In nearly 20 years of supporting companies in the implementation, certification, and continual improvement of management systems, I have seen organizations transform completely thanks to an IMS... and I have also seen some come close to abandoning all that effort.
A few weeks ago, I ran into a colleague, the manager of a very well-known company. After greeting each other, he made a comment that caught my attention:
"I'm concerned. The board of directors is considering setting aside our Integrated Management System."
What was curious is that years earlier we had worked together so that this same company could successfully certify its integrated food safety, quality, and environmental management system.
I asked him what had changed.
His answer was very simple:
"The customer who required the certification no longer works with us."
And with that sentence, I understood the real problem.
For the board of directors, the IMS had stopped being a strategic tool and had become nothing more than a cost.
The reality is that this story is not an isolated one. I have heard it many times.
Many organizations implement a management system to meet a customer requirement, obtain a certification, or participate in a tender. But when that need disappears, so does the interest in maintaining the system.
However, ISO standards were never designed solely to obtain a certificate.
As ISO 9001 states:
"The adoption of a quality management system is a strategic decision for an organization that can help to improve its overall performance and provide a sound basis for sustainable development initiatives."
There is one very important word in that sentence:
"Can."
ISO standards do not guarantee better results on their own.
What truly makes the difference is how top management takes advantage of that set of good practices that thousands of successful organizations have used to improve their performance in quality, food safety, environment, and other management systems.
My colleague then asked me:
"How do I show the board of directors that the IMS is an investment and not an expense?"
I suggested that he completely change the focus of the conversation.
Instead of talking about certificates, audits, or regulatory requirements, he needed to talk about results.
External focus
- Quantify the reduction in customer complaints over the last 36 months and estimate how much money had been saved thanks to that improvement.
- Estimate the reputational cost avoided: how many customers had they not lost by reducing incidents and complaints?
- Show how customer perception had evolved using indicators such as NPS, satisfaction studies, and positive comments on social media.
Internal focus
-
Demonstrate process improvement through indicators such as:
- KPI compliance;
- deviations at CCPs;
- losses;
- rework;
- waste;
- cycle times;
- operational efficiency;
- results of regulatory, customer, and certification audits;
- corrective action compliance;
- reduction of food safety or quality incidents.
-
Measure employee engagement through:
- turnover;
- absenteeism;
- employee satisfaction;
- percentage of new hires coming from employee referrals.
-
Select two improvement projects that had arisen from audit findings and calculate the economic benefit generated for the company.
-
Incorporate environmental indicators such as reductions in water, energy, and fuel consumption, waste generation, and associated costs.
You will notice that I deliberately did not focus on sales or profitability.
Not because they are unimportant, but because those results can be influenced by external factors such as market growth, the entry or exit of competitors, or economic changes.
I wanted to demonstrate the direct impact of the Integrated Management System on the organization.
Weeks later, I had the opportunity to see the presentation he prepared for the board of directors.
The result was much better than expected.
The conversation stopped being:
"How much does it cost to maintain the IMS?"
and became:
"How can we leverage it even more?"
The final decision was not to eliminate the system.
It was to assign it more resources to continue strengthening it.
That was when I understood, once again, that the problem is almost never the Integrated Management System.
The problem is that many times those of us who lead it do not speak the language of those who make the decisions.
So I want to leave a message for all colleagues who lead management systems:
Do not wait until a meeting comes along where the word "savings" appears on the agenda.
When companies look to reduce costs, the first budgets they usually question are those whose benefits are not visible.
Be proactive.
Start measuring the impact of your system today.
Build indicators that translate improvements into data that top management can easily understand.
Bring evidence to management meetings and give the general manager solid arguments to defend the investment before the board of directors.
Because a good management system does not prove its value when it gets a certificate.
It proves its value when someone can answer, with data, a very simple question:
What would have happened to the company if this system had never existed?
And I will close with a comparison that has always seemed very accurate to me.
Hens lay an egg... and announce it by clucking so that everyone notices.
In contrast, management system leaders often generate enormous benefits in silence.
Perhaps the time has come to make a little more noise. Not to boast, but so that the value of the work done becomes visible before someone decides it is no longer needed.
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Francisco J. Tapia Guerrero
ftapia@qualitascertification.comwww.linkedin.com/in/franktapiaguerrero------------------------------