The Executive’s Guide to PQR: Turning Compliance Reviews Into Boardroom Metrics

The Executive’s Guide to PQR: Turning Compliance Reviews Into Boardroom Metrics 

Let’s be honest: for many senior leaders in pharma, the Product Quality Review (PQR) is perceived as a checkbox—necessary, regulatory, and far removed from strategic conversations. 

But what if we told you that your PQR could do more than satisfy auditors? That it could actually fuel your next board meeting? 

Here’s how to transform your PQR into a high-impact executive tool. 

Define What Executives Care About—Then Extract It From the PQR

 Senior leadership doesn’t want to read 80-page documents. They want clarity on: 

 Site performance trends 

 Product risk exposure 

 Compliance gaps 

 Cost of poor quality (COPQ) 

Translate this into: A 1-page executive dashboard sourced from your PQR. 

What to include: 

 Top 3 recurring deviations (with impact) 

 Batch failure rates over the past 3 years 

 Yield losses by product category 

 CAPA backlog status and risk level 

Use PQR Insights to Justify Strategic Investments

 Planning a facility upgrade? Justifying a new QMS? Pull data directly from PQRs to demonstrate inefficiencies, recurring losses, or compliance risks. 

 Example: “25% of batches in the last two years had yield variances >5%. A new granulator could reduce this by 70%.” 

PQRs provide the historical context needed to support CapEx decisions. 

Trend Quality KPIs Over Time—Not in Isolation

 Executives need to see if things are improving—or getting worse. 

Solution: Include 3-year trendlines in your PQR executive summary. 

 Complaint rates 

 Right-first-time metrics 

 OOS/OOT occurrences 

 Deviation aging (how long issues stay open) 

These help leadership track the direction of quality, not just a snapshot. 

Align PQRs With Risk Management Frameworks

 Many organizations run enterprise risk management (ERM) programs. Your PQR can feed directly into this if structured properly. 

Bridge the gap: Map your PQR findings to your corporate risk matrix. Show where quality risks are trending and where controls are strong or weak. 

This supports enterprise-wide decisions on where to focus resources. 

Create a Closed Loop Between Quality and Strategy

 The real power of the PQR lies in feedback loops. If insights remain siloed, value is lost. 

Action Plan: 

 Present quarterly PQR snapshots at executive QBRs. 

 Link PQR findings to business KPIs (e.g., cost savings, cycle time, resource utilization). 

 Revisit PQR insights during strategy reviews and budgeting. 

Final Thought: Quality as a Strategic Lever 

 PQRs shouldn’t just live in QA folders—they should live in the boardroom. 

When structured the right way, your PQR becomes more than compliance—it becomes competitive advantage. 

Want to see how QEdge builds boardroom-ready dashboards directly from your PQR data? Let’s talk.