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You ask, we answer! Yup, here are all the questions we’ve been asked by customers and prospective customers – most often when trying to make a decision about audit/inspection management software. And, here are the answers – because we believe the best decision is an informed one!

• What reports are available?
• How easy is it to configure the system?
• Are there additional costs if other sites, locations or departments in our business want to use the software?
• Do we have to licence by user?
• Can we add corrective actions on the fly as needed during an audit?
• Do you have a sustainability policy?
• Can we train our own users?
• What if there are bugs or issues that cause us problems?
• Can we bulk upload user data?
• Can we customize the look and feel of the software?
• Can we provide our users with training?
• What’s involved in starting a project?
• How long does it take to set up a Certainty project?
• How often do you backup our data?
• If there are hosting issues will we lose our data?
• Can we host outside of the USA?
• Where is our data stored?
• Are you prepared to complete our Corporate IT Data Security Assessment questionnaire?
• Are you GDPR compliant?
• Will we lose all our data if we move to another solution in future?
• Can we de-activate a user’s access (i.e. when they leave the company) but still be able to see the audits they completed?
• Are we able to export or migrate our entire project’s data from Certainty if we need to?
• Can you provide direct access to our project database?
• Can we automatically be logged into your system if we are already logged in on our own corporate network?
• Can you customize user access and privileges?
• Is help available if we have issues or problems?
• Do you offer guaranteed response times for any technical issues raised?
• Do you offer 24/7 support?
• Can we use the solution at just our location and expand later if there is a need for an enterprise-level solution?
• How can we be sure that the solution will meet our needs?
• Can you allow access to all sites and data for corporate-level users while limiting site managers, regional managers access to only the data related to their sites or regions?
• Can we have a single audit with a core set of required corporate-wide questions but also allow our locations to add their own site-specific audit questions?
• Do we have to pay on-going licence fees for users that are no longer active?
• What happens to our audit data if we close a plant or location?
• We manage jobsite safety on our construction projects that have a specific life cycle – usually about 1 year. Can we keep all historical audit data for finished projects?
• We are a construction company and manage ‘projects’ not ‘sites’, can we rename ‘Site’ to ‘Project’?
• Can we change the user interface names used?
• What support do you offer to get a project up and running?
• Can we build our own audit checklists?
• Can you limit who has access to build and edit audit checklists?
• Can we create work orders in our existing work order management system (Maximo) based on finding in our safety audits?
• Can we push findings (and corrective actions) from a safety audit into our existing corporate tool used to manage corrective actions?
• Can you have a singe checklist for a combined audit (e.g. quality and safety)?
• Can you report safety data separately from a wider monthly SHEQ audit?
• Can a single audit checklist be provided in multiple languages?
• Can we populate a drop down in a checklist with product data from our SAP system?
• Can you integrate with SAP?
• Can you integrate with our ERP system?
• Can you integrate with our HR database?
• What data integration options are available?
• Can you limit a user’s access to only one division, a region or country?
• Can you be notified when critical/major issues are identified in an audit?
• Can overdue actions be escalated?
• Can you notify more than one person if there is an issue identified that affects multiple people?
• Can a person made responsible for a corrective action be notified when they have been made responsible for an action?
• Can you be notified when someone completes an audit?
• Can audit reports be emailed?
• Can I be notified if a corrective action becomes overdue?
• As a regional manager, can I be notified if an issue has been identified by one of my safety auditors?
• Can we manage corrective actions?
• Can we report data in multiple languages?
• Can I have my own reports or report on my own metrics?
• Can you print an audit report from the app?
• Can you email an audit report in the field or on the fly?
• Can we schedule reports to be sent automatically to our senior executives?
• How can we conduct audits in explosive environments?
• How can we conduct audits in areas where smartphone and tablets are forbidden?
• Is there a way to avoid having to re-key audit findings into Excel spreadsheets for reporting?
• With paper-based audits sent into the system, can you see hand written comments included in the original audit?
• Can you add images to your audit findings?
• Can you report KPI’s based on the number of safety observations completed by an employee compared to the amount they were expected to complete?
• Can we create customized reports?
• Are there drill through reports?
• Can you report on a specific shift, department or team of people?
• Can you report by region, division or country rather than just by site?
• Can we report data in real time?
• Can we have reports automatically emailed to senior management on a scheduled basis?
• Can we have reports automatically emailed to people who don’t use the system?
• Can we report core monthly ‘corporate’ metrics from audits that also include site-specific audit questions and data?
• Can we create an audit checklist centrally that all sites can use for an audit?
• Can we collect safety data from across the country and around the globe and compile safety reports for our senior executives?
• How can we report corporate-wide KPI’s and key safety metrics?
• Can we manage printable audit checklists centrally but allow our safety auditors to print those checklists locally?
• Can you create scored audits?
• How can you ensure that the audit data collected is consistent and comparable company-wide?
• Can we have a checklist that has a core set of corporate questions but also has additional site-specific questions?
• Can we duplicate a checklist?
• Can we create a single audit checklist that can be used company-wide?
• Can we use the app to read bar codes on safety equipment?
• We have hundreds of pieces of equipment that are inspected regularly and need to easily identify which piece of equipment is being inspected?
• Can we add signatures to our audits?
• Can we link our own corporate safety procedures to audit questions to provide supporting information to our auditors?
• Can you include images in audit questions to show auditors what something is supposed to look like?
• Can we add images to our audit findings?
• We operate in multiple countries and in multiple languages, can we have a central English version of our audit checklists with versions for auditors in their local languages?
• Is Certainty multi-lingual?
• Can we collect audit data online and offline?
• Some of our sites don’t have internet or WiFi but most do and we don’t want 2 different systems to collect safety inspection data.
• Its difficult to get people to actually do the safety observations they are supposed to do, how can you help with that?
• How long does it take for the completed audits to get into they system?
• Can you enter audit results from a PC?
• Can you conduct an audit using a smartphone or tablet?
• Is there an app?
• Whats’ the difference between using the Certainty app vs. PC to enter audit results?
• With paper-based audits sent into the system, is there a copy of the original audit?
• Can we print our own paper-based audit checklists?
• Can we use paper-based audit checklists?