Brightlabs receives ISO 9001:2008 Quality Assurance

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Brightlabs is proud to announce our ISO 9001:2008 Quality Assurance Certification. Our General Manager, Han te Riele talks about what it means to Brightlabs and how it will impact everyday business.

Over the last couple of months we’ve been working hard for our ISO certification. We’re excited that we've passed our audits and are now formally certified as an ISO 9001:2008 web design company. Here's a Q&A with our General Manager Han te Riele on the process and our journey to being successfully accredited. 

What is ISO 9001:2008?

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Han: ISO 9001 is a family of standards for quality management systems. ISO 9001 is maintained by ISO, the International Organisation for Standardisation and is administered by accreditation and certification bodies. We were audited by Compliance Australia  and they did a great job. They audit for compliance and they were very helpful in the whole process. The rules for ISO 9001:2008 are updated as the requirements motivate changes over time. Some of the current requirements in ISO 9001:2008 include:

• a set of procedures that cover all key processes in the business;
• monitoring processes to ensure they are effective;
• keeping adequate records;
• checking output for defects, with appropriate and corrective action where necessary;
• regularly reviewing individual processes and the quality system itself for effectiveness and
• facilitating continual improvement.

What were the main reasons for seeking ISO 9001 certification?

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Han: We’ve always been very quality focused with a lot of processes and procedures in place already. We thought it would be good to take the next step and have it all documented in a formal Quality Management System that complies with ISO 9001:2008. An added bonus is that the system requires us to track and monitor continual improvement in everything we do. You see, there are no standards or frameworks governing web solution companies and we have taken it upon ourselves to impose a higher standard and join the select few that do have this certification in our industry.

Was there any pressure from the industry and/or customers to complete the ISO certification as a condition of doing business?

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Han: Not really. This is one of our efforts to demonstrate to our customers that we are serious about designing and producing a higher standard and quality of online solution by approaching each project in a systematic and process driven manner. Although certification doesn’t give you a guarantee that the product or service you buy is faultless, it at least tells you the business has the desire to do it right the first time, and that there are processes in place to make sure any issues are dealt with in a structured way.

How long did the implementation process take?

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Han: We started thinking about certification about a year ago, but only seriously started the process at the end of February, 2010. Once we got started it all proceeded quickly. I think 4 months is quite an achievement, something we couldn’t have done without our already solid procedures in place.

Where are your processes documented?

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Han: We use Confluence which is a web-based corporate wiki. It is developed by Atlassian Software Systems. We use a few products from from their suite so they all integrate quite well.

Any parting thoughts?

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Han: While it’s great to have the certification, we realise that we need to continue to put in a lot of effort to pass the half yearly surveillance audits. It’s definitely worth the effort though as being an ISO 9001:2008 certified web design company shows our customers and potential clients that we have a solid quality system in place to provide a high quality and standard of product and service.