ISO certification can bring loads of benefits to a business or organisation, it’s not just a fancy badge! Here's a breakdown of the main advantages:

• Improved Credibility and Reputation: Being ISO certified shows customers, partners, and stakeholders that you meet internationally recognised standards. It can give you a competitive edge, especially when bidding for contracts or working with big companies that require ISO standards.
• Better Internal Processes: ISO standards help you streamline your operations, reduce waste, and become more efficient. Standards like ISO 9001 (Quality Management) push you to document processes, track performance, and continuously improve.
• Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: As you are more focused on quality, consistency, and continual improvement, customers get a better experience. Fewer complaints, quicker resolutions, and improved products/services.
• Consistency and Reliability: Standardised processes lead to consistent outputs, making your operations more predictable and dependable.
• Risk Management: ISO certifications like ISO 9001 (Quality Management Systems) help identify, manage and reduce risks by adopting a Risk Based Approach. You’re better prepared for issues and can recover more quickly if something goes wrong.
• International Recognition: ISO is recognised worldwide and accreditation can create a larger customer portfolio globally.
• Improved Employee Engagement: With clearer roles, procedures, and training, staff often feel more confident and empowered. It creates a culture of quality and accountability.
• Data-Driven Decision Making: Many ISO standards require you to track performance and use that data to make informed decisions. This leads to less guesswork and more strategic action.
• Potential Cost Savings: Reduction in errors, waste and time.

Once all the requirements of the Standard in question have been met, through the programme of work implemented by us, you will be free to apply for certification. A third-party assessment body must then audit these procedures. This should be carried out by a UKAS accredited certification body. The certification body will carry out the certification process in 3 stages:

• Stage One: will involve a review of your documentation including your policy, scope of the ISMS, risk assessment, risk treatment plan, Statement of Applicability, and security procedures. This will also include a review of the controls you have implemented to ensure they are appropriate to the size and nature of your business.
• Stage Two: will be a full on-site audit to ensure that what happens in practice follows these documented procedures and that adequate records are being kept. Following a successful audit, a certificate of registration will be issued.
• Stage Three: is the process of on-going auditing, known as surveillance visits. These are carried out by the assessment body once or twice per year to ensure that the procedures are being maintained.

No. We work with third parties, UKAS accredited certification bodies, who carry out the auditing and issue the certificates. Separating the consultancy and certification elements is essential to create the best systems for you and the greatest value for your business..

If you are a successful business you will already have successful management systems in place. It's our job to review these, compare them with the standard you wish to achieve and identify any existing gaps.

Next, we'll create and document the procedures you need to undertake in a simple, practical and effective way. We'll then help you implement any changes and provide training for your staff in keeping everything on track. With our help within a few months you will be ready for audit and certification. 

To achieve certification, we will implement a programme which will be spread over a 6 to 18-month period, dependent on your readiness for certification. Once all the standard requirements have been met, you will be able to apply for certification. Charter 4 will continue to support you until successful certification is achieved and to maintain your certification, if required.

Yes, you could go through the process yourself. However, unless you have experience of setting up and implementing management systems it will take you longer. In many cases DIY systems can become over complicated as only experience enables implementers to optimise the management systems and minimise complexity.

Charter 4 have over twenty years of experience under our belt, with all our consultants having created and implemented systems over the years. This experience enables them to quickly implement effective and compliant systems, which allows our clients to get on with what they are good at – running their businesses.

UKAS stands for the United Kingdom Accreditation Service. This is a regulatory body set up by the government to ensure companies registered for industry Standards have been assessed to a consistent level. Only assessment bodies accredited by UKAS can include the “tick and crown” symbol in their logo. This will give your customers reassurance that the Standard you have achieved is recognised at government level.

There are several companies offering certification that are not UKAS accredited. Their offering can appear attractive due to the promise of low costs and very rapid certification. The catch is that many of your customers and prospective customers won’t accept this type of certification and will insist on UKAS accreditation. In addition, in most cases the quality of the systems implemented will be lower and therefore you won’t be able to realise all the benefits of system implementation.

At present grant funding is available in some areas of the UK and for some specific sectors. To find out if you may be eligible for grant funding, please contact us.