Voluntary global standard “a must for doing big business”
SIA Solutions, the 60-40 joint venture between empowered technology leaders Tellumat and Harambe Technologies, has attained ISO 9001:2008 certification.
A global quality management standard* considered crucial for doing business with large and global firms, ISO is administered and audited locally by the South African Bureau of Standards. It specifies requirements in terms of which companies can ensure their management systems, product and service offerings are monitored, controlled and guided by a quality standard. As a result of this standard, optimum satisfaction can be ensured across all company stakeholders including internal and external suppliers, customers, company management as well as company project, maintenance and marketing teams.
Ntsane Kolisang, marketing director of the airports, navigation, communication and meteorology technology-focused company, says SIA Solutions took a decision to certify its internally developed quality management system in 2008. Conceding that compliance is voluntary, he says this is one of the ways in which we are proving our commitment to high quality standards. “We work in industries and with customers where quality is of paramount importance and where the systems we supply are used in mission critical environments. This further necessitated full ISO 9001-2008 certification,” says Kolisang. Combined with our Level 2 BBB-EE rating, our recent ISO 9001-2008 certification is another achievement of which we are very proud, he adds.
Management model
Mike Vairy, quality assurance consultant at SIA Solutions, explains that the ISO 9000 family of standards essentially constitutes a management model or a set of guidelines for running a company’s quality management system, derived from decades of observing international practice.
“It covers companies of all sizes in all industries, with rules for specific activities, whether the company in question has a workshop or call centre or another customer interface or means of delivering its service or product. All employees are affected, from top management to sales and customer service,” he says.
Considerable impact
Vairy notes that the certification intervention made a considerable claim on company resources – purely in terms of the time spent to make the changes necessary to effectively implement the standard, and thus obtain certification.
He, too, stresses that compliance is a virtual prerequisite for business. “Over the last two years, it kept coming up in tenders issued by government and big entities like the airports, navigation, meteorological and communication companies. Customers and business partners need the assurance that they’re not dealing with a fly-by-night company.”
As an international standard administered by an independent entity, ISO moreover sets a baseline, he says, allowing companies doing business with each other for the first time to assume a base level of competence.
Having made great strides to get its offering accepted locally and abroad, SIA Solutions has now attained the kind of standing and market reach that simply require it to accede to this global standard.
* http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail?csnumber=46486
