How to make your HACCP records better

Part of my role as an auditor is to review business, food safety and HACCP records. These records are used to evidence your compliance against an audit criteria or to support that documented business procedures have been implemented. If you have been through the certification audit process I am sure you know how long and arduous this process can be.

This is especially so if your business, food safety and HACCP records are not organised, legible or even available. These three factors combined can add time onto your compliance audit which then adds financially to your overall audit costs.

So, how can we positively impact these three factors?

Driving Efficiency in food business  HACCP-Mentor-Guinea-Pig

A lot of the time my own business clients become my personal guinea pigs. I am always trying to find more efficient ways to improve their business and to get through the food safety and HACCP audit process without stress.

If you are a regular reader of my HACCP Mentor blog, you will probably know about my HACCP Link concept which involves organising your paper records for better storage and retrieval. In a nutshell, you scan your paper HACCP records so it becomes an electronic copy. These can then be filed on your computer, server or stored in the ‘cloud’.  You can find out more by clicking here.

HACCP Link has been working fantastically for my clients for years but I have always wanted to improve on this concept.  Using a mobile device to fill out forms (rather than using a paper form) was a natural progression. In well organised fashion, I set up a project and started on my research journey.

Time to go mobile

After trialing different solutions in electronic record collection using mobile devices, I have finally found what I think is the best.  I am very fussy when it comes to technology so my definition of ‘the-best’ was a solution that:

  • Makes a considerable difference to my clients food business
  • Is Affordable for my clients and the food industry
  • Has the ability to use offline if there was no internet available and
  • Easily integrates with my HACCP link concept for document management

I also wanted to be able to easily make changes to the forms used by my clients without it being a complex process to go through – I like things to be as easy as possible (and with limited stress).

HACCP Records is born  HACCP Records for the food industry

After 12 months of research, testing and implementation, I am happy to finally release my new service offering aptly named HACCP Records.  HACCP Records allows you to convert your paper forms into mobile forms.  Mobile forms can then be viewed and completed on any desktop or device including mobile phones, tablets or ipads.

How are my clients benefiting?

My own food safety and HACCP consultancy clients are benefiting from this technology by:

  • Reducing the amount of paper used in their food business which then has a direct impact on the environment and how much we pay for waste removal.
  • Controlling compliance and document forms. This has put a stop to staff photocopying and using out-of-date paper forms.
  • Saving time with data entry – we can even pre-populate information just from scanning a product and staff barcode!
  • Managing food safety and HACCP compliance records electronically.  This has saved us heaps of time during our third party customer audits because we can file and find things electronically.
  • Having forms that are user friendly and well formatted.  By this I mean that we are not limited by the size of a piece of paper or have cramped paper forms anymore. Our compliance rate for filling out forms correctly has greatly improved.

Give it a try yourself

I love making businesses operate better and I would love for you to check out HACCP Records and try it for free.  You can experience all the benefits that my clients are getting right now and even access free mobile forms that I have developed for the food industry. For more information, just head over to www.haccprecords.com

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