Why Should World Quality Day Matter to Your Business?

Each year, quality professionals celebrate World Quality Day in the second week of November. It’s an annual celebration that was designed to increase global awareness of the important contribution that quality makes to growth and prosperity, at an organisational and national level.

But wait! Quality isn’t always something to be celebrated. There’s superior quality, there’s ok quality and there’s subpar quality. And whilst World Quality Day focuses at the upper end of the spectrum, it’s worth re-focusing on quality and what this means to your business on a day-to-day basis.

What is quality?

The Business Dictionary defines quality as: “In manufacturing, a measure of excellence or a state of being free from defects, deficiencies and significant variations. It is brought about by strict and consistent commitment to certain standards that achieve uniformity of a product in order to satisfy specific customer or user requirements.”

That’s what it is and how it’s achieved. But quality can also be defined in more simplistic terms as “meeting the needs and expectations of customers”.

And quality is important to every business, because customers want quality that’s proportionate to –

• the amount they’re prepared to pay
• the level of competition in the marketplace

Quality in a Business context

There are many aspects of quality in a business context. For example, you might offer a product, a service, or a combination of the two. And these goods and / or services – and how they’re produced - involve a number of different elements, such as procedures, processes, staff, equipment etc. Well, every single one of these elements involves quality, not just the end product or service.

And all of this falls under the umbrella of quality management, which can be broken down in to four key aspects:

• Quality Planning – Developing the goods, systems and processes required to meet customer expectations. It’s worth defining who your customers are at this stage, so that you can determine their needs, understand how to meet those needs, and endeavour to exceed them.

• Quality assurance – Systematic monitoring of all aspects of production, project or service.  The aim is simple - to ensure that your business, products and / or services meet the required standard.

• Quality control – Reviewing every element of the production process or the delivery of a service. Regular and robust quality control of your process outputs validates that your goods and / or services meet requirements. You can use tools such as audits and inspections to manage this function. 

• Quality improvement – Taking a methodical and structured approach to improving a product or service. This enables you to weed out anything that isn’t working properly, and to take relevant measures to remedy areas that need improvement. It might require anything from tiny tweaks to significant changes as part of a process of continual improvement.

Why should you care about quality?

Providing a quality service or product helps your business to survive and thrive, by –

• Enhancing your reputation and brand
• Protecting against risks
• Increasing efficiency
• Boosting profits

And quality matters to the people you depend on most – the customers without whom you wouldn’t have a business if they didn’t buy your products and/or services. So, it’s important to see the quality of your products and / or services through their eyes.

When you think about it in these terms, it goes a long way to explaining why certification to an internationally recognised quality management system ISO 9001:2015 continues to soar.

The ISO 9001:2015 standard provides a framework for the key features of quality –

• Customer focus
• Meeting and exceeding customer needs
• Providing a quality product and/or service

Plus, it pulls everything together and underscores the fact that you’re a quality business where quality matters.

What benefits does a Quality Management System bring to your business?

It’s one thing to be vocal about the amazing quality of your products and / or services, (according to you!) But it’s quite another thing for your high ideals to be rewarded and recognised with a global management standard.

First and foremost though, the implementation of a quality management system will help you to:

• Define who your customers are and what they expect from you
• Document your business objectives
• Identify new business opportunities
• Put your customers first, ensuring that you meet their needs, which can lead to repeat and referral business
• Work in an efficient and streamlined way, bringing efficiencies and productivity, and reducing costs
• Gain new clients, (including those that require their suppliers to be ISO 9001 certified)
• Identify and address risks associated with your business

You see, with a certified quality management system, your business becomes internationally recognised as having quality and customer focus at its core. And by placing quality and customer focus front and centre, you’ve got the basic ingredients for lasting success.