ISO 9001 for Security Companies 

ISO 9000 family of standards focus on quality management. Its most famous member, the ISO 9001 standard, guides the creation of an efficient Quality Management System (QMS) that helps organisations meet the needs of their customers and other stakeholders. An effective QMS also ensures that all statutory and regulatory requirements related to your services are met.

1. Cost savings: The QMS recommended processes help to optimise operations by minimising waste and reducing errors, thereby improving your bottom line.
2. Customer satisfaction: The lifeline of any business is its customers. By improving the quality of the services or products you provide, you can enhance customer satisfaction and, consequently, increase your sales.
3. Access to new markets: As ISO standards are globally recognised, they help your company access new markets overseas. Moreover, closer to home, many government entities often ask for ISO certification as a prerequisite for tenders.
4. Increased market share: As a business, you already have a market share. You can gain an advantage over your competitors by increasing your efficiency, employee productivity and quality by implementing a QMS as the QMS enhances employee engagement and streamlines processes; productivity increases because of less ambiguity regarding tasks and responsibilities. Similarly, the QMS enhances efficiency and quality by removing outdated processes and reducing waste.
5. Independent auditing and review: To gain an ISO certificate, you must pass a review conducted by an independent and objective third-party auditor. Hence, procuring the certificate encourages customers to gain confidence and trust in your systems.
6. System integration: ISO does not instruct you to rebuild your processes from scratch. Instead, it focuses on ensuring that your system is well-integrated and interactive. Another recommendation is to ensure effective communication within different components of the system.

The Conformity Accredited Body (CAB) provides QMS certification services. Our accreditation services are supported by JAN-ANZ, a government agency with stringent and transparent assessment criteria. Accreditation is only available to those organisations that clear their assessment.

Generally, small to medium-sized organisations with relatively low complexity have an excellent level of quality control in their existing systems. Such businesses can complete their ISO processes within 3-6 months.

Similarly, a large-scale organisation with higher complexity may take longer to acquire their certificate. Examples of complexity include multiple shifts, locations, and more than a thousand employees.

This article will discuss insightful elements of the certification process. However, it is essential to remember that permanent success comes with customisation. Therefore, managers are required to view the processes from the perspective of their organisation.

 One of the most crucial and pertinent elements of the ISO 9001 life-cycle is to better understand what the standard aims to achieve. By going through the requirements of the ISO 9001 standard, you gain a full appreciation of its recommendations, helping you to make the certification process more straightforward.

By comparing the current system with the recommendations stipulated in ISO 9001, you can identify the current gaps in your quality system. By recognising the existing quality standards of your organisation, your certification process becomes more accessible. Moreover, conducting a detailed gap analysis will help you create a baseline for the current level of quality within your organisation. Identifying this baseline will make the timeline required for the certification process clearer. Furthermore, it will become more apparent what steps need to be taken to achieve and maintain ISO 9001 certification.

 A crucial part of the ISO certification process is documentation. Good documentation clarifies the entire organisation, helping them understand which procedures must be followed, what objectives need to be achieved and which policies need to be adhered to. The ISO 9001 standard is designed to guide an ongoing QMS for your organisation. Without appropriate and sufficient documentation, the systems will not be effective in detecting areas of improvement, thereby reducing their success.

In the implementation phase of the ISO certification life-cycle, elements and requirements of the ISO 9001 standard become a part of the organisation itself. As changes are being implemented, the transition phase may become time-consuming. This is because implementation is a detailed process requiring comprehensive employee training.

Employees at the frontline of the new quality assurance system would require new training to interact with the system with confidence. Moreover, managers need to be educated about the updates so that they have the required information to ensure that processes are running smoothly.

One of the ongoing aspects of the ISO certification life-cycle is auditing. Auditing requires inputs from both internal and external stakeholders. As the organisation provides internal training to ensure that all competency is maintained, audits are helpful in objectively assessing the functionality of ISO processes. Auditing measures if these quality management changes match the requirements of the ISO 9001 standard.

One of the critical components of the QMS is continual improvement. An automatic improvement system is created as audits are conducted regularly by independent assessors.

Acquiring ISO certification is more than a badge of honour; it creates the foundation of your organisational culture and embeds improvement within your business.

There are many advantages of acquiring ISO certification for your security company, such as enhanced reputation, creating services that are an exact fit for your customer needs, consistency in delivering your services and cost savings. We can help guide you through the certification process to reap all these benefits and more.