Netmatters Achieves ISO 9001 Quality Accreditation

We are really pleased to announce that we have completed the Audit Process for ISO9001 and passed with flying colours. This is something that we have been keen to achieve especially as each of our various ISO 27001 auditors have always recommended that with the business standards and process that we have, we were already 90% there in terms of achieving the 9001 standard.

We have been operating to ISO 27001 for many years now, this standard is focused on data security and data management which is absolutely crucial for our business considering the data we manage and have access to as part of the services we provide. 27001 is a difficult standard to maintain and is never finished, there is always more you can do. Cyber security awareness is paramount, therefore we use ISO 27001 to steer and enhance our policies and processes to ensure checks, measures, training and awareness is in place at every stage of our service.

Netmatters as a business has evolved over the years, we quickly recognised it was important to ensure we stayed true to our values, delivered a good service to our clients and maintained fully onboard with the process of constant improvement. Maturing on the idea that we were "perfect", Netmatters adopted the approach of focusing on being better everyday. This is easier said than done, but over the years we have developed the organisation to be focused on continuous improvement.

Everything we do is intrinsically in our system, we have adopted the "one system" methodology of working which means by centralising everything we do in the system, the system becomes the key to our challenges.

Our workflow is managed via tasks, each task has a procedure (standard operating procedure or SOP), where work is conducted using the procedure. This means that the output of work is consistent regardless of which engineer completes the task. Each task has a button which allows any of the team to raise an "issue with procedure", which lands with the Operations team and is reviewed, processed or passed on to the relevant team lead/manager to update and improve. Members are rewarded for flagging issues with procedures as it makes the business better everyday.

We also operate Project templates, which are a set of predefined tasks containing procedures for the delivery of a project. At the end of each project, we review the positives and negatives as well as feeding improvements back into the process. Constant improvement is an opportunity within every task and every project we complete. For reference, we are completing in excess of 8,000 tasks a month.

Customer satisfaction is important, it’s vital to measure so it can be managed. This is a standard part of our business process and centres around communication and consistency. Staff training, staff on-boarding and team management need to be consistent, and we have projects for all of these scenarios. Internal compliance is ensuring everyone has access to the information they need.

This is done via our internal operations manual, which contains the knowledge base of the business and is the first port of call for any internal queries. All of our compliance policies and procedures are found in the operations manual, which has clever functionality allowing us to ensure the team have read and acknowledged their understanding of each policy and procedures.

ISO 9001 is a quality standard that enforces compliance checks, measures, reporting, management and awareness of customer satisfaction and processes for recording how a business is operated and then in turn being able to evidence all of this.

Our systems have been described by the ISO Auditor as "World Class" and made extending our accreditation of 9001 easily achievable. ISO 9001 is a quality standard, it’s not a set of hard and fast rules, it does have some flexibility and allows each business to make it their own, and it does nothing but help make a business better.