Tommy,
You don’t mention the size of your organization.  In the past, as a management consultant to clients, we have suggested that some sort of Sas70, or Sarbanes Oxley or other process and controls methodolgoy could be leveraged/substituted for ISO certification.  If you are part of a larger organization and have some other method of procedure, you may be able to convince your client that you have PS accepted equivalent.

As always, clients have a tendency to throw out such requirements as a red herring to try to eliminate an organization.  My approach would be to find out the real concerns, and get them to be as specific as possible.  You could then volunteer to show them your PS process for that.  You might even suggest doing a gap analyze of the key elements of the ISO 9001 they want to know about.  Bet they really don’t know what they are worried about and are using the certification as a false sense of security

Net net, throw your creativity hat back on and I bet that you can satisfy their requirement, without having to do a full ISO Certification as long as your environment has process, controls and methodology and some sort of review.

Good Luck,

Cameran H.
COO/VP of Services

Cameran,

Thanks for the input.

We’re a small private firm - currently twenty people in three different countries. So it’s unlikely we could, Toyota-like, satisfy them with our own quality approach. The client concerned is a European HQ’ed, large public multinational (although of course I’m interfacing with only one small unit within that). The reason they give for
requiring us to become certified is that that is part of “them” retaining their own certification.

And we have already been trying to argue for our own approach. In fact, we’re already a preferred supplier without being certified. And we have had reassurances from our actual client teams (not the central quality group) that “they” don’t care about the ISO thing. But, the pressure is growing and I reckon it’ll soon become a case of either spending some time and money on the certification process, or walking
away from the client because it’s too costly to do business with them. Or we could simply load up their rates to cover it. After all, we have many such large clients. This is the only one requiring certification.

I wouldn’t mind if I thought there was a real causal correlation between becoming certified and quality, but I don’t know that there’s evidence for that. There’s probably a correlation, but it’s not clear it’s causal; it’s not even clear it’s positive. I’ve seen the effect of injudicious use of certification procedures in the past (e.g. the then CMM from the SEI), and it wasn’t good.

Tommy

Hi Tommy,

I have only read the extract of the ISO9001 but here is my take on handling this.  My understanding of the 9001 standard is that it only specifies the requirements for a quality managment system.
There are some things that I dont buy.  I cant see why your non-compliance affects their compliance to the certification.  That would severely limit their choice of suppliers in many situations.  I see this as some kind of delay tactic on their part.  I bet you the company they get janitor services from doesn’t comply.

Secondly, I’m wondering whether it is the end product they are concerned about or is it the actual quality management process you have?  The end product could be guaranteed by your contract, so really shouldn’t be an issue. If it is the process, then demonstrating your process and how it complies should be enough. If they insist on you obtaining compliance, then I would point out that they are the only customer of yours that has ever asked this and that it requires significant investment. If this is in fact one of their requirements then I would definitely be passing on some of this cost to them.

I agree with Cameron, you need to get to the root of their concerns.  Who is this concern coming from?  Why is it truly an issue?  I doubt that they would lose their compliance because the “product” they bought from you was provided by a company that was certified.  Again, this sounds like a red herring to me.

Regards

Steven B.