Top 5 Issues Companies Have With Their Own Specifications
1. Where Is The Latest Version?
2. Who Has Received It?
3. Are They Complete?
4. Who Changed It Last?
5. Is It In “Sendable” Condition?
Once a product has been created, managing the information across your company and with your customers can take on a life of itself. Some companies have chosen to hire people to manage just this very process. Whether you have someone managing product information and dissemination or if you choose to leave that in the hands of sales and product managers, it is a lot of work. Share-ify helps companies manage this process easier than ever before.
Where Is The Latest Version of My Specification?
Share-ify stores all versions of your specification in the Specification Management menu. Under the “Versions” tab, you (and those with whom you assign the specification) can view the various available versions. Versions can be active, In Development, In Review among other options. Each can be accessed to see notes and specification detail. In addition, authorized users from your company can see which customers or suppliers are assigned to each specification and version.
Who Has Received the Specification?
Share-ify keeps a history log or all adds, updates, and deletes related to any specification. In addition, once you assign a specification to a company, their association and disassociation to the spec is monitored.
When you create a specification, you become the owner of that file and can choose to share that information with parties you determine. Only your company has the authority to share your information.
Is My Specification Complete?
With so many different verticals within the food industry, it would be difficult to come up with one, concise format that would fit everyone. Share-ify has devised a format that is flexible to include many important components to a specification, some that may be overlooked by companies that create their own format. With recent Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) changes, many companies have not updated their specifications to include preventative controls.
Share-ify helps ensure that information is complete to help minimize stops and starts due to missing information. In addition, compliance and risk assessment efforts can flow more quickly with more complete information.
Who Can Change My Specification?
The nature of manufacturing requires that specifications change at times. Perhaps ingredients or quantities change due to regulations or new equipment. It is important to have a means to manage these changes so they can be tracked, routed and agreed to by both parties.
Share-ify offers a workflow management process by which two companies can pass information back and forth until both parties agree to the final information. Notes can be made that include user, date, time stamp that cannot be altered. This ensures that no accidents can happen that cause you to miss a change or a note.
When creating users for your company, you can determine who should be notified from your company when these changes come through. Your trading partners can do the same with their user set up.
In addition, a change to a specification usually requires the approval of more than one person in your company. Share-ify’s “Internal Status” helps route a suggested change to all the correct parties within your company. This means that Sales, Product Development, Operations, Food Safety / Quality Assurance, Accounting, Marketing and even Legal could all use the same system to access and approve suggested changes to specifications so that the entire company can operate from a single version of the specification rather than multiple versions saved in different directories or different systems.
Is My Specification Ready to Be “Shared”?
Sending out your specification becomes a representation of your company. You certainly do not want to send out incomplete (or worse) inaccurate information about your product.
Safeguards exist in Share-ify to protect your information. Share-ify’s platform ensures that the people you assign the duty of approving a specification at your company have received the final form before it is in “Active” status. A specification cannot be shared unless it is in “Active” status, which saves you from the potential of sending out inaccurate or incomplete information.
Once the specification is ready, only those users with authority to see a spec can assign it to the appropriate party. When the specification is assigned, you can see who assigned it and when.
Whether you have someone managing product information or if you choose to leave that in the hands of sales and product managers, Share-ify helps companies manage this process easier than ever before with a low cost subscription model that helps you protect and own your own data.
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