Market Your Business With Iso Certification!

[Oliver Goundry]

Hi! My name is Oli and I help SME's in Scotland achieve ISO Certification. If you would like to find out how standards can be applied to your business and how they can help you grow, then please post your questions below and I will do my best to help you.

 

[MarkB]

Oli, you have not really given a good first impression of yourself by posting the same post twice on the forum with your contact details. The whole purpose of this forum is to discuss subjects on the forum so that others can see how it works, etc. By posting your contact details - which I have removed - you give the impression that you are not going to offer anything to the forum and simply see us as a spam site for business leads.

We will in due course be adding a services section where companies can add their contact details and summary of what they do. I have edited the above post but quite frankly spamming sites using your company name does not make a good first impression in my book.

 

[Businessman]

Very fair point Mark. - Over the years forums like this have come and gone, and invariably the 'blue touch paper' of destruction is lit by the boards just becoming places where people fly post, as opposed to the live communities we might hope for.

ISO certification is an interesting topic through. There is much good to be gleaned from the ISO9001 framework. But, sadly, like a great many other management techniques and protocols, it's open to abuse by those with a box-ticking mentality. To that end I'd question whether certification is necessary? Is it not more important to learn, adopt and apply the principles?

 

[MarkB]

Hi Matt,

I have nothing against experts in certain fields joining the forum and assisting others but it needs to be give and take to the whole forum community - not a self promotion platform. My pet hate is people landing on the forum, chancing their arm with spam posts, and never returning again. I do not have a view on ISO certification to be honest so my mind is open on this one - it would be good to discuss the pros and cons in more detail.

 

[Businessman]

Like HSAW policies, 'Investors In People' status and the like, ISO-Certification has become one of those 'Mutley Medal' things that injelitant managers lust after. Some organisations with certifiable management ( ) won't engage contractors unless they have the magic bit o' paper and a nice plaque at reception. This has resulted in another one of those 'tail wags the dog' situations where having the box ticked is more important than what ticking the box ought to mean... And a resultant level of cynicism among workers who are impacted by the practice. i.e. like 'elfin safeteee' its often viewed as 'monkey tree' stuff.

To some extent that's fair - a whole industry has grown up around providing and maintaining certification. And - whilst I'd be clear I don't automatically include the O/P in this - it's often a case of 'you pays the money and they give you a hat and a balloon.

Cynical rant over with - the ISO9001 is actually quite a good framework, especially for those who are basically learning to be managers - or are faced with the prospect of designing a workflow where quality management is important. Another advantage of it is that it provides a common, translatable, set of signposts which span across different industries. This is useful when hiring in services that may be 'foreign' to your own industry.

It's worth looking into and learning about - even if only to inspire your own thought process and direction of travel. - But it's a bit like having good health and safety practices (see ISO 18001 for more detail ) ... It's important to actually have protocols in place that ensure you're working as safely as you can, and not putting anyone's health at avoidable risk. - Whereas there are an awful lot of managers out there who obsess more with plaque polishing and box ticking.