Here are some rules of thumb for implement a management system:
Generic guidelines based on your employee count are:
- Small Business – 50 people or less: Play your cards right, and you’re looking at 6-8 months, if you implement by yourself.
- Medium Sized Business – Under 500 employees: Get the right people on your team, and you’re doing it in under a year.
- Large Business – 500+: Larger means longer, yet you could finish in as few as 15 months.
What does it take to implement a management system?
Here’s our overview of the process…
- Adopt the relevant standard (for most businesses this will be ISO 9001 to start with): Buy the standards publication, read it, and decide that you want to achieve certification.
- Start with a detailed Gap Analysis to identify the gaps in policies, procedures and processes and a document review comparing your existing documentation against the requirements of the standard. Once you know where the difference is, you can figure out how to close the gap, based on your resource availability and capacity. You will need to create a timeline to ensure an appropriate budget is allocated and to monitor the important milestones.
- Hiring an experienced consultant who has extensive experience of ISO/CMMI certification for multiple IT standards (ISO 9001, ISO 27001, CMMI, CMMC, ISO 20000-1) can help you speed up the process since the expert has been through the process many times before and can guide you by focusing on a streamlined process. While doing the work yourself may seem economical, the time and resources wasted in trial and error may cost your organization the next customer or contract. An expert will help you understand the requirement and identify the best way to implement it without changing your core processes.
- Make necessary adjustments: If your systems are already functioning in compliance with the standard, there’s nothing to do. If they aren’t up to standard, then you need to make changes and re-examine.
- Select a registrar: This body will perform an external audit to ensure that you conform to the standard.
- Deal with issues: After the audit finishes, you should address the shortcomings that the registrar found to achieve your certification.
How long will it take to implement a management system with Sync Resource support?
The bottom line is with the right people, you can implement a quality management system ( ISO 9001) quickly, effectively, and most importantly, correctly.
We have found from experience that most small businesses with 50 employees or less can implement ISO 9001 in 3 months or less with Sync Resource.
Want to discuss how we can help you set up your Management System in less time?
Book a time to talk to one of our experts here.
