In this era of technology most of the organizations are envisioning a growth path in diligent ways and heading towards a much-needed success. ECAT is also creating a benchmark in the audit management industry. Being a leader of the organization, Francis Lyons, CEO and Co-founder, has shared his insights behind the success of his ECAT in the global arena.
Below are the highlights of the interview between Francis and Insights Success:
Give a brief overview of the company, its solutions and services.
Founded in 2011, ECAT is the most efficient and most effective way to enable people, in all locations, to ensure that all company processes are followed and compliant to standards. Our simple-to-use audit management solution provides access to the current status that enlightens any organizational path with valuable insights. At ECAT, we have pledged to deliver a robust and effective audit management and process validation tool, empowering enterprises to fight the mesh of expensive, time-consuming and traditional audit systems and strengthen operational excellence with precise processes.
How do you diversify your Audit Management solutions in a way that could benefit your clientele?
We designed the software to be as open and flexible as possible without losing the ability to structure the collected data. In real terms, everything from Health & Safety, Hygiene, Maintenance, Logistics, Warehousing, Manufacturing, Security and more can and does follow a relatively simple flow. The diversity comes by examining the client’s requirements and “fitting” many of their process validation requirements into a relatively standardized solution. The real result here is that across the many business flows, we can help bring together standardized measurements and viewpoints.
Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learnt that have shaped the journey of the company.
One of my earliest lessons was having spent a lot of time and effort on building one of the most intuitive and “easy to use” interfaces, not many wanted to even look at it, let alone use it. Clients were and still are, very time poor. They simply told us what they wanted and expected that to be delivered. The achievement was in that having been so thorough in keeping the interface simple, it is by default very fast. That allowed our support team to deliver on the clients’ expectations. We assumed that clients would relish building their own audits when in fact, they had no time or inclination to do so. The original concept of handing over a first-class auditing platform and letting the client take it from there couldn’t have been further from the reality. The support team was originally aimed at dealing with software glitches. As it turned out, they morphed into a “how best to build your audit team”. That to this day, has been one of the single biggest learnings for all at ECAT.
How does the company contribute towards making the contemporary Audit Management industry better?
Auditing has moved from Pass or Fail, to a far more, holistic process improvement environment. ECAT has evolved to where it’s not just about capturing what was wrong, it’s about figuring out how to do it better. At the very beginning of this journey, many clients saw auditing as a “necessary evil”. They only audited to satisfy their own clients or systems. Prove that they were actually “earning their keep”. Then over time, they began to realize that it’s not just about scoring 90% to fulfill an SLA (Service Level agreement). It should be more about “how do we get that last 10%?” It should be about identifying the “good” things and spreading that story. The companies moving towards collaboration are the ones that are distinguishing themselves. We enable our clients to imbue their values both internally and with their clientele. Along with the traditional ‘Pass/Fail’ model, we now have audits that have no score. No measure out of 100%. The score, in many cases, has become irrelevant in the improvement environment. In many sectors where price can be “a race to the bottom”, the company that competes on inclusivity, transparency and competency over time, will always succeed. ECAT nurtures these values in all the clients it works with.
Give a detailed explanation regarding the Founder/CEO/Management’s influence over the industry and the company?
After almost 3 decades of working with large enterprise companies, process flow has been a constant passion for me. No matter what job you are doing, there is always a sequence or a flow. Creating ECAT emerged from a frustration of doing audits on paper and having to rekey everything into spreadsheets in order to get any useful analytics. We couldn’t find a technology solution to fit our needs. Other companies expressed the same frustrations. Evidently, a flexible, intelligent, easy to use solution to better manage auditing and process validation; without the help of already over stretched internal IT teams was required. ECAT was conceptualized to make it feasible for organizations to get an instant, accurate and real picture of their processes and better manage their operations.
Through a combination of my own experiences and the cumulative wealth of direct client experience gained by the ECAT team, we have revolutionized many companies of all sizes. From SMEs to Fortune 500s with thousands of users by introducing them to easier, quicker and a better approach to auditing.
Where does ECAT see itself in the long run and/or what are its future goals?
I believe that ECAT will become far more integrated in the day to day activities of many companies. As the auditing model continues to move from one person performing periodic inspections, to everyone continuously evaluating, ECATs roll in collecting, collating and disseminating that information via the internal existing company’s channels will become integral. My hope is that ECAT becomes far more embedded within companies and in the future, ECAT should simply become “part of the furniture” for many progressive companies.
Considering the rising number of Audit Management solution providers, how does ECAT stand out from its competitors?
ECAT is the simplest way to seize auditing success with valuable ROI and actionable data-rich insights. Our solutions help to save up to 60% in audit time and enhance operational efficiency by 30%. With such strong platform capabilities, our cloud-based audit management solution helps to turn complexity into flexibility whilst enjoying better productivity, quality and efficiency. It has been tried, tested and trusted by world’s leading organizations like Penske, Tesco, and Sodexo among others.
Our multi-lingual support, intuitive dashboards, fast and easy reports, improved visibility, transparency and traceability help to get the real picture of the state or status of anything. Simply put, ECAT drives sustainable excellence for our clients- and that makes us different.
Probably the single most important factor about ECAT however is the support. We pride ourselves on knowing all our clients directly. We know how to guide them because we know their business. We will travel to their place of work and help them understand what they need. We will help build their audits and recommend changes where necessary. Ultimately, we know each other by name and we deal with it there and then.
