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ISO CERTIFICATION: Go For It!

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DQC Bureau
New Update

In face of increasing competition, solution providers are gradually getting

ISO-certified to demonstrate their differentiation to customers. Getting an ISO

certification helps the SI organization acquire credibility as well as establish

the customer's confidence in its processes. It also helps it to project itself

as a customer-oriented company while ensuring improved efficiency from within.

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In an age of intensifying competition, where solution providers could be

found pitching for same customer accounts, differentiation beyond price and

technology becomes more imminent than ever before. Various SI organizations try

and showcase this differentiation in terms of reach, service and support

infrastructure, consultancy skills and so on.

However, with customer organizations giving a lot more importance to

processes these days, in view of themselves becoming globally competitive, they

expect a similar business behavior from their technology solution providers.

Realizing this need well, the latter is increasingly getting aware on various

kind of process-related certifications.

And so unsurprisingly, a large bunch of mid and small-size SI organization

today can be found possessing ISO certifications. Those who don't, are slowly

putting their processes in order to get certified in the near future.

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While an ISO certification alone doesn't ensure more business or increased

profitability, it sure acts as a lubricant to smoothen the entire mechanism of

business operations. Solution providers have successfully demonstrated increased

efficiency in their businesses as a result of the exercises undertaken to get

ISO certified and also because of regular evaluations of the same.

WHY GO FOR IT?



An ISO certified company has an edge over its competitors as it can project

itself as a customer-oriented business house. When the prospective client

notices that its supplier has got well-documented processes with a stamp of

approval from a certifying body, their perception of the company improves.

This is all the more so, if the customer is not based in the place as the

company and is unable to monitor its business processes first-hand. And since

certification is done by an external body, the customer accepts this as an

impartial judgment.

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The good news about ISO 9001:2000 is that it lays down what requirements your

quality system must meet, but does not dictate how they should be met in your

organization. This gives the partner great scope and flexibility for its

implementation in different business sectors and business cultures.

Also, several overseas customers purchase only from suppliers and vendors

that are also ISO-qualified. Says Atul Khatri of Kaytek Computer Services.

"Having a certification has become crucial in these times of global

competition and competency." Kaytek is also working on getting its internal

processes in shape, before going for this certification soon.

Adds Ajay Jalan of Trade Technology, "Getting the certification shows

that the company is more process-oriented. This reaffirms the customer's faith

in the caliber of the company and therefore helps business grow." Another

benefit of getting certified is that that selling your home-grown products

become easier.

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PROCESSES INVOLVED



Once a company has decided to get itself ISO certified, it has to create

internal awareness about this decision. This is to ensure that every employee

knows why it is necessary and how to conform to the established standards.

After evangelizing about the decision to go for certification, the company

should ideally appoint an independent consultant to guide them through the

procedures of certification. This is not mandatory, but is preferable, because

the company can concentrate on carrying on its business activities while, the

certification leg-work is done by a qualified person.

The next step is to take a close look at all the processes in the different

aspect for the business operations. For example, if a



sales proposal is sent, is there a well-defined procedure for formulating the
same. Is the quotation checked for spelling errors, product code, proper format

of mentioning the company's name and logo, and even the salutation to the

recipient?

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Once all these processes are identified, they should be documented. The

company then has to identify which areas do not have any defined processes and

bring these into existence. A seamless framework, also called the quality

manual, has to be created and then applied to every component of the business

operations. These are later fine-tuned, based on the feedback from the

employees, internal and external customers.

When the entire system is working faultlessly, internal auditing has to be

undertaken to ensure that there are no loopholes anywhere. The focus of these

audits have to be especially in areas, which could be the company's weak

spots. "Certification calls for total, and at times brutal honesty, from

the company. They should be forthright in admitting areas where they need to

strengthen themselves," remarks Adidas Jacob of Oasis Consultants, an

independent certification consultant.

The last leg of the process involves inviting ISO-affiliated bodies to do a

complete audit of the company. KPMG, AQSR and BVQI are some companies that do

these audits. Once this external auditor is satisfied about the company's

processes being in place, it awards them the certification.

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COST OF GETTING CERTIFIED



The costing for getting certified can be broken down into consultant fees,

training programs, auditing costs and registration charges. Preparing for ISO

9001 certification can cost a small- to mid-size company around Rs 2 lakh.

