The international standard ISO 9001 Certification outlines the best practices for running a quality management system. Its seven principles help businesses monitor and manage their processes while also comparing their service and performance to others.

Getting a QMS isn't easy; you must rethink how your business works and your long-term goals. However, there are many benefits, such as providing better products and services and having more business possibilities.

More than a million organisations are already certified to ISO 9001. In this blog, we show you how to join them with our seven-step plan.

What is ISO 9001: 2015?

ISO 9001 is a quality management system that tells you what to do to ensure your business always meets customer needs and wants. Knowing the best organisational structure, policies, procedures, processes, and tools to support this is important. It's also important to ensure everyone knows their duties.

How to Implement ISO 9001

If you want to use ISO 9001 Certification, the most critical steps are:

Step 1 – Seek Senior Management Support

Senior management must support and participate in the implementation of ISO 9001. They must understand how ISO 9001 can save them effort and money.

Step 2 – Understand the Requirements of ISO 9001

Before implementing ISO 9001, you must understand its structure, ideas, and concepts. Implementers must examine the standard, review the requirements in every ten sections covering various quality management system components, and decide which ones fit their company. Understanding what the standard requires is essential to using it correctly.

Step 3 – Conduct a Gap Analysis

Once you know what ISO Certification Provider requires, the next step is to find the areas where your organisation's present practices don't meet those requirements. Organisations should make an action plan and lay out who is responsible for what in carrying out the plan to fill in the holes. The gap study will help your company determine what it needs to change to meet the standard.

Step 4 – Establish a Quality Management System

Setting up a QMS requires a structured and organised method, and it takes more than one thing to do. Organisations need to figure out who is responsible for what and what their jobs as staff are.

The next step is to make rules, instructions, and plans that will help with putting things into action and making papers like the quality manual. Also, businesses should set clear, measurable goals that should be shared with all workers and regularly checked on.

Step 5 – Implement the Quality Management System

Companies should set up a quality management system (QMS) based on their existing rules, plans, and goals. They should carefully follow all the rules and do everything that needs to be done.

Step 6 – Monitor and Measure Performance

Organisations need to keep an eye on and measure the performance of their quality management system to make sure it works well. This can be done with standard measurements and key performance indicators (KPIs). They should monitor and measure how well the processes, goods, and services are doing. They should also do internal audits to find ways your company can improve.

Step 7 – Seek for Certification

Once the QMS has been in place for three to six months, the ISO 9001 approval process can begin. An authorised auditor should first look over the company's QMS. The organisation will be given the ISO 9001 approval if all of the requirements for ISO 9001 Certification have been met and everything has been working well so far.

Step 8 – Continuously Improve the Quality Management System

Always examine the outcomes of monitoring and measuring actions to find ways to improve. Take corrective and preventative steps to address problems and prevent them from happening again. Make changes to your quality control system constantly to keep it working well.

Step-by-Step Guide to ISO 9001 Implementation in 2025