Introducing our newly launched (June 2021) product compliance management software – Comply Express SmartCertTM - an advanced online product compliance management solution. Comply Express Ltd (UK) and Comply Express Lda (Portugal) are our wholly-owned subsidiary businesses focussed on IT-based product compliance solutions and also providing EU Authorised Representative services, as well as UK Authorised Representative services.
We are excited to bring this brand new SaaS (software-as-a-service) solution to the TICC (Testing, Inspection, Certification and Compliance) industry.
Our leading-edge technology captures deep product compliance domain knowledge and expertise gained through running our consultancy and testing business, established in 2006.
The idea for Comply Express SmartCertTM was conceived from previous work originally done on expert systems in another industry sector and having seen the success of that application, we decided to apply the technology in the TICC sector to bring to reality our ethos of being a forward looking consultancy .. as we say on our home page “….we are a forward-looking consultancy and our mission is to help our customers get their new products on sale in target markets as soon as possible by helping them achieve applicable regulations - like CE Marking for the EU, UL approval for the USA, and more.”
The software has been in development by us over a 3 year period and has evolved significantly in that time to become the tool it is now.
We wanted the software to be very affordable in order to help companies bring new product designs to the market. It can also be used by product importers and distributors to manage their product compliance data. We think you will be pleasantly surprised at the affordability of Comply Express SmartCertTM whatever the size of your business. Read more about the software below.
The software is complementary to our consultancy and testing services delivered by our highly experienced product compliance team at Product Approvals Ltd. We developed the core software in house from scratch and our team of compliance engineers uses it to help deliver compliance projects for our ad-hoc and contract compliance management service (CMS) customers.
Visit complyexpress.com to find out more about our new product compliance software and how it can help your business.
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Comply Express SmartCertTM brings the following key benefits for users:
- Acceleration of the product certification process. We chose the company name Comply Express for a reason – our mission is to speed up the new product certification process in order to help get new product designs to market in the shortest possible time – and once on the market, reduce the time and minimise the effort required to keep products in compliance with legal requirements.
- Simplification of the product certification process is our other key goal. Hence ‘SmartCert’. Our custom-designed expert system has many embedded rules extracted using a knowledge elicitation process by compliance experts and coded into the system using python, PHP and linking with a relational database. A simple user interface captures key information about your products and configures the software according to your product type and related legislation
- SmartCert monitors product legislation and knows how product safety standards and other standards relate to your product portfolio. It will warn you if any of your products may be affected by up-coming changes in relevant standards
- Design Change Process – it’s a significant achievement completing a new product design and getting the compliance evidence ready for the big product launch. Then inevitably once in production, the product changes and evolves over time – design improvements, component substitutions due to part obsolescence, manufacturability improvements – a whole range of reasons. Whatever the reason, SmartCert has this covered by providing the ability to document your design changes as they occur over time, so your product compliance information remains fully up to date.
- Several other leading-edge innovative features have been specially developed and incorporated into SmartCert including advanced tools for users involved in product design – such as an electrical ‘creepage and clearance’ calculator tool
Features
 Identified Requirements
Once the answers to a few basic questions about your product have been given in the New Project section, the expert system will quickly generate a CSR (Compliance Strategy Review) consultancy report.
This is a standalone professional consultancy report document which captures and records compliance requirements for your specific product. This document (utilising fully up to date legislation and standards) is modelled on the way our highly experience consultants perform this process, and forms the roadmap to the required approvals for the target countries / regions in which you wish to sell your product(s).
This forms the basis of a ‘route to compliance’ for the product but also SmartCert uses the generated data to automatically configure and customise the user interface ready for entering your supporting regulatory evidence for your product, for the countries you’ll be selling your products in1.
 Structured Document Control
Document control is an important part of product compliance and SmartCert automatically generates a customised structure for your product compliance document control.
The document control approach taken by SmartCert is highly flexible. If you already have a software tool such as a PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) solution, as may be the case in larger organisations, you won’t want to replicate data stores (except for backup purposes). In this case you could simply use SmartCert document control to record where your data /evidence assets are located in your organisation. However, if you are a smaller business, you may well want to use the built-in data / information uploading capability to upload compliance evidence straight into SmartCert. An added advantage of this approach is that you can easily output complete product compliance Technical Files on demand, in a compressed file-zipped format, and this can then for example, be quickly made available due to request for examination by a regulatory and/or market surveillance authority.
 Evidence Based Milestones
SmartCert keeps track of your due-diligence evidence.
A key part of meeting legal requirements ready for launching new products on the market is building the body of legal evidence to back up the claim you’ll be making (when you are sufficiently satisfied) that your new product design complies with the law. Often referred to as a Technical File (TF) or Technical Construction File (TCF), this highly important legal evidence must be built up to a sufficient level, and SmartCert will create a suitable structure within the system so you can upload the supporting data and information. It will also give you a visual progress indicator of how you are progressing so you can easily check progress for any project and related product(s). Once completed, the new projected is transferred to your completed projects section.
 Project Status
Got a lot of products in your portfolio?
SmartCert can manage 100’s or even 1000’s of products across multiple product families. Or you may just be working on your very first product! Whatever the case, you can see the progress status of each new project at a glance on a summary page. Once completed, the project is closed and then moves to the completed projects area, which can also be seen on a summary screen. The latter is colour-coded and will show you any of your projects that may be affected by an upcoming standards change to give you plenty of time to assess the impact of an upcoming change on the relevant products and make potential changes to the affected products so they remain in compliance. You can drill down by individual product to see which specific standard(s) are changing.
 Standards Watch
Standards Watch is our database of product related harmonised standards kept up to date by our research team and linked to SmartCert.
Enter your product details into SmartCert, create the new project, and the software will track the harmonised standards your product is certified to and will give you a visual colour-coded alert if standards are being withdrawn2
 Management of evidence of due diligence and legal compliance for your products.
Your data is stored on a secure web server and independently backed-up.
It includes compilation of entities such as the EU Technical File which is a legal requirement for example for products carrying the CE and / or UKCA certification marks. The system can also generate appropriate DoC’s (declarations of conformity. SmartCert also informs you on the progress level attained as you build your regulatory evidence such as EU Technical File.)
1.For countries / regions currently covered by the SmartCert tool and database
2. For industry sectors currently covered by SmartCert and standards that are monitored in the database
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