​“Should I get ISO certification?” - this is a question only you can answer, and really only when you’ve answer the question “why do I need ISO certification”?

It might be that you need it because a client has said it won’t deal with you until you do; or you want to get onto a supply chain list; or your competitors have it so you need to get it to compete.

While there’s nothing at all wrong with any of these reasons, the trouble is they drive a ‘tick box’ industry when it comes to certification. Certification just becomes an end in itself, and simply a side project that achieves certification by ticking off a series of actions in preparation for an audit then ignored as soon as the auditor walks back out of the door and other priorities take over. 

Then its back to battling through self-inflicted mistakes and complaints for another 11 months before starting to look at fabricating evidence to show the auditor again in a month’s time. This is an all-too-familiar story.

The main reason you should want ISO certification is the reason they were developed in the first place - to improve your organisation.

The quality standard - ISO 9001 - is used by over one million companies across the world and is revered by large corporations and small firms alike. If it’s applied properly and diligently, then organisations reap the benefits over time.

The only problem with it is that it’s a seriously underused system, mainly because of all of the unnecessary bureaucracy, costs and generally poor implementation which have become associated with the certification of them. But this does not have to be the case. If done correctly it can be, simply put, the most effective way of improving your business. 

If you strip away all of the rigmarole surrounding certification, then it can be the level-best way to continually improve your business from your customer’s point of view.

So when trying to gauge if it’s worth it, then this is a really important thing to frame it against. 

Due to the nature of ISOs, it can be difficult to work out whether it’s cost-effective - many of the costs fall into the ‘it depends’ category (it depends on your company size, sector, risks, etc) and the benefits will depend on many things so can only be estimated.

“Is ISO worth it?” might be one of those million dollar questions, but in reality it’s more of a “work in, work out” answer. The benefits that are gained will vary greatly on the ISO standard that you implement and the amount of effort you put into improving the management system. 

Some of the benefits are not as obvious as they can be harder to quantify. For example, when implementing ISO 9001 we would be looking at your processes and identifying streamlining opportunities, often reducing time and paperwork. Unless you are doing time and motion studies then it will be hard to obtain the cost benefits from these improvements. But you can certainly estimate how much time and money you have saved and see the value from that perspective. 

The more focus you place on process improvements the more benefit you will gain - the ISO 9001 standard, as we’ve discussed, is all about continual improvement. 

The ISO 14001 standard on the other hand could be easier to justify from a money perspective as you will need to monitor your waste and utilities usages. It is very easy to save money from both with this environmental standard. It is not uncommon for businesses to save at least 10% year-on-year through improvements and just focusing on those areas such as energy reductions. 

It’s possibly harder to demonstrate cost benefits with the ISO 45001 standard but there are some businesses that will see the value of this more than others, especially when you analyse time off work through sickness or accidents. If you reduce these and improve the wellbeing of personnel then this will return monetary savings.

Likewise, ISO 27001 enables organisations to avoid the potentially devastating financial losses caused by data breaches. The global average cost of a data breach has skyrocketed to £3.13 million (a 6.4% increase from 2017), according to the Ponemon Institute.

The standard is also designed to ensure the selection of adequate and proportionate security controls that help to protect information in line with increasingly rigid regulatory requirements such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other associated laws. 

When you’re looking at costs there’s a lot to take into account, such as implementation costs, employee hours costs and Certification Body costs (IF you want to be certified - you don’t HAVE to be certified).

The Ideas Distillery’s spent a lot time putting together a rough-and-ready spreadsheet calculator - our Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) tool - to address the main areas of installing an ISO management system, including becoming certified. 

The idea is, at the end of the process, you can see the overall costs and compare these with the overall benefits, in the context of both one-off and ongoing costs and benefits, and how ISOs might benefit you (or not) in the long term.

The downloadable CBA tool and accompanying guides (there’s one for ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001 then a separate one for ISO 27001) will quickly get you underway allowing you to work out a good indication of how much your chosen path is going to cost. Just click here for our CBA tool and guides.

Millions of people around the world have lost their jobs amid the current Covid-19 crisis - it is a crisis within a crisis. The long-term economic impact is yet unknown but will surely be deep.

