We design and implement ISO management systems around the way your business already works, so the system is something you use rather than something you maintain for the auditor.
How we implement
Most ISO consultancy starts at clause 4 of the standard and works through to clause 10, producing a document for each. What comes out satisfies the standard and describes a generic company.
We map how work actually moves through your business first: enquiry to quote to order to delivery to invoice, or whatever the equivalent is for you. Then we check that map against the standard and fill what is missing. Same destination, and a system your people recognise at the end of it.
What the build involves
- Gap analysis. What the standard asks for against what you already do. Most businesses are further along than they expect, because a company that has been trading for years already has processes. They are just not written down or measured.
- Documentation. We bring a ready-built library with us and tailor it, rather than writing from scratch or handing you a template pack.
- Implementation. Getting it into use, training people, and starting to generate the records an assessor will want to see.
- Evidence. Supporting your internal audit and management review so your team owns them, and closing out anything an assessor would otherwise raise.
Keep it small
Every procedure you publish is a commitment you will be audited against every year. A twelve-page procedure for something that takes ten minutes generates findings that a one-page procedure would not.
We deliberately avoid unnecessary forms and procedures. A business with fifteen tight documents has an easier life at surveillance than one with sixty thorough ones, and the shorter system is the one people actually follow.
In the tools you already have
Systems can be built in whatever your business already runs on:
- Microsoft Teams and SharePoint
- Google Drive and Google Docs
- Dropbox
- Confluence and Jira
- Any other cloud system that fits your IT setup
That matters more than it sounds. Systems fail because people do not engage with them, and a system living in the tools people already open every morning gets engaged with. A separate platform with a separate login gets visited before audits.
Documents are supplied in editable Microsoft Office or Google formats so you keep full control. We also have in-house IT capability and can help with bespoke systems for tracking things like equipment or staff renewal dates, where that is genuinely useful.
Integrated from the start
If you think you will eventually want ISO 14001 or ISO 45001 alongside ISO 9001, say so at the outset. Designing one integrated system from the beginning costs very little extra. Retrofitting one later means reorganising the manual, the audit programme and the review agenda, which is real work.
An integrated system means one internal audit programme, one management review, one document control process and one set of records serving every standard. The saving is not in the build, it is in every year afterwards.
What it costs
Fixed price, agreed before we start, payable by milestones or interest-free monthly instalments. See our ISO consultancy costs page, or our guide to implementing ISO 9001 for what the process looks like in practice.