Quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) are powerful processes that are a given in some sectors and largely ignored in others. Often thought to be interchangeable, QA and QC are complementary elements of quality management, emphasizing quality throughout an organization. Quality control ensures that industrial products are consistently delivered according to standards. But quality assurance is a more holistic pursuit designed to ensure the success of products and processes. For this reason, it can and should be used by organizations in every industry and every sector. Every organization deserves quality assurance.

What Is Quality Assurance?

According to the American Society for Quality (ASQ), quality assurance (QA) is defined as “part of quality management focused on providing confidence that quality requirements will be fulfilled.” In other words, quality assurance is the promise that a customer will have the most positive experience possible with your organization – regardless of purpose – time and time again.

QA is an integral part of the full scope of a quality management (QM) system, which is the entire system used for achieving quality objectives. The QM system includes processes, procedures, and responsibilities for total quality. Encompassing quality control and QA, quality management helps organizations ensure they are meeting customer needs and statutory or regulatory requirements while also continuously improving.

The purpose of quality assurance is to fulfill front- and back-end processes in the most efficient and fluid manner possible, delivering the intended product or service on time and within budget. Rather than simply satisfying expectations, an organization that embraces top-tier quality assurance will incorporate the tenets of QA into every aspect of its organizational structure and operations.

What Are the Goals and Tools of QA?

The obvious, overarching goal of quality assurance is to build constituent satisfaction by providing uniformly excellent goods and/or services. As we’ll explore later, this goal applies to most industries and most sectors. Within that goal are several smaller ambitions:

• Articulating, improving, and overseeing effective processes
• Preventing waste and mistakes
• Maximizing cost efficiencies
• Increasing staff engagement and training
• Effectively communicating QA approaches

QA relies on a suite of tools to realize these goals, including those for inspection (measuring, examining, and testing to make sure a result is acceptable), auditing (evaluating the process rather than the result), and analysis. Additional elements of a comprehensive QA program include policy and procedure statements and manuals, data management, customer satisfaction, and other business processes that help ensure the integrity of your product or service.

What Are the Universal Benefits of QA?

Because genuine quality assurance extends not just to products but to services, QA is applicable in all sorts of settings and industries, including for-profit, nonprofit, private, and public. Companies that provide raw goods or tangible, physical products are hardly alone in their need to maintain consistency and customer satisfaction. Genuine quality assurance is about authentic, people-first attitudes and step-by-step, satisfaction-ensured processes. Any sector that deals with people will benefit from quality assurance and quality control principles.

What are some of the sector-agnostic benefits of QA?

1. Thoughtful Recruitment, Training, and Management: Promoting and accepting a quality-assured environment means investing as much in your human capital as you would in your physical assets. By stressing the importance of customer care, product and service excellence, and people-first values during the hiring, onboarding, training, and management of all employees, your organization can ensure quality service and/or product provision to clients, constituents, and customers.
2. Customer Service: Customer-facing departments represent the public face of your organization and are often the direct line of communication between your company and your customers. These resources must have a deep understanding of quality assurance, telegraphing an upbeat, friendly, service-oriented organization.
3. Regulations or Compliance. One of the many reasons for emphasizing quality assurance is its innate embrace of regulatory compliance. It sees these measures not as red tape or bureaucratic annoyances but as a guarantee that consumers’ interests come first.
4. Branding and Marketing: Beyond listing the features and benefits of a good or service, quality assurance branding highlights the betterment of humans’ lives and prioritizes their needs. It must establish trust and an emotional bond, not merely a transactional one.
5. Product Design and Testing: Depending on your industry, the products or goods you design will vary, but the commitment to excellence should not. Sourcing quality parts, providing relevant assembly training, outfitting quality machinery, enacting an overall efficient production system, and conducting rigorous testing ensure quality. Quality products, goods, and services are sound, stable, and precisely what’s been promised to the end-user.

Where Is QA Applicable?

When delivered, QA stamps dependability and credibility on your organization in a way few other acts can. Quality assurance can give your brand a competitive backbone while maintaining consistency across all organizational levels by providing flawless, people-first deliverables as promised. This isn’t just about consumer goods, of course. Most industries gain from instilling people-centric values, brand trust, integrity, and flawless deliverables. Here’s an overview of where and how QA is most applicable.

The manufacturing sector has traditionally been the most forward with quality assurance, testing, checks and balances, and quality control principles. In many ways, they’ve had to. Tighter markets and higher global competition have made product reliability, cost-effectiveness, and confidence paramount in manufacturing regardless of the end product. This trend is only poised to continue, with creative uses of quality control buffering market forces.

From public utilities to legislative boards to regulatory agencies, the government sector provides tangible and intangible services requiring steady public trust. Quality assurance in this sector invites transparent messaging, offers more immediate public access to informational or educational resources, reduces processing times, and streamlines many other governmental operations. The end results benefit everyday constituents.

Organizations within the nonprofit sector rely on trust, ambassadorship, goodwill, and social good to operate. Their services already encompass many quality assurance and quality management factors to remain true to their missions. However, nonprofit organizations can also quickly land in hot water if they aren’t following through on the services they claim to provide. A strategic QA approach ensures that things remain above board.

In recent years, finance, health, and technology firms have often polarized public opinion. Insurance agencies, banks, and investment groups are subject to wolf-on-Wall Street stereotypes. Pharmaceutical companies and technology firms are labeled as predators. The reality, however, is that most consumers depend on the guidance and services of these institutions. Enterprises in these sectors must utilize the public-first principles at the heart of quality assurance. They may also rely on it for creative, consumer-first marketing and customer service operations.

Why Invest in Quality Assurance?

Occasional glitches or defects in a product are one matter. Mismanagement of resources, wasted time, poor oversight, and dissatisfied consumer bases are another. Quality assurance matters because of what occurs when it’s overlooked. Organizations that don’t take quality seriously across the entire enterprise will run into issues ranging from lost customers and lost revenue to a more existential loss of purpose.

Quality assurance is as important for strategic reasons as it is for your spreadsheets. You risk poorly functioning goods, inadequate services, and routinely disgruntled customers without QA. You will also have poor performing and disgruntled employees if you have these.

However, when QA is applied, your employees benefit from a results-driven rather than job-driven mindset and a more positive work environment. Your organization benefits in turn from a vibrant brand following, smoother regulatory audits, a culture of improvement and collaboration, better resource and asset management, a renewed focus on efficiency and productivity, and new models of production and innovation.

Conclusion

Because everyone wins with thorough QA, every organization would do well to apply quality assurance tools to their enterprise. We’ve only touched on some of the basics of QA here. To learn more, subscribe to Momentum’s news and blog portal.