Global Survey Sees Substantial Opportunity For Quality Management Digitization To Meet Competitive And Regulatory Pressures

Global Survey Sees Substantial Opportunity For Quality Management Digitization To Meet Competitive And Regulatory Pressures

The Verdantix 2024 global quality management survey highlights the evolving digital maturities and priorities of quality management functions across highly regulated manufacturing industries. The survey results provide benchmarking data for quality management leaders, and strategic decision-making insights for quality software vendors. Our research spans 11 prominent economies in North America and Europe, across 12 industries, including aerospace, food and beverage, chemicals, electronics, vehicle manufacturing and pharmaceutical manufacturing. The survey gathers responses from 101 senior quality decision-makers responsible for influencing quality management strategies. As firms face increasing regulatory pressure, supply chain risks and market competitiveness, quality management teams are expanding their roles and responsibilities. Verdantix finds that:

• Heightened risk and compliance expectations motivate budget expansion.
  Prominent quality management failures have been amplified through various media outlets, resulting in a loss of public trust and severe regulatory action. Increasingly, quality management is assuming an essential role in mitigating operational risks in organizations, with 67% of respondents expecting their budgets to rise in 2025. Notably, 26% of respondents anticipate budget growth of over 10%. This budget expansion supports critical initiatives such as proactive risk management, streamlining regulatory tracking and enhancing compliance processes. In the highly regulated industries surveyed, 76% of respondents indicate that streamlining quality regulatory tracking and compliance processes are either their highest or a high priority over the next two years.
  
  
• Intersection of sustainability and operational priorities drives stronger cross-functional collaboration.
  Quality management functions are increasingly influential in activities beyond product development, supplier selection and manufacturing processes. The Verdantix survey shows that 44% of respondents view improving collaboration between the quality management team and adjacent business units as a high or the highest priority. This trend complements the emergence of sustainability as a strategic focus, with 31% of respondents identifying the integration of sustainability priorities into quality processes as the most important operational goal over the next two years. Firms are rightfully prioritizing cross-functional collaboration to enable data-sharing on quality and sustainability metrics, which support broader organizational ESG ambitions.
  
  
• There is significant opportunity for digital transformation.
  The survey reveals a disparity in the digital maturity of quality management functions, with 49% of respondents reporting that their firms have implemented a digital transformation strategy, while 48% are still in the development phase. Many organizations continue to rely on in-house or manual processes, with 48% using in-house software and 6.5% still depending on paper-based systems. This marks a significant opportunity for quality teams to adopt advanced digital tools, such as quality management system (QMS) software, which can assist in streamlining audits, reporting and compliance in a unified system, ultimately improving efficiency and reducing quality risks.
  
  

To gain a deeper understanding of budgets, priorities and tech preferences in quality management, read the Verdantix global corporate survey or watch our upcoming webinar.