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The Coronavirus was an alarming cause of death. It also wreaked havoc on almost every business in the U.S.

Tested/Untested. Positive/Negative Results. Asymptomatic. Stay Home, Work Safe. Shelter-In-Place. Essential Business. Non-Essential Business. Social Distancing. Curbside Service. Conflicting Federal, State and Local Guidelines.

Now that America is thinking about getting back to work: How did you your operations stand up to the chaos? How did you communicate to your employees during the ongoing confusion?

We have heard horror stories of procedures and policies being changed three times in the same day. Employees completely thrown off their routine.

Whether the Coronavirus or some other pandemic or crisis one thing is for sure…you need to communicate with your employees timely and accurately. Among other things, we can help you with that, simply and effective.

Conformance Portal has the ability for you to:
  • make one post and reach all your employees
  • use our chat function to hold meetings
  • document any procedure changes for regulator review
Give us a call to see how you can update policies on the fly as events are unfolding to keep your employees current at all times. It’s simple and easy with Conformance Portal – and we have special pricing in these difficult times to help you.

Wishing you all the best.

For the sixth straight year most employers report attracting and retaining employees is their greatest concern. There is a “Top Down, Bottom Up” approach used by Conformance Portal with spectacular results proven to reduce employee turnover by up to 40%.

The changing nature of cloud traffic, threats and business challenges requires a security solution that is purpose-built for today's Internet. There are dangers on the internet, from invasions of privacy to actual hackers cracking your security, so an application that helps you protect your portal and your on-line business is a must!

Conformance Portal Firewall gives you powerful services and portal protection in a comprehensive system, by bringing together professional username / password, read / write permissions protections as well as other server related configurations that can weaken the overall security measures. An aspect that most, if not all Conformance Portal users, take for granted, is security. Although the Conformance Portal itself is pretty secure thanks to the security team that constantly checks for issues in the code, nobody (or, better yet, nothing) is protecting you from malicious hackers.

There is an old saying, “The shoemaker's children go barefoot.” Let’s face it, we all have limits and that is true of every IT Department. With new hardware and software to install and to repair and update throughout the company, their job is mind numbing.

Urgent decisions and solutions must be made to keep production, sales and accounting running and, although important, quality, safety and employee training and communication are normally forced to take a back seat. That’s just the way it is.

Complying with federal and state regulations, and other certifying groups, ranging from product safety to health, safety and environment impact can be tough.

Complying doesn’t have to be a grueling task. It can be made easy.

True, regulations can be complicated. They often change and it is critical that they be followed.

And on top of running a business, meeting strategic goals, and operating profitably, employers have the responsibility to ensure regulatory compliance. The risk of not compliance can be severe, from losing sales to statutory fines to losing your business.

Your company is growing past 50 employees. That’s great! It’s a milestone for many different reasons.

At the 50+ employee mark, it's easy to feel a loss of control over employees, tasks, and details of the business. You really need to think about:

  1. Standard operating procedures for the company to function smoothly,
  2. Major regulation requirements, and
  3. Maintaining company culture.

No one likes a defective product, a customer service nightmare. It creates a negative customer experience, increases the chances of losing a customer and further business, and it generates untold hidden costs by customer service time, return authorizations, shipping costs, and remaking a product possibly as a rush order.

It’s well-known that once a product is built quality cannot be added into it. The work must be put in at the front end before the product is built. That means ensuring that the right material is being used, that procedures are well defined, and employees are well trained.

“You cannot inspect quality into a product.” Harold F. Dodge

Firms often talk about “Safety is #1.” Conformance Portal has a collaboration tool that can show everyone you really mean it.

Including an online discussion group about Safety provides a method that will reduce the risk of injury.

In just seconds Conformance Portal’s collaboration module can be set up to include a safety group. This allows every member of your organization to post a safety observation of your own and view safety issues posted by others.

One safety manager required that everyone in the company be a member of the safety group, and that each employee post one safety issue every week. Posts can include a photo or video as well as a comment.

If you do not have a scorecard you’re missing the boat.

If you are not sure what a scorecard is go online and search for what is commonly called a “balanced scorecard.” The balance scorecard includes four elements:
  • Learning and Growth is centered on improving and growing value from your people, information, and organization.
  • Internal Business Processes to identify issues with and improve your quality and efficiency
  • Customer feedback and particularly complaints that will help you focus on customer satisfaction, new orders, etc.
  • Financial performance of your company including profit targets, budget, scrap, and cost-saving measures.

Reported by Mel Valkner

A great benefit of Conformance Portal is its ease of use from an administrator’s perspective, as well as the end-user.

At MPF we assigned the portal’s administration to Melissa. She had a two-year accounting degree, and was on the Quality Committee. She had some free time beyond her normal accounting duties.

Melissa would create new work instructions and make revisions to existing ones. She ensured these were properly recorded in the company’s portal.

Any new or revised work instruction required each affected employee to take a test that Melissa created. Then she assigned tests to current employees and assigned new employees their tests. She monitored tests results and informed department managers of those not timely taking their tests who would then follow up with staff.

Conformance Portal collaboration module is absolutely effective with dramatic effects.

Before they even punched their time card at Marshall Plastic we often had employees lining up at their department’s desktop computer to see the latest postings. Others were standing nearby but checked in through their smart phones rather than wait in line.

Morale went up as even the lowest person on the shop floor could contact the president of the company and express his opinion about something. Perhaps something could be done better or differently. Not saying that all the ideas were terrific. That’s not the point.

In 2003 Marshall Plastic, a manufacturing company, became ISO-certified. Eight years later when I was hired in 2011 as Quality Director there were several major issues despite annual ISO and Pharma audits.

There had been a turnover of two quality managers resulting in terrible quality, high customer returns and high scrap rates. Adding to the company’s difficulties were excessive employee turnover and extremely low employee morale.

Trying to get to the root of the problems I began by interviewing the three most experienced shop floor supervisors. I asked Daryl, who had been there 39 years, how he made a certain product. The procedures he described disagreed with the written work instructions.

Then I interviewed Don, with 25 years of experience, and asked him how he made that product. He made it differently than Daryl and the work instructions.
Then I talked with Bob, who had 22 years of experience, and asked him how he made that product. He made it differently than Daryl and Don and the work instructions.

It was obvious we had a huge problem.

The most feature rich, affordable QMS for small yet growing businesses.

We offer best-of-class products to help the small and midsized companies.  We have only two pricing options.  <100 employees and >100 employees.

Maintaining an IT infrastructure can be a full-time endeavor.  Our compliance portal makes it easy on the IT department.  All we need is a go and your portal becomes operational right away.

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