A product recall is a complicated process – not only are you working on tracking and fixing the problem throughout your supply chain, but you also need to coordinate communications with the media, government, public, and more. It quickly overwhelms a company that is not prepared for it, and that’s why recall management software exists. Of course, not all recall management software is the same, and it’s important to understand what to look for in a solution. It is also important to utilize this software when conducting mock recalls, because once all departments have been trained to conduct a mock recall it’s best to use the same system you have been trained on.
Your recall management software needs to be a one-stop shop for conducting recalls, with free mock recall set-up, testing, and training to get started out the gate. Instead of costly bloated software, you need a SaaS-based solution that scales up or down to suit your immediate needs. In addition, you need the entire process streamlined and a dedicated service team at your back. It sounds like a lot to ask for, but a recall management platform should provide all this and more.
Here’s what to look for in your recall management solution.
1. An Out-the-Box Solution
There are a lot of moving pieces juggled during the recall process. The average cost of a recall is $10 million, and that number varies wildly across different industries. This includes the costs of goods replaced, along with manpower and other resources used during the process. Each employee you reassign to the recall is taken away from your normal business operations. This is especially worrisome for businesses with resources already strained by the COVID-19 quarantine.
Your platform shoudl be able to handle the entire recall process from start to finish – everything. This means your tools can securely trace the problem throughout your supply chain, notify all potentially impacted customers, track progress, and notify the proper regulatory agencies for your industry. It ensures the smoothest possible solution to optimize and even automate each step of the product recall process. Of course, that’s just the beginning.
2. A SaaS Business Model
The biggest pain point in enterprise software solutions is that proprietary platforms are often expensive, cumbersome, and make upgrading over time difficult. For example, it’s estimated that 4% of computers running today are still using Microsoft Windows XP, a 20-year-old OS that hasn’t been updated since 2008. Much of the reason behind this is because enterprises have proprietary software that isn’t compatible with newer versions, thus strangling many businesses with unnecessary budgetary restraints.
Your platform should scale to meet the size of your recall, and that includes handling multiple recalls simultaneously. You shouldn’t have to worry about being forced into a long-term contract that drains your financial resources. Instead, you should be able to use software only for the time you need it, freeing up your finances to handle more important matters, like employee paychecks.
A great recall management solution is a software-as-a-service solution that leverages a month-to-month billing plan, so you only pay for what you need. You can add a variety of options to ensure your plan fully meets the unique needs of your unique business. Once your recall is complete, simply cancel your service with no further contractual obligations. A free trial doesn’t hurt either.
3. Free Mock Recall Set-Up
Your platform should have product recall templates based on common situations encountered by a variety of businesses in different industries. Food and beverage recalls, for example, would need to be reported to the Food and Drug Administration, along with state and federal departments of health and agriculture. Each of these regulatory stakeholders needs to be kept in the loop using real-time reporting on your dashboard.
Conducting a mock recall tests your business’s responsiveness without the high stakes of the real-life process. Your business units can discover where flaws are in the existing process to come up with a better way to do it. This mock recall is just like a fire drill that tests a business’s preparedness during an emergency evacuation – instead, you’ll be performing all the steps of the recall in a safe environment that highlights the issues you’ll have during the real thing.
4. Comprehensive Training
Like any software, it’s only as powerful as your team’s ability to use it. There are some enterprise software suites out there that are difficult to use and have a steep learning curve. It may look great in testing, but once integrated into your business, it quickly becomes clear that it doesn’t work as well. Often, this is a sign of lack of training more than anything else, and it takes time to learn any new business process.
Don’t just send your team out into the world untrained – provide comprehensive testing and training for all recall tools. This means sitting with all stakeholders within business units to walk through the process necessary to complete their subsection of the recall process. Professional consultants should be on call to ensure your entire team is well-versed on the recall process before selling you. And it doesn’t matter which industry you work in.
5. Universal Industry Compatibility
Although every industry has its own laws and government agencies to adhere to, some industries are more stringently regulated than others. It may seem like you’re alone, but your recall platform provider should have experience helping clients conduct recalls in every market imaginable. No matter what industry your business works in or where in the supply chain it is, there’s a streamlined recall process that makes everything run more smoothly.
There’s no industry that’s immune – recalls are conducted in healthcare, food and beverages, consumer products, construction, commercial, retail, and more. With a knowledgeable provider, you’ll beneift from years of experience helping companies both large and small conduct their recalls from start to finish, including filling in any gaps in your existing operations.
6. Dedicated Customer Contact
Your recall software provider needs dedicated call centers and other customer contact solutions to take care of the legwork in your recall. This includes setting up a consumer-facing toll-free hotline to field recall questions, customized return kits, first response post cards, no response letters, and more. Customer contact options will ensure your recall has a shiny public face that’s both transparent and positive.
If you already have trained staff and processes in place, this additional options won’t be necessary. No matter what your recall situation is, your system should accommodate it.
7. Optimized Processing and Tracking
When everything is handled within one platform, you have the most efficient process to track any defective products or resources throughout your supply chain. A real-time dashboard provides both at-a-glance overviews and detailed reporting, so all stakeholders have the information necessary to continue business operations. These optimized processes are easily automated and track progress throughout the project.
Reduced Recall Costs Can Save Your Business
A streamlined, automated platform that can handle the recall process goes a long way. It reduces associated costs and full-time employee hours, while saving your company’s public image by handling all consumer and government communications. This also reduces possible fines for mishandling the situation. Depending on the recall, it can be a major deal that even garners media attention.
Using a dedicated recall management solution reduces the costs of your product recall, inevitably giving you more resources to spend on more important things. As our economy recovers from a tumultuous 2020, every business needs an advantage to stay operational.
You don’t even need to wait until a recall hits – you’re welcome to contact MockRecalls at any time to discuss the steps to assess your organizations recall readiness.
MockRecalls is a mock recall training and consulting program to test your recall readiness. We are purely focused on protecting your product investment by working with you to create a new recall plan or analyze your current recall plan and then put it through a mock recall or recall simulation test to insure you are prepared for a possible product recall. We use our on-demand SaaS based recall management platform that eliminates common mistakes manually conducting recalls, by automating the most tedious steps of a product recall. It is a simple to use platform that just focuses on handling product recalls quickly and efficiently. Through our mock recall trainnig using our dedicated recall platform, companies can improve the recall process, increase response rates, and document and communicate with all stakeholders.
Our program can analyze your company’s readiness in many of the typical elements of the recall process including:
- Initiation, investigation, and communication process
- Recall working team and decision team composition and dynamics
- Team roles and responsibilities
- Process flow and lot traceability
- And retrieval capability and effectiveness checks
Our recall simulation program is conducted as an escalating model using real product facts and potential issues, with multiple inputs such as consumer complaints, social media, FDA/USDA/local health department and law enforcement. Conducting a recall simulation will also allow the recall team and all involved personnel to become familiar with their responsibilities throughout the recall procedure. This gives them time to effectively communicate any concerns about the plan while the company isn’t dealing with the pressure of an actual recall.
Looking to test your product recall readiness with across your organization? MockRecalls will help create and/or test your recall program. Click here to learn more or call us!