SQA News | March 2015
SQA Wins & Challenges
I’m delighted to update everyone on some exciting things going on at SQA. In my quarterly update I will be sharing things going well at the company, and also bring up challenge areas in the spirit of candor and continuous improvement. While I always like to stay positive, I also want to acknowledge that we’re not perfect, and with a talented bunch of SQA people out there, there will always be suggestions that will help us with our challenge areas.
Wins
2014 Revenue. I’m proud to announce that our awesome team produced record revenues in 2014, experiencing 63% growth year-to-year versus 2013. We shattered our lofty expectations, and everyone on the team played a part in achieving this milestone. It wasn’t easy, but the stellar efforts of our sales team was well-matched by Operations and our folks in the field.
Jason Gutierrez, our new Director or Marketing. We hired an exceptional talent to take us to the next level. Our sales team has a very difficult time actually talking to clients – everyone is busy and out of the office most of the time. In the past, we have tried to handle marketing duties without a fully-dedicated professional, and that has cost us dearly. Jason is incredibly talented and has tons of creative ideas to reach out to our clients and associates every month using all forms of social media and hard copy. Jason spearheaded the recent 2015 SQA Quality Calendar and you will see more from him soon!
Celebrating our 20-year anniversary. I cannot believe that it has been 20 years since Dad and I started the company. Our successes and failures are too numerous to list, but I want everyone to know how fantastic it feels to start an organization where there are three distinct Wins- our clients win by saving time and money using our services; we create rewarding jobs for our people around the world; and we run a successful business at the same time. Not all companies can make this claim and it’s pretty cool that we’ve earned that right.
Ok, enough cheerleading. We have some significant challenges as well right now. We are at a critical time in our history, and it’s important we continue to grow and flourish. That being said here are some current obstacles.
Challenges
People. We have incredible team members all around the US and the world. The problem is that we don’t have nearly enough to accommodate all of our new and existing client opportunities. Most of the best quality assurance professionals are already working, and we struggle bringing on new, unproven associates, especially in certain geographic areas where we haven’t had a consistent presence.
Travel demands. More and more, both our Associates and Headquarters personnel are traveling insane amounts to deliver our services. It’s increasingly routine that many people have to commute several hours on flights and stay in hotels the entire week. This is taxing and sometimes the fatigue can rear its ugly head and get the better of people. I’m not sure what we can do about this other than stay connected (physically and virtually), communicate early and often, and respond to everyone’s needs as best we can.
Creating a win-win in all client relationships. Over the years we have routinely bent over backwards to satisfy our clients. The key to this is figuring out the organizations that want to grow with us instead of using our services in a piecemeal capacity that isn’t necessarily conducive to growth. Over half of our clients use us for less than 10 events per year, while others rely on us in amazing ways. We are trying our best to tactfully and professionally graduate relationships to this level but it’s not always easy.
Thanks for reading, and please lean forward if you have any ideas to address our challenge areas. Feel free to email me at mmckay@sqaservices.com or call me directly at 310 802 4444.
Looking forward to another record breaking year in 2015, thanks!
Mike McKay
President/CEO
Associate Spotlight
Robert Feng joined SQA in 2012, and is one of our company’s top auditors in China.
He has 18 years experience in quality assurance within the Pharmaceutical and Dietary Supplement industries. Robert has performed various audits for clients including Merck, Hospira, Takeda, BMS, Actavis, Bayer, and RX360.
Outside of his profession, Robert enjoys reading, traveling, and swimming. He is a qualified, dedicated SQA Associate and we’re happy to have him on our team!
– ASQ Certified Quality Auditor
– RABQSA Certified Quality Principal Auditor
– National Licensed Pharmacist Certificate
SQA Content Team
On the heels of a record-breaking fourth quarter in 2014, the SQA Content Team has picked up and run with the first quarter of 2015 right where we left off! Although the volume of audit and assessment events that Content reviews in Q1 is typically reduced, we have yet to experience a decrease in report volume, and the emergence of other projects has kept us busier than ever.
The Content Team is working on several hot projects right now that are showcasing the capabilities of SQA and producing quality deliverables that provide our clients with meaningful information. One of these projects is the DJO Global Validation Site Review and Assessment Program. DJO Global emerged as a major player in 2014, riding SQA’s technological wave into the future by employing both the STEPQ Power Client and Remote Surveillance Assessment (RSA) programs. Appreciating the value of its partnership with SQA, DJO Global enlisted our services to handle the validation of their manufacturing sites around the world. After the program was scoped, the Content Team worked with SQA Field Engineering Directors (FEDs) to develop the audit tools and deliverables to be employed for each event. The execution of these audits and the subsequent report review and acceptance process is an exercise in precision and timing. This symphony of activity requires orchestration between the Client, Content, Technical Review, and Operations teams to achieve harmony with DJO Global’s overall expectations. The long hours and worn fingertips have paid off, as the program is nearing a successful close.
The Content Team continues to work with FEDs to develop new tools to provide our clients with a better method of evaluating their supply chain. We are kicking off the year with the development of a robust software auditing tool, which SQA will be able to modify to address the specific concerns of multiple clients in a variety of industries.
We are also excited to announce that Senior Content Manager David Guerreva will be expanding his role to become SQA’s Associate Onboarding Coordinator as well! In this new role, David will be the primary contact for all new SQA Associates, ensuring that each person’s introduction to the company and to our clients, and all required training, is completed consistently. This means we are evaluating expectations and developing an onboarding process that will improve our current training program by removing redundancy, increasing efficiency, and making sure our focus is fixed on meeting client requirements.
With the Content Team becoming more involved in the associate onboarding process, the need to grow is apparent – you can look for a new face on the Content Team soon! There have been a handful of interviews, and the team is on the cusp of making an offer to a lucky candidate. The ADM Team has provided a slate of potential candidates who have been subjected to meticulous examination by Content Managers to ensure a great technical and cultural fit for the team. We’re being extra picky, because we feel that you have to be quality, if you want to be Content.
SQA All-Star Associates
Are you an SQA All-Star?
Refer a quality associate, and join our team!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Comments are closed.