A new employee starts on your team. An SOP is updated. A new training video is rolled out. What's the common theme? After each of these scenarios, a quality professional will have to update the training matrix and training folders.
Every. Single. Time.
The training matrix is both a blessing and a curse for life science companies. Yes, it makes it easier to assign training based on job function or role and ensures that trainees are compliant. However, it can quickly become an administrative nightmare to maintain and scale.
Many emerging companies feel they are too small to handle the expense and administration required for a full-fledged enterprise learning management system (LMS). Regardless, staff and SOPs will inevitably grow, and so will frustrations over the inability of a manual spreadsheet to keep up.
So what's the best solution for managing training in a validated, compliant environment?
Below are 6 reasons why regulated companies should consider moving their training matrix to a cloud-based, electronic quality management system (eQMS).
1. Grow in size, not complexity
The reason why cloud-based software has become so popular over the past two decades is primarily based on its cost efficiencies, including the ability to scale up (or down) to meet the changing needs of businesses without incurring significant additional costs. By moving the training matrix to the cloud, companies can manage 100 or 100,000 SOPs and courses without requiring the purchase of new hardware or more IT support.
2. Access from anywhere
The global nature of business today means it's likely that employees, contractors, and vendors will not share a central location. Therefore, it is no longer realistic (or convenient) to store physical documents in a file cabinet or conduct live, in-person training sessions as the basis of a training compliance program.
By moving training to a cloud-based platform, businesses can ensure that everyone is able to access critical SOPs and instructional content on demand from anywhere and submit 21 CFR Part 11/ Annex 11 compliant signatures electronically from any connected browser.
3. Intelligent accountability
Companies that use spreadsheet-based training matrices spend a great deal of time “chasing” non-compliant employees/managers, sending reminders, and scheduling appropriate intervals for re-training. By moving the entire matrix to an eQMS, those tasks become automated and configured per the business’ roles and requirements. Individual accountability in this instance is paired with simple managerial oversight/reporting to create a strong, proactive training culture.
4. Employee empowerment
Rather than passively waiting for an alert from management, cloud-based matrices allow employees to log into the system and view their training status on their own schedule. In addition, they can access SOPs and training/retraining content directly through the eQMS via their web browser.
5. Streamlined training designations
By moving the training matrix to the cloud, deploying new training sequences to specific individuals, teams, or the entire company is effortless. When a new employee is hired, it's simply a matter of designating their role(s) in the system. From there, the appropriate training syllabus and courses can be assigned accordingly.
6. Proficiency tests/Competency assessments
Training is critical to every life sciences company for a variety of reasons; meeting regulatory requirements and ensuring the safety of employees and customers chief among them.
Thus, an additional measure of compliance and risk-reduction is to ensure each employee has fully understood the material they're being trained on. A spreadsheet-based training matrix can only track the pass/fail status of results manually, whereas a cloud-based eQMS can provide competency assessments, update scores, and notify managers automatically.
If you're interested in learning more about all the advantages an eQMS can offer your regulated organization, read further or schedule a demo below.
