Audit Management Solution now live

We are pleased to announce the launch of our new Audit Management capabilities bringing the power of Safefood 360° to corporate audit teams and dramatically increasing the benefits for existing customers. Using the revamped Auditing Module you can establish Audit Programs covering Internal Audits, External Site Audits and Self-Assessment Audits. You can also configure your own response dropdown and let the software score your audits automatically. If you’re confused about the terminology, we’ve explained all the new terms at the bottom of this blog.

Configurable response column

You can now configure the response column to contain exactly the options that suit your particular audit. The responses are derived from the Rating that you are using. Instead of being limited to a simple “Yes or No” audit you now have unlimited freedom to develop your own response alternatives.

Automatically calculated audit scores

Additionally you can now configure your own Rating model allowing you to define the specific checklist responses along with a score and rating. When the audit is completed the overall score and rating is automatically calculated and you can drill down to see the score and rating for each section and sub-section of your audit.

Let people participate in audits

Your Audit Programs can be established against sites within your group, retail outlets or customer sites in the case of certification bodies and regulatory inspectors. When your external audit is completed your auditees can log into the secure Audit Portal to address non-conformances and corrective actions without requiring a Safefood 360° license.

Bring all your audit programs together

Your entire corporate audit program can now be managed in Safefood 360° bringing all stakeholders together under the one roof. Immense benefits can be realised through automatic alerts and notifications, attachable audit evidence and reporting which comes to you when you need it. As always we are keen to receive customer feedback on how we can further improve these enhancements in the coming weeks and months.

Explanations of the terms used:

Audit programs are the basic building blocks in the Auditing module. An Audit Program specifies who is responsible for the audit, when the audit should be automatically scheduled, which checklist one should use, how the audit is scored, etc. Once you have configured an audit program you can start creating your Audit Records that will be stored under the corresponding Audit Program.

There are three kinds of Audit Programs:

• Internal Audits: Internal Audits are your traditional audit programs that you complete internally. This means that you don’t need to collaborate on the audit with some external party – like a customer or perhaps one of your other manufacturing sites. Internal Audit is accessed through the Auditing module and it can not be accessed through the new Audit Portal.
• External Site Audits: Site Audits can be audits that you conduct at a customer facility or perhaps at one of your other manufacturing sites. The benefit of using Site Audits in Safefood 360° is that you now have the power to collaborate with the other audit participants through the Audit Portal. These other participants can securely access the audit record through the Audit Portal while you yourself can keep on working in the Auditing module just as you are used to.
• Self-Assessment Audit: Self-Assessment Audits allow you to invite an auditee to take a self-assessment audit through the Audit Portal. You can set everything up in the Auditing module as usual, but you can then associate this appoint this self assessment to some external user who can then fill in the details.

Internal Audits could be used for

• Internal Audits
• Hygiene Audits
• GMP Audits
• HACCP Audits
• etc.

Site Audits could be used for

• Auditing your customer facilities, for example if you are a certification body
• Auditing your other manufacturing facilities
• Auditing your retail outlets
• etc.

Self-Assessments could be used for

• Self-assessments for your other manufacturing facilities
• Self-assessments for your internal divisions
• etc.

How does Safefood 360 know how to score each audit item or how does it know what which answering alternatives you want to show in the Response column of your audit record? The answer is Rating. You can configure your own Ratings under the Utilities > Categories module. In a Rating you are asked to define three things: responses, scores, and rating. Responses are the actual alternatives you can choose from during the audit, the score is the number of points associated with that response, and the rating is a point scale defining the overall score of the audit