For those that haven’t heard of it, ISO 9001 is an internationally renowned standard for quality management systems. However, it is not easy to achieve certification, as companies seeking this accreditation must follow stringent requirements to the letter. Attaining the standard is a great way of showing your client base your intention – and ability – to provide a top quality, cyber secure service.

What is ISO 9001?

ISO 9000 is a set of standards, but the 9001 offering is unique in the fact that it is the only one that requires certification. Businesses, ideally, want to boast that their entire organisation from top to bottom has the certification, but the way ISO 9001 works is by being specifically catered to one department in your organisation. This may sound a little restrictive, but it will allow you to concentrate your efforts and hone certain sectors of your business.

• Size doesn’t matter! Any organisation can achieve the certification.

• Regardless of your industry sector you can reap the benefits of the certification. There are even other members of the ISO 9000 family that may be suited to your industry – all can improve the quality of the service you are offering but none of the others come with the bragging rights of certification.

• We must be clear – ISO 9001 does NOT define product quality but is designed to monitor and control process.

• A person can become an ISO 9001 certified lead auditor after a five-day training course but they themselves cannot be certified – however, they can audit other companies if they wish. ‘Why would I want to do that?’, I hear you say, but being an auditor will give them the knowledge of quality management to take back to their own organisations.

• Look out for these exact words ‘The ISO 9001 Certification’. There are many scams out there claiming to offer the certification – there is no such thing as ISO Certification or ISO 9000 Certification.

You can’t just join as and when you feel like it – there are steps that need to be followed to achieve the certification. So, let’s list those steps now.

Implementing the ISO 9001 Quality Management System

The Certification Body will audit the performance of your organisation against the latest version of the ISO 9001 Requirements. Upon passing, the Registrar will present you with an ISO 9001 Certificate, which demonstrates that your organisation is registered to ISO 9001 for a three-year period (this is the maximum length of certification) and also allows you to present a cyber security mindset to your customers, who then know that you are doing everything you can to offer a top quality secure service.

Addressing the seven key areas in order to achieve the ISO 9001 standard will ensure the continual improvement of your Quality Management System.   They are as follows:

• Context of the organisation.

• Leadership.

• Planning.

• Support.

• Operation.

• Performance evaluation.

• Improvement.

Now that we have delved into the details of the certification, in the following article we will investigate how to achieve it in more detail.

If you know that ISO 9001 is something you are interested in, please don’t hesitate to get in contact with our expert team and let us help guide you and your team through the process.

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