We have heard a lot of negative about quality assurance systems, the difficulties small businesses have developing and maintaining them as "necessary evil" imposed on them by various authorities. Most of the complaints come from the lack of understanding of how quality assurance can actually help your business grow if implemented properly.

Quality assurance is the management tool that can help you achive a complete mastery of your business and let you concentrate on the important stuff, like growing your business, instead of struggling with the daily grind.

In a sense, a good quality assurance system provides a template for every aspect of your business process in a logical and sequential way that is easy to follow by everyone in the business, experienced workers and newcomers alike. The resulting consistent performance allows the business to plan for growth and success.

Another aspect of quality assurance that gets frequently out of control is the size and complexity of the system that is being put in place. We have witnessed situations when small businesses were saddled with quality assurance systems that would have represented a serious challenge for a business ten times bigger then them. And we have seen big businesses operating qualty assurance systems that wouldn't be adequate even for a much smaller businesses.

In quality assurance there is a must have principle: it must be tailor made to suit your business. If it's not, it will become a brake on your business, rather than an accelerator it was conceived to be.