Here is a deeper insight into the cost factor. If you are a small company

with 50 employees and a single location, a freelance consultant who will

hand-hold you through the initial stages of internal audit, will charge close to

Rs 1 lakh. Explains Adidas, "The costing is arrived at depending on the

size of the company and the processes already in place. If a company already has

some systems which are optimizing its customer efficiency, then the charges are

appreciably lesser."

The company has to appoint one dedicated employee who will assist the auditor

with the identification of the various functions and operations of the business.

This manpower has to be factored in as well to the overall costing.

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For the above mentioned company profile, an external auditors will again

charge close to Rs 1 lakh for quality assessment. And finally, the certificate

subscription will cost the company up to Rs 50,000.

This certification is valid for a period of three years. During this period,

surveillance audits will be conducted by the external auditor, the cost of which

is usually included in the overall assessment fee. After three years, the

company can upgrade itself to the latest level of certification, for the

applicable cost.

OTHER QUALITY PROCESSES



There are several quality processes that a company can imbibe to improve its

efficiency and also cut costs. However, they differ from ISO because these are

not certified.

Six-Sigma is one such quality standard which reduces the defects in the

company's processes. It is defined as finding 3.4 errors in every 1 million

operations. This process was initiated by Motorola and GE and is currently

followed by AV Birla and Wipro.

In the Six-Sigma method, the partner informs the customer about the

qualifying factors required to go forth with a proposed installation. This helps

in directly saving costs. This can also become another revenue stream for

solution providers as they can act as consultants to their customers who want to

go for this process. The only cost for six-Sigma is training the company's

manpower regularly. There are no other major capital costs involved.

The other process is a Total Quality Management (TQM). Here quality in every

stream of the business is identified and then measured. A set of parameters are

then determined, and all employees of the company have to adhere to it.

Management guru David Kall explores this subject in his paper on TQM, saying

that if an organization had a set of tools for continuous learning, they were

able to manage change much more easily and with less disruption. And when they

really attacked and fixed the root causes of their problems, customer

satisfaction rose and costs declined.

Finally, they had a process for measuring the cost of non-quality which

allowed them to solve their most costly problems first and to hold supervision

accountable for achieving continuous improvement until customer satisfaction was

achieved.

So, the writing is on the wall. Customers prefer doing business with

certified partners. They equate certification with credibility and confidence.

So, don't sit on the fence. Go ahead and get certified.

VINITA BHATIA

Multiplying The Business Advantage

Mumbai-based Omnitech Infosolutions decided to go for ISO certification in

1999. The decision was not influenced by external factors, instead the promoters

of the company adopted this strategy to drive their business efficiency. The

company also wanted to have processes that were people-independent and which

offered constant uniform delivery to customers.

It invested Rs 2 lakh during its initial ISO 9001:2000 certification. It got

itself re-certified in December 2000 to the ISO 9001: 2000 level. The company

also has surveillance audits every quarter, by a certifying body, which costs

around Rs 25,000.

Calculating the returns on this investment is difficult, as the benefits are

non-tangible. But says Avinash Pitale, Director, Omnitech Infosolutions,

"It offers us a unique value proposition as the business efficiencies have

gone up, thereby reducing costs."

From a business perspective, the certification also helped the company bag

crucial overseas orders. It even helps it in having an advantage while bidding

for tender business, since the service deliverables are easily mapped out.

From an employer's view point, employee retention hass improved as team

members have the documentation about their job roles and career growth

opportunities.

Also, new recruits can be trained faster, since the processes are all

well-defined. And the company can also attract better quality manpower, who

would rather work with a process-oriented organization.

ISO CERTIFICATIONS: A PRIMER

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is an international

body based in Switzerland with headquarters in Geneva. It consists of a

federation of national standard bodies comprising approximately about 140

members, one in each country.

The organization has set three quality management standards to assure vendor

quality in 1987. ISO 9001 was a standard for certifying those companies that did

design and development, product manufacturing, installation, final inspection

and testing, as well as supplying and maintaining software. ISO 9002 covers

companies doing production and installation and ISO 9003 affects companies that

handle final inspection and testing.

Any company can go for the ISO certification, irrespective of its size or

nature of business. All that is required is that it should have a

well-documented setup for its business processes. This documentation has to be

all-encompassing of the various facets of the company's operations, including

purchase, sales, services, human resource management, marketing, etc.

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