There are many reasons why you need a cloud-based quality management solution. If your quality management solution is currently not on the cloud, please be sure to read on. We’d like to discuss some reasons to move your quality management solution to the cloud. It’s often discussed, but the lists are always a little different. We decided to pare the list to three…the big three, if you will. We wanted to focus on the ones that made the most sense to us.
Drum roll please…
Total Cost of Ownership of a Quality Management System
On-premises quality improvement solutions carry with them quite a few hidden “back-end” costs that you might not think of when you first decide to deploy a quality solution: servers, network infrastructure, workstations that speak to the servers, a data center, and so on. That doesn’t even include the added costs of multi-site deployments, which include tiers of servers and multiple datacenters, and all kinds of other goodies.
Then you add in the cost of the resources you need to have available to maintain and manage the hardware. These people are highly trained and don’t come cheap.
As you can see, the expenses can pile up quickly. With on-premises solutions, there is always so much more involved in the cost than just the software.
Cut Cost of Ownership with a Cloud-Based Quality Management System
Moving your quality management system to the cloud means utilizing the cutting edge of quality technology: Software-as-a-Service (or SaaS). With a cloud-based quality management system, most, if not all, of the equipment involved is taken care of on our end. The host (that’s us) carries the responsibilities—and costs—of all the hardware. Essentially, the price you see for the software is the price you pay. There are no hidden fees for backend hardware or infrastructure.
And, of course, the cost of resources to maintain and manage the hardware shrinks (if not evaporates) when you move to the cloud. If there’s no hardware to manage, you surely don’t need the technical people on staff to take care of it. Your IT staff can then concentrate on the myriad other tasks for which they’re responsible. It’s a win-win.
Quality Management with Enact: Try Before You Buy
Enact®, the InfinityQS cloud-based quality management system, is a great example of one of the major benefits of moving to the cloud. You can try it before you buy it. With our “Risk-Free Trial” program, you can quickly and easily get your hands on it, evaluate it, and see if it’s right for you and your organization.
With on-premises solutions, it’s not so easy. In many cases, you can obtain an evaluation license for an on-premises solution, but you still need to install it and dedicate resources and a server on which you can test it. Again, it’s an endeavor that’s hardware- and IT-intensive.
Access to Innovation
In a sense, the cloud-based “try it before you buy it” solution is easy access to innovation. Because the solution is not on-premises, and you access the interface via a browser, you are always using the most-up-to-date version.
When the InfinityQS Enact development team issues a new release of the software, or a patch, or even a bug fix, everyone using the software gets that release. You always have the “latest and greatest” version of the product.
Conversely, with on-premises solutions, you could have many different versions in use at different sites. Managing that can be a nightmare. Each workstation must be manually updated. There’s downtime involved (who can afford that?); and the process is just disruptive. The reality of the situation for enterprises that use on-premises solutions is that all-too-frequently they don’t upgrade when they should. Often, organizations don’t have the resources to shut down and re-install, say, when there’s a service patch. It’s a catch-22: they need the software fix, but can’t quite get to it.
With cloud-based quality management systems, like Enact, upgrading is not an issue. It’s no-fuss, no-muss. There’s no downtime because you already have the most-recent version! The future is here…
Beyond the Big Three: Reasons for Moving Your Quality Improvement Solution to the Cloud
So, those are my three big reasons for moving your quality improvement solution to the cloud: cost of ownership, try before you buy, and access to innovation. But there are many more reasons to move your quality solution from on-premises to cloud-based that have been well-covered in other blogs and articles I’ve seen online.
A few of those are worth mentioning, though, because they tie right in with my selections. And those are cost savings and easy deployment.
Cost Savings
One of the interesting aspects of on-premises systems is that the majority of the money for the system is spent up-front; and then it’s yours to maintain. That’s labor- and cost-intensive. And a big responsibility.
Cloud-based solutions, like Enact, offer a monthly subscription. You can ramp up (and down) the number of users at any time: you pay only for what you use.
The by-product of this, as I see it, is that customers are making the decision to keep the system on a month-by-month basis. Therefore, we as developers really have to be on our toes to keep the software working right, and constantly innovating with input from our customers. It’s what I would call a very symbiotic relationship.
Easy Deployment
Deployment is one of the best advancements from cloud-based systems. It’s so easy. Deploying to multiple sites with on-premises means more hardware, more licenses, and more infrastructure. With cloud-based solutions, you just buy more subscriptions and give the users the password…and they’re in the system! Deployment could not be any easier.
One Last Thing Before You Go
Many other folks working in technology today feel that the internet is the platform of the future. It’s here now, obviously, but it’s also the direction in which everything is going. There’s no denying it. One of the strengths of using the internet for your quality improvement solution is its flexibility.
Being able to integrate with everything/anytime/on any device is definitely the way to go…it’s the wave of the future. Here at InfinityQS, we are in front of the wave, riding it, because we’re already doing that. With Enact, you can connect with any device from anywhere and see what’s going on at the shop floor level. It’s exciting…and will change the way you look at quality.
If you have the internet, you have our quality solution…Enact is right at your fingertips whenever you need it.
Learn more about the Enact Quality Intelligence platform.