CQR UK Obtains
ISO 22301 Certification
Why?
Delivering BCMS for our customers across an international
market is currently one of our main service offerings. In delivering BCMS we advise and support our customers
on what they need to ensure they have good Business Continuity practices in
place, on how they can make their organisation more resilient and how they can
mitigate and reduce impact should they be affected by an incident.Not only is it common sense that we ‘practice what we preach’ but it provides reassurance to our customers and those looking to work with us, we know what we are doing. If we are able to demonstrate that our own house is in order and that we are certified against recognised International Standards, we can ensure that the needs of our customers are exceeded and that we are continually focusing our efforts on delivering quality services.
We are proud of our core values – passion, knowledge, integrity and accountability and believe that obtaining certification clearly demonstrates our commitment to providing consistent, reliable and dependable expertise, along with a competitive advantage in being able to offer a differentiation of service.
How?
Being already certified for ISO/IEC 27001
Information Security Management Systems, CQR UK had a head start when it came
to expanding their credentials and obtaining certification to the ISO 22301
Business Continuity Management Systems.
For CQR UK, this was not only seen as an
opportunity to complete a refresh of our own BCMS but as an opportunity to
provide training to members of our staff who are relatively new to the world of
Business Continuity. It’s important that
we look to develop our staff and involve them with the continued success and
growth of the company. Involving our
staff provided them with the opportunity to learn and gain experience, not only
on how to deploy a strong BCMS aligned to the requirements of the standard but the
opportunity to experience how an audit is performed.
Preparing for the audit was given full
commitment from our management team.
Time and effort was allocated to allow us to review our procedures and
to improve them in line with the requirements of the International
Standard. We completed a pre-assessment
and gap analysis which helped to identify areas of improvement and allowed us
to apply lessons learned to help improve our own BCMS and our customers. Aligning to the standard allowed us to focus
our efforts on the framework, explicitly in terms of interested parties, legal
and regulatory requirements, risk management and management reviews of the
effectiveness of our BCMS.
The audit process itself was relatively
straightforward; the legwork had been done so it came as no surprise that when
we completed the Stage 1 assessment in March our auditor reported no
non-conformities. Stage 2 and subsequent
certification was achieved in April.
BenefitsThere are many benefits in achieving certification, being able to demonstrate our commitment to Business Continuity Management Systems and provide assurance to our customers that we deliver quality and knowledgeable services goes without saying. Certification will also help us expand and provide us with a competitive advantage. We can easily demonstrate our commitment to fulfil new tender requirements and win new business.
Obtaining certification gave us the opportunity to improve the maturity of our own BCMS and helped to ensure we had a consistent documented approach that could also be used to benefit the implementation of BCMS within our customer organisations.
Completing the certification provided us with the opportunity to continuously improve our own BC processes and procedures, ensuring that we can maintain our operations with minimal disruption should we ourselves be impacted by an incident.
Certification enables us to demonstrate to
both our internal and external interested parties that we have robust
management systems in place to cope with a business interruption and this isn’t
just us saying this, it has been validated by an independent external auditor.
What
next?We will look to continually improve our BCMS not only in-house for CQR UK operations but looking to expand our certification to include our operations within our sister organisation in Australia. On-going assessment will be completed to ensure that our BCMS not only continues to meet the requirements of the standard but provides us with the on-going opportunity to continually improve.
We will also be looking after our customers,
providing support and assistance to those that wish to obtain certification or
continually improving their existing BCMS to align to the recognised practices
of the standard.
Our
thoughts
"CQR are thrilled to add ISO 22301 with
our ISO 27001 certification enabling us to operate an integrated management
system. This demonstrates our Business Continuity
and Information Security expertise and competence to our clients as a critical
service provider. It reinforces our commitment
to clients that we take both Business Continuity and Information Security seriously
and demonstrates that we understand what it takes to protect our most important
assets our people and business”. Greg Inge, Managing Director
“Obtaining certification against ISO 22301 is
a goal I’ve been looking to achieve since joining CQR and I’m extremely proud
to have been involved in the process and refresh of our BCMS. Obtaining certification not only shows that
we are capable but also credible in our abilities to deliver great BC systems,
for me something that I’m extremely passionate about. Whilst I did feel apprehensive upon waiting
for the arrival of the auditor, I was extremely confident that we had done
everything that was required and more to ensure certification was
achieved. In fact, I was so proud of the
work undertaken I felt at times I was showing off our achievements even when
not asked. Receiving confirmation that
we had no non-conformities was the highlight, although I thought this would be
the case, it’s nice to be told.” Claire
Phipps, MBCI
Contact
To find out more about services from CQR UK
and how we can support your business, contact us on 01865 882225