What Will ISO Certification Cost? Ask Your ISO Consultant!
If you are interested in ISO certification so you can sell your products on a much wider scale throughout the world, the first thing you need to do is consult with an ISO consultant. There is no way to determine exactly what certification is going to cost any individual business, because there is not one set price tag for everyone. The expenses that you may have to consider include:
- ISO consultant fees
- Implementation Costs
- Registration Fees
- Maintenance Expenses
The ISO consultant fees are at the top of the list, but only because they are typically the first expenses you come across. You need a consultant to help you analyze your business and come up with a quality management system that will not only pass for certification, but work with your budget and your company’s practices in the long run. If the initial process of developing a system is not done appropriately, then you will have problems all through implementation and maintenance.
Implementation Costs
The cost of implementing your new quality management system will depend on many factors, including:
- Company size
- Resources available
- Type of system being implemented
- Extent of change to be made
- Materials/machinery needed
There may be a variety of other expenses that come along. It just depends on the business and what you are trying to achieve. In some cases you may have to pay professionals to come in during the implementation process, while in other cases allocating your current employees to implement the system could be efficient.
Your ISO consultant will be able to help you keep the expense of implementation under control if they have worked with you from the beginning and know what your quality management system is all about.
Maintenance Expenses
Once your quality maintenance system is in place, you will need to keep the system efficient and functional for the long term. This will have its own expenses, though they should be manageable if you worked with a good ISO consultant in the development phase. The system should allow your company to improve quality and move into more markets, and eventually make money even with additional maintenance fees.
Again, the fees for maintaining a quality maintenance system vary from one business to another. It will depend on the system you have in place, the resources you have available to handle the work, and how you have set the system up. This is not a one-size-fits-all process, and the expenses for all stages of development will vary.
The only way to know more specifically what getting certified with an efficient quality management system may cost for your business is to work with an ISO consultant. They will be able to go over your business processes and help you come up with a system that is affordable while allowing you to pass for certification and improve quality for your customers.