Quality Systems

ISO 9001 is one of the ISO 9000 standards whose objectivity is to provide quality management systems that benefit an organization to manage its business effectively and ensure that it puts the best business practices in place. This system encompasses the entire organization with a lot of input from senior management. The primary driver for implementing an ISO 9001 system should be focused on customers. According to the principle described at 9001resource.com, Organizations depend on their customers and therefore should understand current and future customer needs, should meet customer requirements and strive to exceedcustomer expectations.There are several key benefits of having a customer focus for Quality Management System (QMS) in an organization. This include increased revenue & market share, improved market loyalty leading to repeat business and increased effectiveness in the use of the organization’s resources to guarantee customer satisfaction. Other benefits include research, to understand customers’ needs, ensure that the organization’s objectives are met in line with customers’ needs; managing customer relationships, having a balanced approach to satisfy customers’ needs, measuring customer satisfaction and providing the results. This simply means that there is a great importance of the relationship with customers for QMS.

For the case against many organizations, customer pressure is the main key driver to implementing ISO 9001. The pressure usually exerted by customers to achieve ISO 9001 may not be same for every organization but customers usually focus more on the actual quality management practices than even just on the certificate. Therefore, if the organization is able to demonstrate its ability to provide products that meet customers’ obligations and aims to enhance customers’ satisfaction through effective application of its system, then it will be the key driver for implementing the ISO 9001 system.