Fixed Fee - beware of consultants that quote you a fixed cost without conducting a thorough audit of your operation. They are low-balling to get the job. Once they get it and they do get a feel of the amount of work, they will either start cutting corners to save time, which will put you at risk, or find a way to abort the implementation process in midstream after having pocketed a chunk of money. A 2007 survey showed that 32% of consultant overran the client’s budget.
Expensive Firms – don’t use an expensive consulting firm as a guarantee of better results: they usually have large corporation background, hidden infrastructure costs to support, and may impose inapplicable requirements to your businesses, or may send their trainees to work on your account.
Dependence – avoid using a consultant that you will have to depend on to maintain your quality management system after certification. It will just cost you more and imply that the implementation was incomplete.
Cost as the deciding factor – don’t select a consulting or training firm based soley on cost. The cheap ones will cut corners. You will end up paying for the incomplete implementation or training during AND after the registration audit.
One-Stop-Shop - beware of consulting firms offering complete packages, if they offer to assist develop your program and have an entity that will perform the registration audit all for a fixed fee, you are being offered an unaccredited certification (they do not have the required objectivity required of accreditation certification bodies) which is worthless to the business community and most especially your customers and potential customers. The certificate you will receive does not have an accreditation mark. If in doubt review the list of accreditation agencies worldwide.
Price Break - watch out for consultants offering you a reduced fee, they don’t have the experience in the Standard you are interested in or in your industry and are using you as a guinea pig to get it.
Training, training, training – steer clear of consultants that do all the training up front, ISO is an iterative process, some awareness training is important at the beginning, but practical application working with the Standard is required before technical training like ‘ISO Internal Auditing’ can be effectively understood, your people need that perspective (that comes over several months) in order to absorb how to audit a management system.
Experience - Make sure you use consultants with practical business experience in your field. Check their references and recent certification success stories.
Stability - Check credit history of consulting firms... there are a lot of reputable and yet unreliable entities out there...
Every successful implementation should begin with a self assessment or operational evaluation by a competent person or consulting firm in order to identify the operational changes and modifications, the people who will be involved and develop an implementation plan that will guide and monitor the process.
Share / Save