Ever thought about why these certifications are required by any organization, let’s leave aside the IT companies. Yes! you guess it right, it gives you a clear edge over many others who lack it. It highlights a clear brand-conscious image of your brand and organization. It projects you as a professional company guided by systems, processes, structures, rules, and regulations. It promotes you as an organization, which is responsible to its clients and vendors to deliver services irrespective of market ups and downs. It brings to the client’s mind that this is an organization to be banked upon for technicalities as well as for commitments and deliveries.
IT companies are more committed to their clients as their deliverables are dynamic and keep changing with the time, process, and development of the project. If IT companies are not adhering to particular processes or systems then delivering results for them would be more complex and critical than it would be for any other product or organization. Therefore it’s important for IT companies to be audited by a third party for their capabilities and processes to deliver timely results and to let them stand by their commitments. This provides them clear leverage over others in addition to building their image as a responsible company.
International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has developed and published ISO 9000 which is a series of standards that define, establish, and maintain an effective quality assurance system for manufacturing and services industries. It states eight management principles that deal with the fundamentals of quality management systems.
Three principles from them are applicable to IT industries:
1) ISO 9001 – It helps organizations in improving their planning, monitoring, and analyzing their quality.
2) ISO 20000 – It focuses on IT Service Management
3) ISO 27000 – It focuses on making organizations more secure like dealing with cybersecurity best practices/standards
In the backdrop of the above, we can summarize the necessity to require certification for IT companies for the following reasons:
1) To inspire customer confidence – The Certification For IT Companies symbolizes the continual improvement of IT services and therefore builds the client’s confidence in receiving updated services and timely deliveries.
2) To get access to premium markets – Certification provides access to premium markets as the premium clients work with certified companies only and don’t take services from uncertified ones. Therefore it becomes mandatory for organizations to go for ISO 27001 Certification.
3) To make organization secure against intellectual theft – ISO 27000 make organizations devise systems and procedures to save their intellectual property against theft and hacking by adopting the latest and best cybersecurity practices.
4) To have organizational internal processes get audited – The certification allows organizational internal processes to be audited by external agencies at regular intervals and thus eliminates all goof-ups from the system by plugging them in time to prevent any last-moment failure or trap thus making organizations standby with their commitments and keep reaping repeat orders from existing clients.
5) To eliminate last-moment failures – The certification assures all procedures and systems are intact irrespective of their being used at that point in time. This ensures the organization’s capability to deliver timely services, and meet the organization’s commitments and other business objectives.
6) To promote best systems and practices – ISO Certification provides organizations access to internationally recognized best systems and practices which keeps them ahead in the market by making them adopt the latest systems and procedures.
7) To Increase the organization’s productivity – The productivity of any organization depends upon clearly defined documents, procedures, and systems, so as to let everybody follow them religiously irrespective of their personal opinions, principles, and thoughts. It lets new joiners get acquainted with the organization’s systems and procedures and make them follow in toto.
8) To increase customer satisfaction index – Certification leads to monitoring and devising new systems to keep customers happy and meet their expectations in time which leads to an increased customer satisfaction index.
9) To foster better employee relationships – The certification clearly assigns all internal departments responsibilities and deliverables. This fosters togetherness among all employees to work towards a common goal and meet department objectives and goals in time without fail. Ledoux has very rightly said that managers and employees together develop more commitment to improving their business rather than while working in isolation.
10) To Increase prosperity and revenues – The certification help organizations to increase their prosperity and revenues in many ways. It not only lets organizations receive more business but let them receive it at a better price in addition to making them capable to deliver goods on time, every time without fail.