MasterControl Quality Excellence is a Quality Management System (QMS) for the life sciences. It enables life-sciences companies to enable flexible quality event management, simplified document management, and automated training management that work together to close the loop on quality.
$25,000
per year
OpenText ALM/Quality Center
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
OpenText™ ALM/Quality Center, formerly from Micro Focus, serves as the single pane of glass for software quality management. It helps users to govern application lifecycle management activities and implement rigorous, auditable lifecycle processes.
The MasterControl Quality Excellence suite is well suited for the life sciences and biotechnology as well as manufacturing companies that could benefit from the regulatory compliance that this suite of products offer. This product is highly recommended for industries that want to reduce paper overhead and digitally transform their QMS into a singular location
For an organisation that has completely adopted SAFe structure including naming terminology, it is less appropriate and apart from that. It can suit any organisation out there, and it can solve all your problems one way or another by customising it. It is a robust and highly scalable solution to support all the business needs. It improves a lot of productivity and visibility.
If you have a mix of automation & manual test suites, HPALM is the best tool to manage that. It definitely integrates very well with HP automation tools like HP Unified Functional Testing and HP LoadRunner. Automated Suites can be executed, reports can be maintained automatically. It also classifies which test suites are manual & which are automated & managers can see the progress happening in moving from manual to automated suites. In HPA ALM all the functional test suites, performance test suites, security suites can be defined, managed & tracked in one place.
It is a wonderful tool for test management. Whether you want to create test cases, or import it, from execution to snapshot capturing, it supports all activities very well. The linking of defects to test runs is excellent. Any changes in mandatory fields or status of the defect triggers an e-mail and sent automatically to the user that the defect is assigned to.
It also supports devops implementation by interacting with development tool sets such as Jenkins & GIT. It also bring in team collaboration by supporting collaboration tools like Slack and Hubot.
This tool can integrate to any environment, any source control management tool bringing in changes and creates that trace-ability and links between source control changes to requirements to tests across the sdlc life-cycle.
License model can become very expensive for small startup businesses.
More development with validation and more transparent information on how the improvements and or fixes may impact the current configuration. Currently, everything is listed, but it is not tailored to my system.
More information regarding the transition of previous processes to new processes. i.e., FBS to AQEM. I am currently working on the ADV/FBS forms and will eventually transition to AQEM/ADAPT. Still, I would like more information regarding the transition to inform current stakeholders about the improvements on the horizon.
The requirements module is not as user friendly as other applications, such as Blue Bird. Managing requirements is usually done in another tool. However, having the requirements in ALM is important to ensure traceability to tests and defects.
Reporting across multiple ALM repositories is not supported within the tool. Only graphs are included within ALM functionality. Due to size considerations, one or two projects is not a good solution. Alternatively, we have started leveraging the template functionality within ALM and are integrating with a third party reporting tool to work around this issue.
NET (not Octane) requires a package for deployment to machines without administrative rights. Every time there is a change, a new package must be created, which increases the time to deploy. It also forces us to wait until multiple patches have been provided before updating production.
would rate MasterControl Quality Excellence a 7 out of 10 because, while it offers strong compliance tools, centralized document control, and effective audit readiness features, there are still areas that could be improved to enhance the overall user experience. The platform can sometimes feel complex and unintuitive, especially for new users, and customizing workflows to fit specific organizational needs can be challenging. Additionally, integration with other enterprise systems isn't always seamless, which can slow down processes. Despite these drawbacks, the system remains a reliable and valuable tool for maintaining quality and regulatory compliance.
Some tasks require the users and SysAdmin to access multiple modules at a time. For example: to create a training course and an exam for a document in the system, the user needs to finish creating the document in the doc module, then go to the training module to create a course and an exam separately. Ideally, from the document page we should be able to access the training course, which could have some fields auto-populated. And from there, also create and link an exam, all without leaving the document page.
Because it lets me track the test cases with detailed scenarios and is clearly separated in folders. Also the defect filter helps me filter only the ones that have been assigned to a particular area of interest. The availability of reports lets me see the essentials fields which I might be missing the data on and helps me to work on these instead of having to go through everything.
The Technical Support team has grown exponentially over the last couple years. Some front line support staff are new to the system and so know less than the clients do. Back line staff are more seasoned and provide immediate assistance to the front line staff. They have an extensive knowledge bank to assist them as well as client access to most KB articles. Annual user group conference gives us chance to meet the support staff an also to resolve any outstanding issues. Any critical vendor notices are emailed immediately when found and a patch offered at the same time. These are rare, but quickly resolved.
It is a great tool, however, it got this rating because there is a lot of learning that takes a lot longer than other tools. There are no mobile versions of ALM even with just a project summary view. I believe ALM is well capable of integration with other analytics tools that can help business solutions prediction based on current and past project data. This is Data held in ALM but with no other use apart from human reading and project progress. ALM looks like a steady platform that I believe can handle more dynamic functionality. You could add an internal communication platform that is not a third party. Limit that communication tool to specific project members.
I rated the MasterControl in-person training a 10 because it was clear, practical, and well-paced. The trainer explained concepts thoroughly and answered questions effectively. I appreciated the hands-on walkthroughs, which made it easier to understand how to apply the system in real scenarios. Overall, it was a valuable learning experience that boosted my confidence in using MasterControl.
transparent and immediate when the documents are updated. Easy to check on training and customizable to the company's expectations. Allows easy exam creation with GXP assist and the correlation between job codes and courses has proven reliable. What i would advocate is that you see who has trained on the course in the Course Infocard, to the document infocard
The implementation of MasterControl Quality Excellence was largely successful, earning an 8 out of 10. The project was well-structured, and the implementation team provided solid guidance throughout the process. Key milestones were met on time, and the system was configured to meet most of our core requirements. One of the most valuable aspects was the hands-on training and support during go-live, which helped ensure user adoption. However, there were some challenges around data migration and aligning the system’s capabilities with our existing workflows, which required more time and effort than anticipated. Overall, the experience was positive, and the lessons learned have positioned us well for future system enhancements.
The products we evaluated were considered as potential replacements for MasterControl Quality Excellence. At this time, we continue using MasterControl Quality Excellence primarily due to the significant volume of data in our system and the operational impact of a platform transition. Intellect QMS emerged as a strong alternative, offering extensive, intuitive business process development tools and a wide range of built-in QMS processes out of the box. MasterControl Quality Excellence currently maintains the advantage solely because of the logistical and business burden associated with migrating to a new system.
We have other tools in our organization like Atlassian JIRA and Microsoft Team Foundation Server, which are very capable tools but very narrow in their approach and feature set and does not come even close to the some of the core capabilities of HP ALM. HP ALM is the "System of Record" in our organization. It gives visibility for an artifact throughout the delivery chain, which cut downs unnecessary bottlenecks and noise during releases.
