For any business, the fundamental goal is to maximize its reach to customers and scale it to new heights. When your organization seeks to bring more business opportunities while increasing market share, it must align to minimum quality standards or criteria. It will build mutually beneficial relationships with customers, partners, and vendors. Adhering to standard quality parameters is crucial to ensure the survival of your organization. ISO has published more than 22,000 standards across several areas such as healthcare, food safety management, IT management, and safety. Adopting relevant ISO standards will help to ascribe a mark of consistency, quality, safety, and efficiency to a product, system, or service.
Aegis can help your organization in the ISO certification process. Through providing quality and reliable consultancy, audit supports the streamlining of the certification path. Some of the popularly opted ISO certifications include:
- ISO 9001: Quality Management
- ISO 22008: Food Safety Management
- ISO 14001: Environmental Management
- ISO 27001: Information security Management
- ISO 10002: Compliant Management System
- ISO 31000: Risk management
- SA 8000: Social accountability
- ISO 26000: Social Responsibility
- SO 13485: Medical devices
- SO/IEC 17025: Testing and calibration laboratories
- ISO 639: Language codes
Costs of Getting ISO Certification
Two types of costs are associated with the ISO certification process. The first type includes the cost of certification itself, while the other is getting ready for the certification process. The third-party certification body will provide a quote to you that details the cost estimate.
The quote will typically include the number of days for audit multiplied by the day rate. The quote is further divided into the initial cost for the certification and ongoing maintenance costs across the three years. Thus, the surveillance audit in the first two years and the full re-certification audit in the third year are involved in the quote. The exact quote tends to vary according to the certification body’s rates, the nature and scope of your organization, and the standard by which you seek certification.
The different variables that affect ISO certification costs include:
- Cost of Training: Depending upon the nature of the business, you need to invest in training employees involved in implementing the concerned ISO standard. They must attend required training sessions, read the relevant literature, and ensure that they can grasp what it means. Finding the right training course and literature is crucial.
- Cost of Consultancy: Besides investing in training your team, you need to get the help of experts who can smoothen the bumps in the certification pipeline. The ISO consultants have adequate hands-on experience in helping companies to identify, organize, maintain, and adapt in the certification pipeline. They offer you the required knowledge and expertise to act quickly and efficiently. They can develop bespoke solutions that adequately reflect your circumstances and aspirations. Consultation fees are worth the costs to achieve success in the ISO certification process.
- Cost of Workforce: While consultancy enables optimization in the certification process, it is ultimately the employees who will implement it. The assigned employees will take up the implementation activities either as an additional task or replace them with their regular projects. Hence, when you are planning to get your organization ISO certified, it requires you to incur additional costs to maintain the employees to incentivize them. The employee cost adds to the ISO certification costs.
- Cost of Hiring Certification Body/Registrar: It is ultimately the Registrar or Certification Body who will perform the external audit for your organization’s management systems and will get the project certified. It is based on the total number of days the professional will spend on-site. The size of your organization and several business locations affect the cost as it will take more time to conduct the audit. The certification body will interview, inspect, and observe processes to identify if the organization is ready to get certified. The direct costs of ISO certification depend on the audit duration. The less time audit will take, the lesser you will have to pay the third-party certification body. Audit duration is thus directly reflected in your quote. The certification body must offer competitive industry rates and exceptional customer service, providing you with the optimum value for your investment.
- Cost to Remediate Nonconformities: During stage 1 and stage 2 audits, an assessment of the organization’s management system may expose certain nonconformities. Companies must invest efforts, time, and costs to remediate these gaps before proceeding further into the certification process.
- Developmental cost: It covers the time and costs invested in the documentation and implementation of the system. Your team must access the copies of the relevant standard. Understanding the literature thoroughly and learning its requirements is of critical importance.
- Hidden costs: Sometimes, the quote for ISO certification may include the hidden costs for additional items like application fees, expenses, travel time, and annual management fees. Certain third parties may hide the costs, increasing the value presented in the quote. Ensure that the third party ensures transparency in the quote.
To Conclude:
These are the various types of costs involved in the ISO certification process that you must consider.
