BUSINESS STANDARDS
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Small business, big world

02 Oct 2006
Topics: SME

When it comes to the adoption of standards, the SME sector has always lagged behind its counterparts in big business. This is due to a variety of reasons, but reticence among the industrialized world's small- and medium-sized enterprises is usually associated with cost or resource issues. There is either a fear that the financial impact of compliance is prohibitive for all but large organizations or a more vague suspicion that signing up to international standards blunts the creative process by interfering with entrepreneurial spirit and weighing the company down with excessive red tape.

All of which makes ISO's decision to focus attention on smaller businesses for this year's World Standards Day (October 14) a challenging choice. Building on last year's successful event, which adopted the theme of safety and demonstrated how standards can prevent accidents and save lives, this year ISO is making a direct play at getting the message across to SMEs that standards, through saving money and boosting sales, are good for businesses of all sizes.

The argument is simple: carefully chosen and well-implemented standards offer smaller businesses the opportunity to compete on a level playing field with deeper pocketed, larger competitors. Standards are generally drawn up by experts in their respective fields, thus their adopters gain access to an unrivalled resource of knowledge and best practice that otherwise would have taken years to accrue organically.

What's more, standards can help SMEs win new orders ? in certain industries, for example construction, certification to a particular standard is often a key criteria for participation in tender processes. Standards can also help retain customers by inspiring trust, improving the quality of output (whether a product or a service), reducing mistakes and ensuring compatibility. They can also boost profits by reducing R&D spend and accelerating speed to market of new products and services.

At the same time, they also help break down barriers when it comes to winning export orders, as most leading standards get adopted or at least recognized internationally.

The reasons why

For Dean James, sales and marketing director with UK-based electronics SME, CorinTech, standards made sense from the start. The company manufactures bespoke electronic circuits for medical and military customers. Both the electronics industry and the company's client base require that suppliers are working to the highest possible standards. This is why CorinTech decided to become an early adopter of the ISO 9001 standard for quality management.

"It makes us look at our own systems and how we handle manufacturing and client feedback," he says. "To the world outside, it shows we are a competent and professional company."

James explains that the other standard to which CorinTech is certified, IPC-A-610C (which relates to soldering, assembly and manufacturing processes), took on a new importance in 2004 when BSI launched a Kitemark in association with the standard. Given the marketing clout a Kitemark can bestow, the decision to go for it was straightforward, says James.

Now the company holds a Class 3 Kitemark, the highest available, which means CorinTech's products are suitable for use in situations where down time cannot be tolerated such as life support machines in hospitals.

"Although I can't quantify the exact value the Kitemark has brought us, we have definitely won contracts on the back of it and more than recouped the cost of accreditation. In fact, a customer recently told us that they wouldn't do business with a company that didn't hold the Kitemark," says James.

The road to good business

Standards can form an essential part of the R&D efforts of SMEs, and standards, along with patents and measurements, are an essential part of the SME's strategic toolkit. They provide a starting point for R&D and an environment in which the SME can produce measurable intellectual property without giving away trade secrets.

And it's not only large organizations that have a part to play in the development or evolution of standards. Although individual businesses are rarely recruited onto standards drafting committees, there are ways to influence the drafting process if an organization is prepared to expend a little time and effort. Interest groups such as trade associations are usually represented on standards committees for example, while the formal process for standards development managed by BSI welcomes input on drafts from interested parties.

If an innovative SME is developing a new product or process to which no existing standard can be applied, that company can work with BSI to develop a new standard. At the same time, existing standards are updated when technology evolves and new processes or products are developed, and all standards are reviewed every five years. In both cases, SMEs have an opportunity to influence the process, and that is in the interest of any business.

The benefits standards can bestow on SMEs are so evident that in 2003, the UK's Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) teamed up with BSI, the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) and the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) to launch the National Standardization Strategic Framework (NSSF) to promote them in the UK economy. The DTI has calculated that standards contribute on average £2.5bn to the UK economy each year and that British Standards account for 13 per cent of the growth in labour productivity year-on-year, as well as enabling innovation and technology transfer.

The NSSF has just launched a pilot project, the Standards Information Service (SIS), which is aimed at engaging with SMEs to promote the benefits they bring and also debunking the myth that they are the preserve of large organizations. The SIS also aims to keep SMEs abreast of developments in the world of standards, including intelligence on new and updated standards and other events.

World Standards Day and the NSSF's new service both seek to address one of the major obstacles to SME adoption of standards: a lack of information. By cutting through the acres of documentation and making clear the possibilities they represent, it is hoped that mainstream SMEs across the globe will begin to view standards less as regulatory necessity and more as strategic opportunity.

For more information on the Standards Information Service, visit:
www.standardsinformation.com

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Question: Why is ISO 9001 still relevant?

This question has been raised before and at BSI, we make certain to ask the question as a matter of course. The forthcoming update to the standard - ISO 9001:2008 Quality management systems. Requirements - is the result of just such questioning.

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