Cost for Certification Implementation

The total amount your business will pay for certification will depend on a number of factors. The size of your company, complexity of your operations and whether you already have some elements of a quality management system in place will all affect the cost of the certification.
The main considerations when it comes to the cost of the certification are as follows:

1. Certification Body Costs: A Certification Body must perform the registration audit. The cost of the CB depends on your organisation and its size and risk profile. Certification bodies charge based on the amount of time they have to spend working with your organisation, normally based on the number of days.
2. Internal Cost: While you may not have to pay monetary costs internally, the costs of your employees’ time can add up quickly. It can take a significant amount of time to build and implement the Quality Management System.
3. External Costs: Depending on how you carry out the process, you may have external costs in the form of consultant fees or tools to help you with the development and implementation of the system.

There are three main options for an organisation considering implementing the Quality Management System. How you decide to implement the standard will impact the costs involved.

1. Do it Yourself: Create your own documentation and develop your own training programs internally by interpreting the standard. This can be advantageous as you know your business better than anyone else, and will know the processes and systems that are most likely to work for you. However, obtaining  certification can be a big task that involves thorough understanding and interpretation of the standard as well as developing documentation and conducting staff training, so it can be a lot to take on internally. This option is particularly suitable if you have team members who can spend a significant amount of time on this as a project and preferably have considerable experience in working with the standards in the past.
2. Use Pre-prepared Templates for Documentation and Pre-defined Training Programs: Applying documentation and training programs that have already been devised for the standard may help you implement the process more smoothly. You still do it internally, but with training and a system to follow, which can save you time and frustration. The caveat here is that templates only go so far and to be really effective, they should be high quality, industry-specific or just a guideline within which you can design your own system. Templates which are too generic will have a lot of irrelevant information and over-documentation which can bog down the process and create more work for you down the track. It can be hard to know what is necessary to keep and what isn’t unless you are experienced. Either way it is very important that whatever templates are used are customised to the point that they align as closely as possible with how you do business.
3. Hire a Consultant for Part or All of the Process: Many businesses will use a combination of 1 or 2 plus using the support of a consultant to guide them in the right direction. For example a gap assessment at the start of the process and an action plan will help support companies who want to set up the system themselves but don’t want to reinvent the wheel. Periodic support throughout will ensure you are on the right track and meeting all the requirements.

A good consultant can save time and effort and mistakes due to lack of experience or over documenting.

There is also the option of a full-service approach to obtaining certification where the consultant does everything for you. If you do not have the capacity to carry out the process internally or you have limited existing systems in place, this may be the most effective option. However, it is also the most expensive and may limit your opportunities to have understanding and ownership of your own system.

There are a number of available options for obtaining  certification. It’s important to remember that there is no ‘one-size fits all’ approaches, and you should choose the process that works best for your business.