The business benefits of adopting management systems are well-known. The framework of processes and procedures they provide help to ensure that you can fulfil all tasks required to achieve your business ambitions.
Whether your goals are to grow your business, safeguard it from risks, respond to customer demand, or inspire customer and shareholder confidence, there is a management system that can help drive them forward successfully.
Gaining certification is a powerful way to demonstrate that you meet all required criteria.
Here’s everything you need to know:
What exactly is certification?
It’s the formal process that provides recognition and a high degree of assurance that your business is competently performing the processes, activities, or tasks required by the ISO standard in a credible, reliable and accurate manner. Clauses of the standards are usually best business practice and companies get certification from being externally audited.
What benefits does gaining certification offer?
It indisputably demonstrates compliance to a management system standard and provides the evidence that your business follows the highest standards.
Additionally, certification can provide internal business benefits by managing risks and opportunities, improving the quality and validity of work, supporting the management of your business, and providing confidence to your customers and stakeholders.
It can also open commercial opportunities through differentiating your business from your competitors and be a key factor in maintaining and winning contracts. It’s worth noting that ISO standards are internationally recognised.
Who awards the certification?
There are many companies offering certification to ISO standards, so it can be difficult to know what you should be looking for.
The best place to start is by making sure that the certification body you use is answerable to an approved accreditation body, such as UKAS. This is something you simply can’t afford to overlook.
UKAS stands for the United Kingdom Accreditation Service and it’s the only government recognised national accreditation body in the UK. It’s designed to evaluate the competence of any organisation that supply services relating to certification. There are other recognised accreditation bodies throughout other parts of the world.
If a certification body meets the standards enforced by UKAS, they will be accredited to certify other companies on those specific ISO standards within their given sectors of competence. If a certification body has reached this status, it means that they deliver results while being reliable, impartial, transparent and competent.
In short, UKAS ‘checks the checkers’ so when you choose a UKAS accredited certification body, you can be certain of the highest levels of quality.
How can I tell if a consultancy is UKAS accredited?
All organisations that are accredited may use the Royal Crown symbol, so look out for this. Alternatively, you can visit the UKAS website, and you’ll find a list of all certified bodies under the ‘Accredited Bodies’ tab on the homepage.
Absolute Quality always work with UKAS accredited certification bodies and value the highest levels of quality and ultimate peace of mind this brings.
We know that ISO, management systems, auditing and certification can be daunting and time-consuming so please do get in touch for Absolute Quality advice.
