Last week we welcomed an auditor from NQA to our Castle Donington offices to run the rule over our quality management system. And we’re delighted to say that we got the green light to remain accredited to ISO9001:2015.
Our accreditation to ISO9001 is not simply a marketing tool, it’s important to us and we work hard to keep our systems up to date and maintain our status. So, after a thorough examination of our all our procedures – from courier training to the delivery process, much cross-referencing of documents and many cups of tea, the auditor gave us the nod.
Our QMS constantly evolves to meet the needs of our business and encourages us to regularly review our processes and procedures. It’s always interesting to take a step back, look at the way we do things and see where we can improve our operation. We’re committed to providing the very best same day courier service in the Midlands and our quality system is the foundation on which our service is built.
For a relatively small company such as ours, retaining accreditation to ISO9001 represents a significant amount of work. So why do we do it when we’re not exactly short of things to do? Here are a few reasons why we think it’s a good idea:
Developing best business practices; ISO9001 is all about consistency. Having a set of good, written protocols and procedures helps provide the same high service levels day in and day out.
Standards drive efficiency in your business operations; once you have developed good practices they can be refined and improved because you measure your performance against them.
Standards add credibility and confidence for your customers; whilst we realise that being accredited to ISO9001 does not guarantee the quality of your service or products it does demonstrate to clients and suppliers that you take the issue of quality very seriously. These days when many sameday courier companies claim to ‘have access to’ enormous fleets of vehicles or say that they operate in every town in the country, it’s reassuring to know that our systems have been independently audited our standards found to be consistently high.
Standards open new business opportunities and sales; quality accreditation is often on the checklist of companies when putting out tenders for contracts or assessing applications from new suppliers.
These are just a few reasons why we think the time and effort put in to maintaining standards is well spent. It’s easy to go along thinking that your service is faultless and that your clients are happy but unless you document your activities and review your performance regularly, you can soon find out that you’re out of touch with reality!
