Triaster Blog

What a Quality Strategy Can Do for Your Business

Written by Brad Fagan | 8 November 2016

You might not think that creating a quality strategy should be a major focus for your company and there are a lot of companies out there that would agree with you. This may be because of a traditional business ideology that focusing on quality costs time, money and is generally becomes a nuisance to the business bottom line.

However, the way things were is not always the way things should stay. And over the years, it’s been the companies who have focused on quality that have seen their businesses thrive.

A good business can recognise when their customer's needs and wants change. And as our world is becoming more focused on quality products made in socially conscious ways, consumers are increasingly looking for companies who are creating quality with a socially responsible mentality.

So the question isn’t ‘is social/quality responsibility important?’ but ‘how could neglecting quality negatively impact my business?’ Because at the end of the day, it takes a long time to build your brand image, but only a moment to destroy it.

Image sourced from: webpresence.tv

Quality Failure

So how dangerous can neglecting quality be? The answer to this question is…devastating.

The 2008 financial crisis is considered by Paul Moore (former head of group regulatory risk at HBOS) to be the “greatest quality failure of all time”. He was given his marching orders in 2004 for warning senior executives about the dangers of taking risks. It seemed this was an unpopular message because after the smoke cleared, it emerged that Moore was the only Senior risk and compliance executive in the UK who spoke out publicly.

Image sourced from: thelastgreatstand.com

Tech giant Samsung left quality behind recently after rushing out their new Note 7 Smartphone to compete with Apple’s latest iPhone release. When it was discovered that the new smartphone’s battery had a tendency to overheat and catch fire, Samsung discontinued production and recalled phones already sold. This catastrophic blunder in quality control has led to a forecast in losses totalling somewhere in the neighbourhood of $5 billion.

It’s not just time and money that's at risk either. In 2010 Toyota’s removable floor mats caused the accelerator to stick and led to 52 deaths and a recall of 9 million cars in the US.

The business world is littered with these stories. For some businesses, quality failure could have more serious impacts than others, but the fact of the matter Is, you’ve spent years building this brand, why not spend some time and energy to protect it?

How to Implement a Quality Strategy in Your Company

An increase in quality management won’t be achieved overnight, but it will be achieved as long as it becomes a core strategy at the heart of your organisation.

Image sourced from: huddle.eurostarsoftwaretesting.com

You have to be willing to implement processes and documentation that focus on quality and ensure that it’s upheld in every area of the company, while creating a culture where changes can be made to your systems where there is a potential risk to quality.

With this in mind, here are some important factors you should implement when creating your quality strategy:

  • You must already understand the processes of your company in order to understand how they are to be improved.
  • Create a risk assessment for all areas of the company, so you can see the potential danger.
  • Create a quality team who is responsible for making sure standards remain high.
  • There must be a top down acceptance of quality as a core value of the organisation and employees must be encouraged to produce quality work.
  • Responsibility must be assigned to someone in the organisation involved with the process to keep an eye on consistency.
  • In order to create a quality culture, you will need to make it part of every employees job description.

Can You Live Without a Quality Strategy?

The short answer is yes, you can. The longer answer is, it depends on how much you like gambling.

Image sourced from: media.salon.com

You might have gotten along fine so far without a quality strategy, but at the end of the day the risks might be too high not to have one in place and while it’s probably not ideal living without a quality strategy, it’s pretty ideal living with one. That’s because having a quality strategy will actually support what your company is trying to do by:

  • Creating brand loyalty
  • Protecting your brand name
  • Causing you to become a leader in your field
  • Turning your company into an inspiring place to work for your employees (Knowing that you produce the best product for your customers tends to satisfy employees)
  • Minimising risk.

Get More From Your Business

Triaster has been at the forefront of Business Process Management for a long time. We know the value of placing quality at the centre of your business processes as do our customers.

If you would like to know more about how BPM and quality can work hand-in-hand to improve your business, read our case study below:

Related Articles:

Business Process Management vs Quality Management vs Enterprise Architecture vs Workflow Management: The Ultimate Comparison

How to Achieve a Quality Strategy for your Business

Managing Risk in Business: How can I manage risk and avoid quality failure?

What is the cost of quality failure?

The Top 10 things your Quality Management System (QMS) must deliver