What is not in doubt is that the economic strain on companies of all sizes across the UK and the rest of the world will be here for the foreseeable future. Manufacturers have closed plants, stores are shut, and consumer demand has collapsed in many sectors.

Research by the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex has found that more than 6.5 million jobs could be lost due to the economic fallout from the UK’s coronavirus lockdown, about a quarter of the UK’s total jobs.

A simply staggering number of companies have plunged into administration, from stalwart high street brands to major travel agents, as well as a whole raft of businesses in sectors such as construction. The true toll is only just beginning to be understood.

So it’s no surprise that companies which are still managing to keep their heads above water will be starting to look at deep cost-cutting measures in the short- and medium-term. With profit centres being hit like never before, cost centres such as ISO compliance will undoubtedly have fewer resources until the economy turns around.

What does this mean for the ISO compliance functions of companies that are struggling?

In practical terms, they will have to make risk-based decisions about how to allocate the limited resources that they have. And one important thing to think about is how you can use the expertise of companies such as The Ideas Distillery to outsource your compliance tasks cost-effectively with little overhead.

Certification Bodies have recognised, for the moment at least, that the world has changed significantly. Just about all have turned to ‘remote auditing’ as a way to still service clients while still respecting the lockdown. There has also been the option of postponing for up to six months in many circumstances, although this option is now starting to wind down.

Any company’s priority will simply be to put themselves in a position to survive the crisis. So when dealing with budget constraints and limited compliance resources, flexibility and creativity will be key.

For our part, when we are helping businesses in these scenarios, we always assess risk and conduct a review with the aim of identifying core ISO compliance requirements. This often entails a historic review of internal procedures and controls to identify past activities or other problems to determine where the biggest risks reside.

​External industry risks such as enforcement actions brought against competitors should be considered as well, along with identifying low-risk areas where there have been few incidents or problems.

But more significantly, we help companies to determine if new, immediate significant risks have arisen due to the pandemic. Another emerging risk may exist in a company’s sales department, for example, perhaps due to the pressures of bringing in new business. This may be an area that leads to an increase in customer complaints as things are missed.

The crisis may have caused companies to find new suppliers that have not been fully vetted due to time pressures. Likewise, the pandemic may have caused substantial risks to employee safety associated with reopening businesses. This emerging risk will likely call for the development of new policies and procedures that will require close oversight by senior management.

For more information - and to see how we can help - just get in touch with us in any number of ways using on our Contact page.

​Achieving certification to ISO 27001 demonstrates that your company is following information security best practice, and delivers an independent, expert assessment of whether the data you are handling is adequately protected.

Information is the lifeblood of any business – this is especially true if your clients have entrusted their valuable data to you. Maintaining an information security management system (ISMS) is the most effective way of reducing the risk of suffering a data breach.

An ISMS is a systematic approach to managing the security of sensitive information and is designed to identify, manage and reduce the range of threats to which your information is regularly subjected.

​There are a whole host of benefits to getting ISO 27001, such as demonstrating credibility when tendering for contracts, showing you are taking cyber security threats seriously, and avoiding fines and penalties.

We identify the key requirements of ISO 27001 for you and provide a top level route map for a successful ISMS implementation in your organisation. We will outline a structured approach to implementation based around:

• Planning. Defining the scope of the ISMS. Undertaking a Gap Analysis to assess management system requirements and controls currently implemented. Defining your information security policy. Creating a network map to identify all of your organisation’s devices that are connected, as well as their functions. Produce a data map in respect of all personal data held/used by your organisation.
• Creating a list of relevant risks that would compromise the confidentiality, integrity and availability of your information.
• Defining a systematic approach to risk assessment. 
• Carrying out risk assessments to identify and evaluate information security risks. 
• Identifying and evaluating options for the treatment of these risks. 
• Selecting, for each risk, the controls to be implemented.
• Preparing a statement of applicability (SoA).
• Formulating a risk treatment plan for approval by risk owners. 
• Meeting your organisation’s ongoing legal, regulatory and contractual obligations through a Compliance Legal Register and Key Issues Newsletter.