How to Reduce the Costs for ISO 9001 Certification

This article is going to explain key ways to help businesses to control their costs for ISO certification which can be a complex process involving many stages.

Every business today considers the ISO 9001 certification a crucial achievement to gain a competitive edge in their industry, besides showing off their adherence to quality regulations. While the entire process of certification can seem quite complex, that there is enormous freedom in how you implement the ISO 9001 standard. You can decide how to plan and implement it in the most effective thereby optimizing the costs. It leaves enough scope to modify the process, reduce resources uses, combine training and resources, and do anything required for an organization to reduce its costs of certification.

Achieving the ISO 9001 certification can be a big benchmark for your business and help you earn more loyal customers by making your approach to quality management consistent. If you have not yet considered it, then it is time to start planning. Here are some crucial tips to make your business certified with fewer costs.

Gain Complete Knowledge of Certification

This is the first evident thing to ensure before certification. You should know enough about ISO 9001 quality management clauses and eager to implement them into your business processes. When you have proper understanding of the standard, you can decide how well you can integrate it within your processes with an appropriate strategy. In other words, you can avoid confusion or uncertainty which can emerge while getting into the certification process if you know the standard’s requirements beforehand. This ensures you wont have to spend any extra costs for certification.

Get a Consultant/Team of Consultants

You might think hiring a consultant or team of ISO consultants can add to your costs of certification. However, spending certain fixed costs for getting their guidance can actually help you save from lots of avoidable expenses. Besides, while executing the full process of certification for your organization, you can get stuck at and will be need experts’ advice. For instance, you may not know appropriate ways to document your QMS or need a second opinion on the competency of your QMS by performing a professional internal audit. In that case, you need to pay fees or service charges to the appointed experts. It is generally advised to have a team of ISO consultants besides you right from the start who can instruct you, assist you in forming a QMS and complying it with the ISO 9001 standards. They will charge a consolidated fee for that which less than paying several separate fees given to many different experts.

Reach Out a Reliable Certification Body

There are lots of certification bodies and so you need to choose one wisely to control your costs of certification. Assess more than one certification body, get quotes from them that include surveillance visits and be vigilant about any hidden fees. Ensure you prevent any extra expenses by getting clear quotes and discuss them with your management executives and department heads.

Consider Performing a Gap Analysis

This is specifically needed if you want your QMS to achieve compliance with the ISO 9001 standard at one go. With gap analysis, you can identify whatever shortcomings are there in your existing management system compared to an ISO compliant QMS. Subsequently, your organization can improve your QMS by filling those gaps. It prevents you from experiencing any noncompliance issues during your official audit which can result in reforming, adjusting and reimplementation of QMS later on. Naturally, that would involve additional costs.

Seek to Reduce the Amount of Paperwork Needed

One key way to reduce the costs of certifications is to streamline the paperwork and make it less haphazard or complex. Ideally, you can use documentation templates for your QMS. Even in this case, you can seek assistance from ISO consultants who can explain how to put each functionality of QMS, process integrations, management procedures etc. into the document.

The ISO 9001 certification is a huge achievement for a business which can consequently help it to escalate the quality of performance, acquire a solid customer base, and assure growth in the long run. Never let higher costs of certification to put you off. Instead, consider these strategies beforehand. Most importantly, hire a consultant who can easily make your certification process smoother, faster, and hence more cost-efficient.