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Articles QMS Software

July 7, 2022

Using Formwork as a Regulatory Consultant

Dr. Oliver Eidel

Prior to launching Formwork, we did a lot of regulatory consulting. It always was our goal to be a profitable company, and doing consulting helped us bring in enough money each month to pay our salaries, rent, mansions, airplanes, casino trips, .. oh wait, regulatory consulting isn’t actually that profitable. Well, it’s profitable for sure, but given that we tend to be faster and (therefore) cheaper than our competitors, we won’t be flying a whole lot of private jets any time soon.

Where was I.. ah, talking about consulting: It’s a huge pain to share documents with clients. I mean, many “modern” companies have started using Google Drive so you don’t have to send around old-school Word documents via email. But still, Google Drive forces you to juggle lots of folder names in your head when trying to remember where your client files were.

And of course I won’t even start talking about Confluence and Jira. It’s just hell - Confluence is a comically slow document editor, but the main problem is that Atlassian tools spam your inbox full of emails until you give up by hoisting a white flag atop your laptop. It still fills me with a deep sense of wonder why any company nowadays would select these tools without being blackmailed. I’m sure I’m missing something there.

Now, when we developed Formwork, we thought: Can we solve this problem and use this to make our consulting more efficient? And the answer is yes! In Formwork, our clients can add us as “consultants” to their accounts, and that enables us to collaborate with them on their documents, including reviewing and signing stuff. So cool.

Here’s how it looks. First, you select a company which has given you consulting access.

Consulting Companies in Formwork

And then you see Formwork in the same way they see it, except that you see a huge notice at the top that you’re currently consulting them.

Consulting in Formwork

Now, why am I telling you all this?

Because today, we’re shipping our consulting feature to anyone who wants to use Formwork, including you. That’s right, if you’re a consultant or work with other companies in any way, Formwork is now (probably?) the only eQMS software which allows you to collaborate with multiple companies in an intuitive way.

So - no need to juggle Google Drive folders in your head, and no need to purge your mailbox from Atlassian email spam yet again.

Finally - you guessed it - consulting is a Formwork Pro feature. No surprises there because it’s quite an advanced feature, and adding it to the free Community Edition didn’t feel right. So, if you’re a consultant, you need Formwork Pro, but all your clients can still use the free Community Edition. We think that’s a fair model.

Getting access to the consulting feature still requires us to manually give you access. So, if you’re interested, get your Formwork account, click “Get in touch” in the bottom right corner and let us know that you’d like to use the consulting feature.

I hope you like it as much as we do!

On a slighty different note: You want to get your medical software certified under MDR but don't know where to start? No worries! That's why we built the Wizard. It's a self-guided video course which helps you create your documentation yourself. No prior knowledge required. You should check it out.

Or, if you're looking for the most awesome (in our opinion) eQMS software to manage your documentation, look no further. We've built Formwork, and it even has a free version!

If you're looking for human help, did you know that we also provide some limited consulting? It's limited because we are not many people. We guide startups from start to finish in their medical device compliance.

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Dr. Oliver Eidel

I'm a medical doctor, software engineer and regulatory dude. I'm also the founder of OpenRegulatory.

Through OpenRegulatory, I've helped 100+ companies with their medical device compliance. While it's also my job that we stay profitable, I try to dedicate a lot of my time towards writing free content like our articles and templates. Maybe that will make consulting unnecessary some day? :)

If you're still lost and have further questions, reach out any time!

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