What is ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation)?
The ISO is an independent, international non-governmental organisation with a membership of 166 national standards bodies that develops and publishes a wide range of proprietary, industrial, and commercial standards.
The ISO plays a particularly significant role in facilitating world trade by providing common standards among different countries.
Reasons why your company should have ISO certification?
Organisations should choose to pursue ISO certification not because they are forced to but because it is beneficial to the company and more importantly their customers.
It is important not to gain certification due to satisfying a customer requirement. If you only concentrate on the immediate benefit without putting the customer first, it can cost you a lot more eventually.
The most common benefits of the ISO standards:
- Improving the quality of your processes
- Ensuring consistency of your operations
- Improving efficiency
- Reducing costs
- Reduced Risks
- Improved customer satisfaction
The ISO standards are internationally agreed by experts, “think of them as a formula that describes the best way of doing something” covering a huge range of activities such as managing a process or delivering a service.
Some examples of the ISO standards include:
- Quality Management (ISO 9001) sets out the criteria for a quality management system and is the only standard in the family that can be certified to (although this is not a requirement). It can be used by any organization, large or small, regardless of its field of activity.
- Information Security Management (ISO/IEC 27001) is widely known, providing requirements for an information security management system (ISMS), though there are more than a dozen standards in the ISO/IEC 27000 family. Using them enables organisations of any kind to manage the security of assets such as financial information, intellectual property, employee details or information entrusted by third parties.
Regulators and governments count on ISO standards to help develop better regulation, knowing they have a sound basis thanks to the involvement of globally established experts.
Achieving ISO implementation (and certification, where appropriate) can help drive maturity and repeatability into your processes and operations. It can also give confidence to both your customers and your suppliers on the seriousness with which quality, security and risk are treated within your organisation and acting as a differentiator within your peer organisations.
How do I know what ISO certifications I need?
Our team have experience of several ISO standards from identification, through planning and implementation and on to certification where desired.
Our ISO Strategy service will help identify those standards that are a good fit for your organisation and help determine whether a posture of “alignment” or formal certification are best placed to meet your business objectives. Standards should be aligned to business requirements and be part of other overarching strategies IE. Cyber Strategy may include ISO 27001.
Before you start, Nine23 will work with you to determine which ISO you want or need and then understand the benefits the ISO will provide to your business. We will provide you with a list of things you will need including management commitment, ISO requirement document and more.
How do I implement ISO?
We will then take the next steps on how to implement ISO, what it entails and the documentation.
The final steps of our ISO strategy service, we will begin to discuss certification, what this entails and the external audit. It should be strongly noted that achieving certification is just the start of the journey and the key is one of continues improvement within the organisation.
Nine23 has achieved and continues to successfully complete external annual audits for ISO 9001 – Quality Management, ISO 27001 – Information Security Management, ISO/IEC 20000 – Information technology — Service management and are implementing ISO 14001 – Environmental Management Systems.
Do not just get a certificate but help your business grow.
Call us to get started +44 (0)23 8202 0300
