Be template free!!

Need ISO system templates?

Once we received an email from one of our Sales Managers. His email was entitled “How often have we seen this”. Yes we have seen it many times over.

His email continues…

“Why the Compliancehelp method makes sense“

I sat in a boardroom meeting this morning with a potential new client.

After revealing their current QA manual, prepared by an internal staff member, I noticed it looked very much like a template system. I proceeded to read sections of their management system at random and asked:

“Does this sound familiar?”
“Do you do this?”
“Do you know what document your QA manual is referring to here?”

The first question drew a blank. The second was met with the response, “The Director would never do that, he hasn’t got time to muck around with that”. The third question elicited the too frequently heard reply: “We don’t have one of those, do we need it?”

Without delving (or embarrassing the potential client) further we quickly agreed their current management system documentation had very little connection to their company’s actual operations and procedures. Why?

Upon further discussion we established that the person who wrote the manual wrote it in isolation from the people and processes he was documenting.

That was the first mistake.

The second mistake was thinking you can download a template and adapt your business to it. You can’t. Not without changing the integrity of the already existing procedures and processes you’ve developed to consistently meet client requirements.

Why does the Compliancehelp method make sense?

It makes sense because the client’s business becomes the “template” for building their quality management system, not a downloaded template from the Internet.

It makes sense because we document what the company really does – or will do to comply – not what they could do in theory, based on one person’s opinion and misunderstanding of the ISO 9001 standard.

Mike Low, Sales Manager, Australia.

RIGHT ON MIKE!