Product Recalls: Lets get Digital

Moving with the times

With so many aspects of organisations moving away from paper and into the digital age, it seems that the management of product recalls hasn’t quite kept up. A product recall is a serious task for any company to undertake. They therefore deserve the same technical considerations and process management as other areas of the business, instead of being managed with outdated processes such as spreadsheets and paper responses.

How could we utilise digital platforms to make running product recalls more efficient and manageable? Read on to find out more, the topics below discuss the areas you can focus on to streamline your recall processes into business best practices, becoming more productive and effective when dealing with a crisis or product recall.

Dedicated Recall Management CRM system

Product recalls should be managed seamlessly and efficiently on a dedicated recall response database. This eliminates the need for fiddly, manually updated spreadsheets and other documents, providing an accurate system to produce up to the minute reports quickly.  Imagine having all of your customer information stored in one centralized place with access available across departments for internal key users. Automatically updated as customers are notified and when they respond, this is what a Recall Management CRM system can provide seamlessly. You’ll wonder how you ever lived without one.

Digital response

It is expected that any action can take place online nowadays and why should it be any different with a product recall? Here are the advantages you can reap when taking your product recall or crisis digital:

• Provide a dedicated URL in your notifications to allow your stakeholders to respond securely online.
• Allow these responses to be automatically added into your dedicated recall database, and attached directly to each contacts record.
• Avoid the potential risk of human error when manually entering data from paper responses.
• Build up a seamless workflow, from notifications to responses and follow-up to make managing recall communications much simpler.   

Accurate Reporting

Did you know recall authorities request companies dealing with a recall to submit status reports, usually every 2 to 4 weeks depending on the urgency of the recall?

The FDA state that recall status reports should contain:

1.   Number of consignees notified of the recall, and date and method of notification.

2.  Number of consignees responding to the recall communication and quantity of products on hand at the time it was received.

3.  Number of consignees that did not respond (if needed, the identity of non responding consignees may be requested by the Food and Drug Administration).

4.  Number of products returned or corrected by each consignee contacted and the quantity of products accounted for.

5.  Number and results of effectiveness checks that were made.

6.  Estimated time frames for completion of the recall.

When using a dedicated recall response database, this information should be available to download quickly, whenever the authorities require it. Our digital recall system prevents you from having countless spreadsheets and combining them to build a report, and allows you to have all of the required information ready to download at the click of a button.

Capturing the right information

Product recalls are occurring more frequently than ever, finding valuable information about how to manage your product recall can be hard. Search online for product recall management and you’ll find various companies selling services, you’ll also find articles about how product recalls have effected companies and their reputations. There isn’t much information available to you on effective recall response management and how to best capture all of the information in order to execute the appropriate actions with the various stakeholders.

When a recall situation is encountered, companies usually have an independent team managing them away from the standard company systems. Therefore lots of spreadsheets are started and various, sometimes disjointed processes are put in place. Dangerously, these processes and documents aren’t planned with the outputs required for the authorities in mind and can take days to rectify. Authorities require a recall status report every 2 – 4 weeks isn’t always taken into account, therefore hours and hours can be wasted compiling these mandatory reports when they are requested. With a dedicated Recall Management CRM, all of these problems are overcome.

Visit our digital recall management page to find out more about Marketpoint Recall and how we can help make your product recall or crisis project quicker, simpler and more manageable.