Is it really worth it?
In a time of global uncertainty, financial turmoil and growing mistrust, why should you maintain your ISO management Systems, like ISO 9001 for Quality Management, ISO 14001 for Environmental Management, ISO 45001 for Health and Safety Management or ISO 27001 for Data and Information Security?
There are many big reasons why these systems are worth maintaining, though sometimes there are also less prominent ones for maintaining them which can be overlooked. Here’s a few:
Standing out from the Crowd
When purchasing decisions are based purely on price, they are often ill fated, resulting in poor products or services. As suppliers you may have cut your costs to the minimum in order to undercut the competition. You might even win some orders that way; but you are likely to end up with an unsustainable business or you’ll have to constantly look for new customers after annoying your existing ones.
In a competitive environment, and especially where purchasers/customers are looking for longer term relationships just being the cheapest isn’t enough. You need to show you aren’t just the cheapest, you need to show you are reliable, trustworthy and that dealing with you isn’t going to give your customers hassle.
An UKAS accredited ISO 9001 certificate is a way of doing that. You are showing the world that your internal ways of working have been validated by an independent third party, and that third party has been confirmed and validated on behalf of the UK government. This kind of certification tells your customers that you are serious about the work you do; that you are looking towards the future of the business, it’s growth and also that you don’t plan on disappearing with their money.
Reducing Customer Risk
Customers don’t want to end up doing business with you if it’s going to increase their own risk. Whether from faulty goods, poor services, environmental damage, data breaches or poor health and safety. Maintaining your ISO certificate reduces those risks, gives customers more confidence and shows them that even if something unforeseen does go wrong, you have the internal structures and resources to address them quickly and efficiently.
Legal Compliance
For the vast majority of people raised in the UK; the tragedy at Grenfell Tower is a core moment in history. Many are also aware that since 2017 there have been ongoing legal battles between people and companies looking for those culpable. These investigations and suits come with enormous costs to the people and the companies involved. It is almost inevitable that with these investigations, someone somewhere may not have followed the correct legal processes; and they will likely be left holding the bill if they aren’t behind bars.
Ensuring that not only your business, but also those suppliers and sub-contractors working for you are legally compliant is essential if you wish to stay out of court. Many, many laws now make it the responsibility of customers to make sure they buy from reliable compliant suppliers – using businesses who do not follow the applicable laws and legislation can make you legally responsible for their failure, ensnaring you in long, difficult legal challenges; draining you of the time needed to build your business, damaging your reputation and possibly even blocking you from potential markets.
ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 45001 and ISO 27001 now all insist on managing legal compliance. So using suppliers and sub-contractors that hold these kinds of certification is a simple, practical and a cost-effective way of ensuring somebody checks your suppliers are behaving correctly, giving you some level of protection.
Tenders & Bids
Tendering and bidding can be expensive and time-consuming activities; but without them how do you get into the larger markets and more lucrative contracts? Holding properly accredited ISO certificates can greatly simplify this process along with the data you need to provide to support your bids. For instance, an ISO 14001 Environmental Management Certificate can save you having to answer pages and pages of questions about your emissions and reduction plans, etc. it also means you shouldn’t need to sink hours into finding the evidence to support your answers. When it comes to tendering and bidding ISO certification generally pays for itself just in your saved time fairly quickly. Having ISO can also be mandatory in some markets, so, it could also give you access to markets and contracts you simply wouldn’t get into without it.
Increasing Revenue
ISO management systems are now based around the objectives and targets you set for your business; they support and help maintain all aspects of performance monitoring and so can support drives to reduce cost, increase sales and use resources more effectively.
Past criticisms of ISO, claiming that it was complex and drowned businesses in bureaucratic admin were addressed long ago. Once the appropriate systems and controls have been developed and installed in your business, maintaining them can be super simple and not specifically costly.
Costs should be well below the advantages and savings you gain through efficiency and improved communications; clear operating processes and additional controls should give to your business.
Properly structured and installed, any of these management systems can be maintained with little impact on work or resources, but as explained above, they should also give you many advantages through access to new markets, reduced risk etc.
If you’d like to know more why not drop us a line and if we can help your business to grow through ISO Certification we will, why not give us a call on 0115932 3770 or go to our contact page.
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No AI was used to write this post, so the spelling and grammatical errors are all mine, and the result of a UK, state provided, education 😊, for which I remain, most thankful.