What’s the Best Way to Achieve ISO Certification?
There’s more than one way to achieve ISO certification, but not all routes deliver the same results in the same timeframes, let alone at the same costs. Choosing the right approach depends on your resources, your experience, and your deadlines.
Here’s a comparison of the main options.
- Taking a course
- The DIY approach
- Appointment a systems manager
- Hiring a consultant
Taking a course
In order to be cost effective for any course provider the vast majority of online or attended courses are developed around the “clauses” and “requirements” of the relevant standard. And if you want your management system to be sensible, practical, commercial and useful you absolutely want to be squeezing the standard into your organisation rather than squeezing you into the standard. The latter we would call Mistake #1.
So, generally, courses will give you an insight into the relevant standards “clauses and requirements”, but they are far less effective at helping you marry the clauses to the specific requirements of your business processes and activities.
Pros
- Low cost
- Flexible learning
Cons
- They are not built around your business
- Limited support
- Still requires significant internal effort
- Risk of gaps in interpretation
DIY approach
Clearly, there is some crossover between taking a course and the DIY approach.
In the early days of ISO implementation where there were far fewer courses, the DIY approach required the user to actually read and decipher the standard without any external support – in all honesty… bloody difficult! Even then, the first (and second) time our founder ever did this, he encountered problems – principally what we now call Mistake #2.
Pros
- Lowest external cost
- Full control over the process
Cons
- High internal time commitment
- High risk of misinterpreting requirements
- High risk of omitting or not fully covering key requirements
- Significantly greater chance of audit failure
Using an internal management system manager
If you haven’t got an internal management system manager (that is, somebody already trained and experienced in the standard that you want to implement), you fall back to the DIY, or the take a course, approach.
In addition to which, you’ll then need to go and “buy” an internal systems manager which means that the implementation is delayed by the duration it takes to recruit that person before you even start. That’s got to be a three month, or possibly even six-month, delay before you start writing the first procedure.
In addition to which once you have appointed the internal systems manager, there is a chance that they might empire built. That’s what we’d call Mistake #14.
Pros
- In-house knowledge and expertise
- Easier integration with existing processes
Cons
- Requires internal ISO experience
- May require recruitment which will add cost and delay
- May overload existing responsibilities
- Slower if learning from scratch
Hiring a consultant
He would suggest (but we would, wouldn’t we 😊) that hiring a consultant is probably the quickest and cheapest way you have of getting to your ISO goal.
Whilst a consultant is expensive on a daily rate basis, (from £300 a day for a retired quality manager to £3000 a day for a “newbie”, fresh from university, consultant from PWC, Ernst and Young or any of the other “big guys”) having a good consultant is likely to both short circuit the process and eliminate a lot of the stress and anguish that often goes with an initiative of this nature.
Pros
- Expert guidance and proven frameworks
- Faster implementation and higher success rate
- Reduced internal stress – Your people get on with their day job
Cons
- Higher upfront cost
- Need to choose a credible, UKAS-focused consultant
Which option is best?
There really isn’t a one-size fits all correct answer.
If you have strong internal expertise and the time, DIY or internal management can work. If deadlines and tender requirements matter, a consultant-led approach offers the most certainty. Online courses are best for learning, but probably not for full scale implementation from scratch.