Seeking Feedback for Audit Preparation Software for Food Companies

Dear all,

As the title suggests, I'm building software to help food companies prepare for their audits.

I'm not looking to sell over here, although I'm happy to share more info if you're interested. :) I would just like some answers to very basic questions for which I'll be very grateful.

I'm hearing that QA managers use a lot of excel but I would like to understand better for what it's used? I know from experience how hard it is to prepare audits, although in another industry. Could you share your 3 biggest frustrations?

My software basically does 2 things; centralise artefacts and optimize preparation through AI.

Thank you!

A lot of companies still use basic MS office tools for audits.  Often audits are completed using word as a record and then corrective actions tracked on Excel.  So all it's being used for is a list with raised / completion dates, owners etc.

There is already a lot of internal audit software out there and some sites have chosen not to invest in it.  It might be worth trying to find out why that is and what the competition offers before investing to much time / energy.

I use Excel and google sheets for all of my tracking logs.  It's searchable and sortable.  I can pivot data into other tables and use vlookup to stream line entries and create graphs.  I can insert a link to a folder with related photos or other documentation.  I also use it for technicians to enter data into one screen  where calculations are performed and then use a macro to transpose it elsewhere with a timestamp of their entry.  I also used vlookup and macros to pull data into a "Form" from another excel sheet to have a document that could be printed/saved/sent to customers.  This reduced transcription errors created when Word is used as the record for a log.  My previous company did not have an ERP system capable of handling COAs so I created an excel file with COA templates that pulled in data from two other tabs if you entered product and date code numbers.  I had a tab for the tracker to look up what data was needed for that product code and then it would indicate it on the tracker tab. 

My guess is that my previous employer doesn't use some of those files or their capabilities anymore because although it didn't take much effort for me to maintain the systems, it would for someone that didn't design it and doesn't have the same level of experience/knowledge.