improvement through the timely execution of the audit schedule. Importantly, it finally puts an end to the “one-man show,” where the same person plans the audit, conducts it, and then completes corrective action reports on behalf of employees (because they have no time, or other matters are considered more important).

Another key aspect is that the entire management team has visibility into the status of corrective actions. As a result, employees place greater importance on the quality of records documenting the process of eliminating nonconformities.

The Audit module primarily provides:

• a single register containing all audits: process audits, system audits, second-party and third-party audits,
• the ability to view the real-time status of related corrective action forms,
• documented communication between the person responsible for managing the audit schedule and lead auditors, as well as between lead auditors and audited parties,
• a centralized repository for all audit reports.

If our thoughts on the module described above have caught your interest, contact us via the contact form. We will arrange a short, free-of-charge presentation of our system’s capabilities—either at your company or online.