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certification

Certification and service - an oxymoron?

Perhaps. A certification service provider is really only as good as your primary contact. And if you happen to be a small / medium business, you may not even register (no pun intended) on the certification provider’s radar. There are many fundamental reasons why you get varying degrees of service and attention from the certification fraternity. Here are a few.

If you wish to have the biggest market recognition from your certification trade mark, then realise, they also attract the ‘big end of town’ as their client base. What this means is that 80% of their revenues come from 20% of their clientele. And if you just happen to be in the bottom half of the client pool, then you aren’t even afforded a primary contact.

You must deal with the operations department for things such as auditor availability, audit dates, reschedules, etc. Got a problem with a certificate? Different department. Got a problem with an invoice? Different department. And so on. And remember, the largest provider is also one of the very few that has employee auditors which comes with its own pros and cons (and another post). However, these guys do have resources and do have people in just about every location in Australia. I just wish they would stop charging travel within metropolitan areas. It looks so petty on an invoice.

Most other providers have a client manager mentality and that means your auditor is your primary contact. This stream lines your communication and allows you to form a relationship with that person meaning you don’t have to induct that person into your workplace or quality system every time they show up. It means they can truly add value once they learn the culture of the organisation. However, not all providers allow these ‘client managers’ to actually book audits, which means you still have to go through some sort of back office bottleneck to get a date set up or changed. Some don’t allow these people to quote on additional sites or additional risk systems.

Just keep in mind, there are certification providers who do all this from your primary contact and ensures you get the best level of care and service you deserve. And if you are not, you get to resolve with them first to ensure the best outcome. If not, it is just a phone call or email away to request a replacement auditor (or provider) and let the journey begin again. p>To get a new certification or transfer the certification of your quality management system click certification fee proposal request

blog

Document Control – the risk

How you manage your documents should be structured around the risk to the company. In a law firm, structuring a legal response around an incorrect precedent is high risk, using the wrong annual leave form is not (unless of course you can’t go on holidays then the risk lies with the employee!). Having a document control system that can manage both scenarios is desirable but not a necessity. There are some things that are just so mission critical, just so commercially sensitive that they deserve the ‘extra hard yard’ of control to ensure things go right..

And so putting them on ‘Google docs’ might not be the best solution, but in so many ways , it might. It really is a mine field of exposure, mitigation and downright dumb luck. And these are just the documents that you have complete control of. Then there is the wonderful world of external documents. Those things that you need to use, adhere to but you don’t publish or control. Forget just having a clever repository for them, you will need a process of review, issue and recall to ensure things go right, especially in the field. A great example of this would be drawings or specifications used at a construction site.

So I suspect you are now expecting a solution to all this. Sorry to disappoint, but there is no definitive solutions to these complex needs. Some are better than others. Some are just wrong. So here is a very simple list to review when considering your document management; MS SharePoint, Google Docs, DocuShare, Base camp, just to name a select few.

There are so many available via the cloud and some more worthy than others for review. The main selection criteria you should consider are, single source of data, check in / out capability, version control, distribution control, data backup / recovery and others. Good luck. span>

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client feedback

Australian Enviro Services

I engaged quality.com.au (Quality) to oversee the third party accreditation of our environmental, quality and OH&S management systems. The success of Quality's work can be seen in AES achieving certification to ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and AS4801 on our first attempt. I would recommend John, Stuart and everyone at Quality to help you successfully through the accreditation process. Cheers! James Costello, managing director

Click here for more quality.com.au case studies

not too serious

Know your stuff.....

Picking on lawyers (again) One day, a teacher, a garbage collector and a lawyer wound up together at the Pearly Gates. St. Peter informed them that in order to get into Heaven, they would each have to answer one question. St. Peter addressed the teacher and asked, "What was the name of the ship that crashed into an iceberg? They just made a movie about it." The teacher answered quickly, "That would be the Titanic." St. Peter let him through the gate. St. Peter turned to the garbage man and decided to make the question a little harder, "How many people died on the ship?" Fortunately for him, the trash man had just seen the movie and answered, "About 1,500." "That's right! You may enter." St. Peter then turned to the lawyer. "Name them."