Slaying the three-headed monster
Last night I had a real nightmare – I dreamt that I was being chased around our offices at night by a Three-Headed Monster. As the Monster chased me I could hear in the background voices chanting ISO! ISO! ISO! At first it was almost a whisper as I ran bumping into the desks and the various re-cycling bins of paper, plastics and so on. The new Tea Bag collection points where we collect the teabags before moving them to the compost heap outside started flying at me, and then suddenly I tripped up on some electrical wire on the floor (that shouldn’t have been there) and slowly the monster moved forward inch by inch….
First, one head chanted IS0 9001! ISO 9001! Then the second head began ISO 14001! ISO 14001! followed by the last head screaming - ISO 2 7 0 0 1!! ISO 2 7 0 0 1!!!
Then, thank goodness, I woke up, my heart was beating so fast – you know what it is like when you are in that period between dreaming and wakefulness – I turned to take a sip from my water and of course knocked the whole glass on to the floor!!
The truth – I did have the dream above and for those of you who don’t know, ISOs are International Standards. ISO 9001 is for quality management, ISO 14001 is for environmental management and ISO 27001 is for information security management. At thebigword we have always being proud that we were the first Language Company to be awarded ISO 9001 (In former years it was known as BS5750).
So why am I telling you all about this? - Well for a number of reasons. Firstly to be certified against the various standards involves a huge amount of work, it can be very expensive and certainly very time-consuming. Once you have achieved recognition then that is not enough as all these ‘Kite Marks’ are audited on an ongoing basis and to maintain them you have to ensure that you have robust processes in place which again are costly to administer. Therefore it is important to understand the effort that goes into gaining recognition, and I suppose we want to share with our Customers and Linguist the efforts that we are making to ensure the delivery of a world class service.
So why bother? - Well at least for one important reason and that is if we don’t have them then large organisations, Government Departments and Local Authorities both in Europe and the USA will, in many cases, simply not consider using our services or the services of companies who cannot demonstrate they have undertaken the work.
Do I think it is a good thing? – Absolutely, in my opinion there is no other realistic way to demonstrate our commitment to quality and environmental management, and of equal importance, being able to demonstrate that we have in place programmes to ensure adherence to information security. Only last week I received a letter from Zurich Insurance company that a database with all my personal details had been stolen. Perhaps if they had got ISO 27001 in place then I would not now be in danger of my personal details being misused.
Finally - I believe that it is essential that organisations using Language Companies should check that these quality processes are either in place or being put into place before considering using them. Again we also believe that our efforts will continue to lead to us winning more business for our own community of Translators.
Let me know your thoughts on these matters and once again thanks for the many e-mails I received in the past week especially regarding ideas re the ‘We love our Translator’ programme that we will be launching in January.
Have a good week and I will catch up with you on Friday
First, one head chanted IS0 9001! ISO 9001! Then the second head began ISO 14001! ISO 14001! followed by the last head screaming - ISO 2 7 0 0 1!! ISO 2 7 0 0 1!!!
Then, thank goodness, I woke up, my heart was beating so fast – you know what it is like when you are in that period between dreaming and wakefulness – I turned to take a sip from my water and of course knocked the whole glass on to the floor!!
The truth – I did have the dream above and for those of you who don’t know, ISOs are International Standards. ISO 9001 is for quality management, ISO 14001 is for environmental management and ISO 27001 is for information security management. At thebigword we have always being proud that we were the first Language Company to be awarded ISO 9001 (In former years it was known as BS5750).
So why am I telling you all about this? - Well for a number of reasons. Firstly to be certified against the various standards involves a huge amount of work, it can be very expensive and certainly very time-consuming. Once you have achieved recognition then that is not enough as all these ‘Kite Marks’ are audited on an ongoing basis and to maintain them you have to ensure that you have robust processes in place which again are costly to administer. Therefore it is important to understand the effort that goes into gaining recognition, and I suppose we want to share with our Customers and Linguist the efforts that we are making to ensure the delivery of a world class service.
So why bother? - Well at least for one important reason and that is if we don’t have them then large organisations, Government Departments and Local Authorities both in Europe and the USA will, in many cases, simply not consider using our services or the services of companies who cannot demonstrate they have undertaken the work.
Do I think it is a good thing? – Absolutely, in my opinion there is no other realistic way to demonstrate our commitment to quality and environmental management, and of equal importance, being able to demonstrate that we have in place programmes to ensure adherence to information security. Only last week I received a letter from Zurich Insurance company that a database with all my personal details had been stolen. Perhaps if they had got ISO 27001 in place then I would not now be in danger of my personal details being misused.
Finally - I believe that it is essential that organisations using Language Companies should check that these quality processes are either in place or being put into place before considering using them. Again we also believe that our efforts will continue to lead to us winning more business for our own community of Translators.
Let me know your thoughts on these matters and once again thanks for the many e-mails I received in the past week especially regarding ideas re the ‘We love our Translator’ programme that we will be launching in January.
Have a good week and I will catch up with you on Friday
