The competition in today’s crowded business world is fierce and entrepreneurs must do more and more to succeed. You can have your product or service selling like hot cakes and you can have an extremely receptive target market as well, but a scaling strategy is what sets a small business or start-up, and profitable organization apart from each other.
If you are interested how the ISO certification can help you to scale your business and increase profit, keep reading.
In 2015, the latest version of ISO 9001 was launched by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) which is now known as ISO 9001:2015. The ISO provides a set of standards that are required for any company to prosper in a world of complex supply chains and increasingly advancing technology.
If your company is about to implement quality management system according to ISO 9001, here are 6 ways it can help you boost profits and scale your business.
1. Reduced Waste
Whether your company decides to reduce its carbon footprint and create an Environmental Management System (EMS), or decides on a Quality Management System (QMS), implementing ISO 14001 and ISO 9001 both are an excellent choice.
Not only does compliance to their standards help improve your company’s environmental performance, but also helps increase operational efficiency.
When your company identifies processes that can be improved to reduce areas of waste, preventive measures can be taken to avoid these situations. Streamlining these processes can result in cost-saving and result in increased efficiency.
2. Enhanced Quality
Compliance with internationally recognized standards promise a continuous improvement in the core business functions of your company. Quality management standards such as ISO 9001 help boost operational efficiency and prevent you from non-conformity issues by competent bodies.
Even though the system itself concerns an organisation and its processes as a whole, clients usually perceive products and services produced by certified companies as more reliable.
The enhanced quality of your product or service, the implementation of corrective actions after mistakes have been made, and preventive measures you can take so that problems can be avoided in the future will directly result in increased demand and profits. What’s next is how well you’re able to understand and retain your customer base.
3. Improved Processes
It is impossible to scale a business without the creation and implementation of business processes and procedures that facilitates the improvement. A proper delegation of the repetitive and standard processes shall be ensured to simplify business growth.
By unifying and standardising the basic functions, you’ll be able to quickly build a solid foundation in the long run. Instead of focusing on short-term solutions, you’ll be able to achieve bigger business goals with ease.
Process approach is one of the fundamental principles of ISO. ISO standards are not only a list of boring documents, but they are a carrier of a significant amount of information and important sources of knowledge spreading best practices.
The ISO implementation and certification will help you to organise many issues in the company during the creation of the documentation system. Lack of documented business processes is one of the mistakes that should be avoided when scaling a business.
4. Customer Satisfaction
The ISO 9001 certification emphasizes customer satisfaction by identifying their priorities. As a next step, business processes impacting customer needs and expectations are reviewed, evaluated and worked upon to enhance the overall customer experience.
It wouldn’t be wrong to say that while improving the customer experience, you’re also enhancing your product quality and in doing so increasing sales and therefore, profits for your company.
5. Productive Workforce
It takes teamwork to be able to work towards a common goal. Whether it’s increasing profits or just improving processes, with ISO 9001 in place, employees and managers become more proactive to identify areas they can work towards improving together. Problems are quickly identified and resolved, feedback becomes more constructive, employee motivation increases, job satisfaction reportedly becomes higher and there’s better performance of employees is observed. A productive workforce, would result in greater efficiency therefore, resulting in greater profits.
6. Greater Business Opportunities
Companies that put in an active effort in improving their operations report better performance results. ISO certifications greatly impact the bottom line and help boost revenues. What’s even better is that ISO certifications opens doors to new business opportunities for you.
There are a lot of government departments and large firms who refuse to do business if you do not implement ISO standards at your company. Getting an ISO certification can help you gain their trust and make your business more credible for your external stakeholders. This will, in turn, result in more business and increased profits and also open doors for opportunities to scale your business.
Implementing ISO 9001 certification can be a tedious and time-consuming project, without the expertise of a management consultant. EQM Consult offers implementation of Quality Management Systems including ISO 9001 in cost-effective packages. Outsource your ISO certifications and get a chance to boost your company profits.
Ph.D. Beata Paliwoda
Founder and Owner of EQM. Environmental and quality consultant and auditor. Professional career built in Quality Assurance departments in various companies from the automotive, aerospace, railway industries, as well as a management systems consultant. Successfully completed many complex projects related to the implementation of management systems, process improvements and business transformation. Auditor of ISO 9001, ISO 14001, AS 9100, project manager of APM, lecturer at the Poznan University of Business and Economics, researcher on the effectiveness of EMS and QMS in organisations.
