– A Practical Viewpoint

SYNOPSIS IN POINT FORM

• ISO Certification is an internationally recognised label of quality

• It is a certified Quality Management System (QMS)

• It is relevant and may be applied to any type of business

• It is most useful in a B to B environment and with businesses of a certain complexity

• ISO may be strictly required or strongly preferred by your business clients

• It can also be effectively utilised for marketing purposes

• A QMS can greatly increase your business’s efficiency

• It also focuses greatly on customer satisfaction and feedback

• It should help you to obtain and retain clients better

• It ensures that all processes and their stages are properly logged and recorded

FULL ARTICLE

ISO certification has been around for a long time. For those however, who might not be too familiar, it is an international Quality Management System (QMS), which ensures that your organisation reaches and maintains certain standards in its overall operation and its relations with the needs of its customers and stakeholders. Depending on the products and services you produce and/or offer, specific criteria based on official, commercial and management aspects, will be established and must be abided to.

It was originally designed for the industrial sector, however today it encompasses any type of business, with very few exceptions. Whether your business requires this certification may be a question you might consider at some time in its growth and progression.

It has long become a very significant, internationally recognised label of quality for any business that carries it, as it automatically indicates a high level of competence within that organisation.

There are various motivating factors which compel businesses to obtain ISO certification. One of the most frequent is because they deal directly with overseas businesses, which might even make this a strict requirement for all their partners. Even if this is not made compulsory, in certain countries and many cases, when seeking a certified partner/supplier abroad, certified organisations will always be given preference over others. Furthermore, in all cases, ISO certified organisations will always by far prefer to deal with other similarly certified businesses.

Besides these very compelling and valid reasons, obtaining such a label of quality can only indicate a certain level of professionalism and quality. So even if none of your clients and partners specifically require this from you, it automatically shows that you know your stuff and that you know exactly what you’re doing.

Some businesses in fact, obtain ISO purely for marketing purposes, and this too may be a valid reason for its acquisition. Once obtained, you may stick that precious label everywhere, including on all your stationery, marketing material, online footprint and everywhere else you are present. This will naturally have varying levels of effect and interest on your clients, depending exactly who they are, and admittedly is usually much more effective with business, rather than final consumer clients.

But having been through this process various times, I feel that the most important reason of all to obtain such certification, is to urge yourself to instil a quality management system (QMS) into your business. Understandably, the more complex your organisation and its internal procedures, the more necessary a QMS becomes. There are many categories of small and straightforward businesses which do not merit such a process. However, the more a business grows in complexity, the more relevant this becomes.

What a QMS does is to impose upon you the exact systems and procedures with regards to most internal and external processes. These usually encompass most factors of management such as production, research, purchasing, operations, personnel, marketing and most of all, customer satisfaction. So it can really be extremely useful to ensure that your business is running on track in all its aspects.

What is also important to understand, is that it is the business owners themselves who choose and indicate which processes need to be included, and how these will be managed and monitored within the QMS. So in most ways you will be imposing these criteria yourself, back onto yourself and your collaborators.

If handled sensibly, without going to either extreme, whereby either you impose far too ambitious principles, or ridiculously easy and slack ones, a QMS can work wonders to your organisation. Just to give some practical examples, you might want to include in your QMS that say any client enquiry must be handled and replied to with 24 hours of receipt and in a certain required format. You may impose that all complaints be dealt with within 5 days and if the client is still not satisfied, then a full refund must be given. Or that all goods received from suppliers must first be checked upon arrival at your storage facility, then stored only within certain conditions, and then that all their successive movements be registered accordingly. That at least once a month a minimum number of clients are contacted to generate feedback and gauge levels of satisfaction. That all personnel in a certain department receive six monthly training. You may also include the type and frequency of management and other internal meetings. You simply include any and all processes which you deem to be important for the correct functioning of your business.

The scopes are endless and what the QMS also does is to ensure that all steps and processes are perfectly logged and documented. Basically it keeps you and your staff on your toes and generally ensures that you are running an efficient and professional organisation.

As it also focuses a lot on customer issues and satisfaction, your QMS should also be working in your favour to obtain and retain clients much more efficiently. If it is not, then there must be something wrong with it and it should be seriously reviewed. Incidentally all QMS’s are reviewed regularly and this review process is, in fact, usually even built into the system itself.

The cost of creating and more so of maintaining a QMS is also a common concern for businesspeople considering its application. First of all you may develop an internal QMS without seeking ISO 9000 certification, which admittedly will relieve you of certain costs and charges. However in many ways it would be a pity making such an effort without then being able to officially show this off to others. It would be like studying hard at a subject, without passing an exam and obtaining the relevant certificate.

Usually the biggest cost results from the time required both to create and develop it, as well as to maintain it. You are usually required to assign an individual within your organisation who will be in charge and responsible for its maintenance. So your overall cost will very much depend on the efficiency of this individual. If you have created a good and efficient QMS which is not too complex and cumbersome in itself and which does not require a lot of tedious recording and logging, then the system should not be too costly to maintain.

One common mistake is to include several similar procedures, which prove to create duplication of work, others which might be unessential and redundant, all in themselves unnecessarily increasing the workload. This is not the scope of a QMS. It is not there to increase your workload but to ensure that your current work is executed properly. It will always add some additional duties, but as it principally deals with efficiency, it too must be efficient.

Like most other things, this is a tool which, used well, can be very beneficial to your organisation. If on the other hand, you do not embrace it fully and ensure that you use it in your favour and to your advantage, it is best not to go down this road.