Building Process Driven Results

It’s that time of year again, we’re preparing for our ISO 9001:2015 external audit. Preparation starts with a series of internal audits completed by our quality council. To maintain an ISO 9001:2015 registration requires a lot of work and dedication, in this blog we’re going to share some of the secrets to making it work and why the commitment to best practices is worth every bit of effort.

What is ISO?

The International Organization for Standards (ISO) promotes the adoption of a process-driven approach when developing, implementing and improving the effectiveness of a quality management system to enhance customer satisfaction by meeting customer requirements. That’s quite a mouthful. But what does it mean to Telelink specifically?

The result of all the hard work that happens behind the scenes can be found in the services we provide. It results in fewer errors, faster onboarding times, smoother account launches while supporting a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.

Telelink Quality Committee

While we’re preparing for the external auditor to arrive, our Quality Council is busy crossing T’s and dotting I's. As we prepare, it provides us with an opportunity to reflect on why we are an ISO 9001:2015 registered organization in the first place.

Maintaining our ISO registration takes a significant lift and a lot of dedication from our entire organization. We have a Quality Council made up of a Quality Manager, multiple Internal Auditors and a Document Controller. Every Internal Auditor is ISO educated and has undergone training by an external controlling body. They are all certified as auditors and check our standards rigorously.

Benefits of being ISO certified

A quality management system helps assess risk and reduce waste by finding efficiencies in processes and systems. The result of reducing waste is often improved process control and lower costs. The true benefit of ISO is when all the small improvements and efficiencies add up, improvements compound together and over time and create a well-oiled machine.

The compound effect of all the individual benefits helps promote continuous improvement and innovation within our organization. The more we’re able to think about continuous improvement as an organization, the more prepared we become to identify risk, and manage change. Continuous improvement and innovation also happen to be one of our four core values as an organization.

International credibility

For many contracts in the Oil & Gas industry, Emergency Response Services and Health Services industry, having an ISO registration is a minimum requirement. ISO is an international stamp of approval that’s recognized in 168 countries and can give an organization credibility when competing for contracts.

Consistency

ISO helps us do what we do - to the best of our ability. Setting a standard of quality that is second to none across our entire organization, we allow ourselves to not only produce our best work, but to produce our best work consistently.

ISO, meet Lean

15 years ago, Telelink was a 40-year-old company with a great deal of best practices but felt weak on documented processes that provided consistency in our deliverables. We came to the realization that the way we ran our company was not scalable. To grow we had to design and follow processes consistently.

Early in our ISO journey, we were so thrilled by our new process-driven world that we became over-processed. We were delivering an incredibly high-quality product, but it slowed down our deliverables at times. In the last number of years, we have studied and adopted the Lean Methodology. Our foundation of ISO combined with the principles and practices to eliminate waste through Lean has allowed us to significantly improve both our quality and productivity.

Won’t make that mistake twice

Our ISO registration ensures that we don’t make the same mistake twice and that we truly learn from our experience. For example, whenever we have issues, mistakes, complaints, or ideas for improvement we track them and their progress in controlled documents. This way, issues don’t fall through the cracks and get forgotten until the same mistake is made again. Issues get resolved quicker and more effectively. We track these things so that we can learn and continually improve as an organization.

More about Telelink and its commitment to quality

An ISO registration is one of the things that makes Telelink an organization truly dedicated to learning and continual improvement.

Telelink provides live call answering services as well as emergency and safety services such as lone worker monitoring and Journey Management™. Over the years we have earned a reputation for being a premium service provider, particularly in complex industries such as property management.

Please visit our website to learn more about Telelink and its many certifications and best practices.