Disjointed legacy systems and disconnected processes are holding chemical companies back from reaching their full potential. With increasingly complex supply chains, changing regulations, and evolving market demands, manufacturers are struggling to maximize operational excellence and meet time-to-market goals.
How can the chemical industry follow in the footsteps of consumer goods and biopharma to become more agile, data-driven, and future-ready? The answer lies in digital quality transformation.
By embracing digital quality management, chemical manufacturers can increase agility and collaboration across the supply chain, enabling them to meet new market demands and drive operational efficiencies at scale. Modern technologies like cloud computing and artificial intelligence are helping companies streamline, automate and standardize processes, which leads to reduced costs and faster product releases.
Three Strategies for Unlocking Agility Through Quality
Forward-thinking quality and IT leaders are leading the charge by focusing on three key strategies.
1. Consolidate Systems with Modern Cloud Platforms
Leading companies in the consumer goods and biopharma industries are unifying their quality management systems (QMS) and document control, as well as their processes for batch release, environmental, health, and safety (EHS), and compliance training.
For example, in the consumer goods industry Unilever unified 10+ systems and standardized over 16 processes with a single Veeva QMS. Turning to the biopharma industry, Sanofi consolidated 40 legacy systems into one unified system of record, bringing 83,000 users across 200 locations onto a single platform. This strategic move drove many benefits, including reducing local documentation by 99% and change control steps from 11 to 5.
2. Prioritize User Experience Over Feature Lists
Great user experiences that solve critical pain points lead to higher adoption rates, which creates value and momentum for further transformation. Requests for proposal (RFPs) for quality management systems are often written as comprehensive "wish lists" that are difficult to implement and rarely focus on user adoption.
The most effective implementations and RFPs hone in on the must-have capabilities needed for an early deployment. They also confirm strategic alignment with software providers that deliver easy-to-use platforms and rapid innovation. This ensures companies focus on speed to value and maximally leverage user feedback to guide progress. As noted by Ahmed Maklad - Director of Global Digital Transformation & Consumer Quality, Unilever "We didn't want to boil the ocean. We wanted to focus on key use cases that can add so much value, and on collecting user feedback. Through this we are able to deliver quality transformation with excellence." When business needs align with technology, user adoption and change management capacity, great things happen.
3. Leverage Data to Drive Insights
Disconnected and aging systems, local applications, and spreadsheets for managing complaints, nonconformance reports (NCRs), audits, and change controls starve companies of modern insights. In contrast, pharma and consumer goods leaders have millions of structured records at their fingertips, ready for AI analysis and agents.
It’s time for chemical companies to catch up. The blueprint for quality transformation is clear, and the long-term returns are compelling.
Want to learn how a unified quality management system can help your organization standardize processes, leverage data for better decision-making, and unlock greater agility? Contact me to set up a conversation about your organization’s unique challenges and ambitions.
