Thinking of employing an ISO consultant? Top questions you should be asking.

Getting started with ISO certification can be exciting and daunting. Perhaps you are exploring tendered work or larger contract opportunities and ISO certification is a requirement? Or perhaps you want to streamline internal processes and would like to benefit from the recommendations set out in a globally recognised certification.

As a successful ISO certification consultant, we get asked many of the same questions from prospective clients. These include:

What qualifications and experience do you have?

Clients want to know whether or not we have enough experience to ensure they are successful in gaining certification and how we manage audits on their behalf. The answer is that Compliant is certified to the five main ISO standards (9001, 14001, 22301, 27001 and ISO 45001) so we go through the same processes as clients would, we ‘walk the walk’ and ‘talk the talk’ you might say.

Our managing director, Mark Henderson, is also a BSI trained lead auditor to those five ISO standards, is NEBOSH qualified and is a Chartered Manager with the CIM.

We ensure that everyone within the team is up to date with all of the requirements of each standard and just recently Mark and our Internal Audit Manager Danielle Barry completed training course ‘ISO 27001:2022 Transition training’ to support clients with the updates coming out in the new version of ISO 27001.

Are payment plans available?

Becoming certified can be a costly exercise and we aim to support our clients by offering monthly payment plans and explaining the full cost breakdown.

The cost of certification is significantly influenced by the size and complexity of a business. Costs are related to:

The number of premises that your business has
The number of employees that your business has
The scope of your business

Once we have secured a quotation from a certifying body on our client’s behalf, we will supply a proposal price including payment plan options. Compliant and the certifying bodies that we partner with offer payment plans over 10 months and if you opt for ongoing payments with ourselves there are added benefits. All of the reasons to opt for Compliant’s post certification support and monthly payment options can be found here.

Who do you work with?

Compliant are renowned in the ISO industry and have developed partnerships with all of the leading certifying bodies including the British Assessment Bureau, Alcumus, CQS, Citation ISO Certification (formerly QMS) and NQA to name a few. As a result of these partnerships, we can arrange everything on behalf of our clients and can pass preferential rates that we receive directly onto clients.

Do you have any case studies?

Prospective clients want to hear from current clients about their experience and whether they would recommend us. To date we have received no complaints and have case studies from a wide range of clients across a variety of industries. We help businesses from all sectors and of all sizes to become certified and can tailor management systems to each client’s requirements. We are also present with our clients on audit and surveillance days and liaise directly with auditors allowing you to get on with your day job. Don’t believe us? Just check out our recommendations.

Will meetings and audits be remote or face to face?

If you are starting out on your ISO journey you’ll want to know what is expected from your business and whether audits and meetings will be face to face or remote.

Compliant offer an initial teams meeting remotely with our Director Mark and depending on your location an ISO trained auditor from Compliant will be available either remotely or in person. We have staff located in the North East and South West but for the majority of clients a remote presence will always be available. Face to face audits will be dependent on the nature of your business and whether the majority of your operations are carried out from an office, factory or client sites. Your certifying body will request some information based on the above before setting up audit dates and details. If you decide to progress with Compliant there will always be audit support available and one of our team will liaise with auditors on your behalf throughout audit and surveillance days.

Is the certifying body’s cost an annual fee?

ISO works in a 3-year cycle, with clients gaining initial certification. The following year clients have their annual surveillance audit which is based on a day rate and the number of days based on the business and the certifications being implemented (the certifying body would provide the client with a proposal for this closer to the date, based on their annual day rate charges). The year after is the same and then on the 3rd year clients go through a recertification audit which may require more days. The cycle then starts again.

With every proposal we always offer optional ongoing support to help clients in managing and updating the standards. This includes being present during client’s surveillance and/or recertification audits too. Every year all documentation within management systems must be reviewed and have a new date, review date and version number. We take care of all of this for our clients.