For an organization like the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), qualities such as precision and accuracy are baked into the culture, and a desire for efficiency is part of their DNA. Businesses and regulators around the world rely on the ASME Mark as it signifies their commitment to public safety and quality. Given the massive scope and significance of ASME’s work, the organization recognized the need to update its outdated accreditation and quality management system to better serve constituents—and partnered with ARMATURE to get the job done.
Project Goals
- Upgrade ASME’s accreditation and certification processes—moving from a traditional paper-based system to ARMATURE’s suite of cloud-based tools that captures and manages the data and documentation that play a critical role in ASME’s audits.
- Integrate with ASME’s Single Sign-On (SSO)—giving users the ability to access all systems through one login, while allowing the systems to talk to each other through a shared customer relationship management (CRM) system.
Accreditation Management System | Core Services
ARMATURE collaborated with ASME to clearly define their requirements and identify the key products and services that would help them transform how they serve their customers, supply chain, industry, and regulators. The following solutions were a critical element in achieving this:
- Conformity Assessment (CA) Connect: A customer-facing application that integrates with ASME’s CRM system to allow companies and individuals seeking accreditation and ASME certification to perform critical tasks such as filling out applications, viewing audit assignments, status updates, etc.
- Audit & Survey Application: An application that allows onsite auditors to move from paper-based forms to an online system, with the ability to fill out audits online or offline and sync data afterward so nothing gets lost and the process is more efficient and accurate. The offline option is extremely valuable to ASME’s auditors, as many audit sites do not support Internet access.
- Designee Certification: An auditor certification tool that makes it easy for ASME administrators, National Board, and jurisdiction supervisors to track and manage the many designees in the system, while also maintaining current records of auditor qualifications to streamline the team scheduling process. The designees themselves can also access the system to maintain their certification and complete assessments assigned to them.
Critical Outcomes
- Increased efficiency: By automating ASME’s paper-based processes, we were able to create efficiencies for staff and auditors alike. The entire audit process—from accepting assignments to filling out onsite audit forms and submitting them to ASME for evaluation—is now handled through our intuitive web-based application. Because onsite auditors often lack Internet access during their audits, we designed our product to allow auditors to fill out the web-based audit forms offline and sync the data after the site visit, if needed. No paper forms required.
- Greater accuracy: The applications we built for ASME serve to improve the accuracy of its end-to-end accreditation and certification processes. We built ASME’s data collection instruments to surface trends and enable consistent and accurate year-over-year reporting, and also converted the organization’s paper forms into electronic ones to allow data to flow directly from the auditors to the system. Our highly configurable quality management system lets ASME specify the data they wish to collect, and then it captures, manages, and shares that data with appropriate constituents according to ASME’s established processes.
- Enhanced customer satisfaction: In an effort to improve the customer experience, ASME sought to give companies seeking accreditation greater visibility into the ASME process. Via a unique portal with personalized dashboards, today’s customers can see everything that matters to them at a glance: they are able to fill out and submit applications, update and manage their contact details, and communicate with ASME to keep the process moving along.
- Auditors who use ARMATURE also reap its benefits. Instead of going back and forth on email and using cumbersome paper forms, auditors now log in to the system to complete all of their tasks: reviewing submitted applications, accepting scheduled audits, conducting and submitting audits, etc.
By providing all stakeholders with greater visibility and engagement, ASME has created a vast community of satisfied members and is better equipped to focus on driving its core mission forward.
