ISO Certification is an important part of modern business as it gives confidence to your customers and stakeholders that your organization is committed to continual improvement and is operating based on international best practices. Also, it’s often mandatory when bidding on large-scale tenders and government jobs.

Being ISO certified signifies that a company has fulfilled the requirements of the ISO standard to which it is certified. For instance, if a company is ISO 9001 certified, it signifies that they have fulfilled all of the criteria that determine whether a Quality Management System (QMS) is acceptable and effective, as well as recognized and implemented changes to its organization.

The ISO certification is valid for three years from the date of certificate issuance and subject to an annual surveillance audit for the first two years to ensure compliance and a recertification audit in the third year.

Getting certified mostly depends on the level of documentation available as regards the ISO standard your organization needs to get the certification. However, a good understanding of what the requirements are for ISO 9001 certification, enables the organization to be on a fast track, hence it is expected that such organizations should be able to achieve certification within 3 to 6 months depending on their size and complexity of their process.

The most popular ISO certification are ISO 9001 (Quality Management System), ISO 14001 (Environmental Management System), ISO 45001 (Occupational Health and Safety), ISO/IEC 27001 (Information Security Management System), ISO 22000 (Food Safety Management System), and ISO 22301 (medical device quality management)