How much does it cost to get ISO 9001 certification?

ISO 9001 is the standard that defines the requirements for Quality Management System (QMS). It helps businesses be more efficient and improve customer satisfaction.

The primary focus of the ISO 9001 standard is to meet customer requirements and strive to exceed customer expectations. A quality management system based on ISO 9001 defines how an organisation can meet the requirements of its customers and other stakeholders, promote the idea of continual improvement and define objectives that help them continually improve their processes.

Complying with ISO 9001 ensures consistency in the quality of products and services. By putting its customers first, organisations have repeated customers, increased customer loyalty, new clients and increased business. The cost for ISO 9001 certification is variable and is dependent upon the size of your organisation and the industry in which your company operates.

However, regardless of the cost, the seamlessly endless list of benefits of ISO 9001 certification makes it a valuable investment. In this article, we will explicate how much it costs to get ISO 9001 certification and the benefits associated with it.

How much does it cost to get ISO 9001 certification?

As mentioned above, there are many factors that come into play when attempting to determine the cost of the ISO 9001 certification. In addition to the size of your organisation and its complexity, there are two other kinds of costs that you need to consider. This includes:

1. The cost associated with getting ready to be certified
2. The cost of certification

When talking about the cost of getting ready, there are various factors that you need to consider, including:

• The current “shape” of your organisation: To determine the current shape, you need to ask yourself if you are consistently able to deliver the same quality of goods or services to your customers. Therefore, you need to introspect and identify if you are meeting the requirements of your target audience by analysing customer feedback and complaints.
• Your experience with quality management: Quality management requires organisations to focus on leadership, customer focus, engagement of people, improvement, process approach, evidence-based decision making and relationship management. To understand your experience with quality management, you need to identify the procedures that you have outlined for each quality management principle.
• What resources do you have available: For the efficient functioning of a QMS, resources such as raw materials, finance, infrastructure, personnel and IT are required. Additionally, the personnel should be competent enough to interact with the QMS. To determine the cost of the ISO certification, it is necessary to identify the skills, knowledge and experience that your personnel has.

All these factors affect the cost, and simply asking for a direct quotation without answering these queries will not give you an accurate result.

Similarly, certification costs can be acquired from different certifiers. Certifiers will be able to provide you with an answer after obtaining certain information, including the size of your company, the number of personnel, your main purpose, the types of services or goods you provide, your number of locations and so forth.

As a rough indication, for an organisation with less than 50 employees in a single location, the budget would be around 8000 AUD per year.

Factors that influence the cost and time of certification include:

• The quality awareness and commitment of senior management: This is an important factor as it dictates the strategic direction of your organisation. After all, the top management is responsible for allocating resources for the proper functioning of the QMS.
• Understanding your core beliefs: It is important to understand why you want the certification. Do you only want it because the customer has demanded it, or do you have some internal issues that you wish to improve? 
• Your current status: It is essential to analyse your current system and identify how many of the standard requirements you meet. To identify the gaps, gap analysis may be helpful. The analysis will also allow you to check your documented information, including process maps, procedures, flowcharts, checklists, policies, job descriptions, etc. 

Therefore, to come up with any kind of reasonable assessment of the time and cost involved in acquiring an ISO 9001 certification, a gap analysis is usually beneficial. 

Justifying the cost of ISO 9001 certification

The return on investment is many times above the cost of certification, making the entire process desirable to many companies. Certification allows for the implementation of a QMS and its significance on quality control.

Through business measurements, collecting information and improved frameworks, you are able to build a superior comprehension of your organisation’s current qualities and shortcomings. With this information, you will have the option to plan and actualise changes that will protect you against any vulnerabilities and enhance your objectives.

The ISO 9001 standard implementation will improve the proficiency and adequacy of your procedures. As a result, the board and representatives will start to see how much simpler their workload and other jobs have become.

Improving the organisational tasks will ensure more control over your procedures. This is particularly true with ISO 9001’s stringent requirements for documentation. Hence, improving company operations will improve the quality of the products and services. Additionally, it will improve morale, enhance customer satisfaction, improve customer loyalty and, in turn, help you earn more revenue.