ISO 9001 Quality Management is a Pathway to Growth for SMEs

to get their system up and running and their certification in place. There is always a cost and it always requires significant input from businesses but a proportionate investment of both time and money can provide excellent returns.

The British Standards Institute says that ISO 9001 is: A standard that helps organisations ensure they meet customer and other stakeholder needs within statutory and regulatory requirements related to a product of service.

That is technically accurate but here’s what I say – it’s a practical and workable system which helps businesses to improve their operations and outputs so they make more money and get more business – i.e. it supports growth.

So how does ISO 9001 support growth?

I’m a self-confessed ISO nerd but I also have a background across multiple sectors, roles and businesses. That means that I bring a level of pragmatism and insight to the implementation of ISO standards, particularly in small businesses. Small businesses arguably can gain the biggest benefits from an effective quality management system as well as from certification. However, the reality is that SMEs tend to regard ISO 9001 certification as being out of reach – primarily due to the cost of consultancy fees as well as the amount of people-hours needed to create the system.

That’s certainly true of typical implementation projects which are carried out as quickly as possible putting a strain on operations and the people involved as well as on the company finances.

This approach not only stretches the resources of a small business, but it often doesn’t deliver the best results. It doesn’t leave breathing space for learning or for the rest of the business to adopt to new ways of working, nor does it support the business in feeling confident to manage the system post-certification.

The result can be a dormant system which fails to deliver the benefits it should, and a team that sees it as a paperwork exercise which causes stress around audit dates. However, there are alternative approaches to implementation which make it affordable and manageable for small businesses

First, it puts management mechanisms in place which improve various elements including efficiencies, waste, productivity, risk reduction and business scalability. Second, certification acts as a signal which opens up sectors and customers that insist on certified suppliers, it provides an edge over non-certified competitors, and it indicates a focus on quality and customers. Even if your business isn’t ready to think about ISO certification there are things you can do to start improving and getting some of the benefits of quality management:

• You can put the ISO 9001 system in place but not go for certification - this reduces your ongoing costs but still delivers the benefits which come from the mechanisms listed above. (you can always get certified at a later stage)

• You can focus on processes – processes are powerful and putting them in place for your key business activities will deliver multiple benefits.

• You can go to your customers for feedback on your products and services and use that information to help set some quality objectives - this provides focus and by monitoring your performance against these objectives you obtain valuable information about how your business outputs are working.

Wherever your SME is in its development, a planned approach to managing the quality of your products or services will always benefit your business. If you’d like to find out more about how ISO 9001 works or how you can set up ISO 9001 in your small business please get in touch.

Annie McNeely, AMc Consulting