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Learn how SharePoint and Microsoft 365 help organisations achieve ISO 9001 certification by streamlining Quality Management Systems, improving document control, and automating risk management.
In this blog I am going to be discussing two key elements that have been critical to me within my career, that is Quality and SharePoint.
Specifically, the way that SharePoint can be configured to assist an organisation in achieving their ISO certification.
ISO 9001 is a certification that is applied to organisations to reflect that they deliver their services to a high quality.
This is based on an international standard that outlines requirements for organisational Quality management Systems (QMS), with the latest major version, ISO9001:2015, having been released in September 2015.
The methodology used within ISO 9001 is known as Plan -> Do -> Check -> Act, which is illustrated as a cycle, like that shown below:
ISO 9001 certification demonstrates to your employees, customers and additional network that your organisation has stringent quality measures.
This is due to the award of ISO 9001 requiring a number of full audits each year (to gain and renew the award), as well as surveillance audits throughout the year to check you are continually improving and maintaining quality.
These are then supplemented by internal auditing, improvement tracking which generally require systems to maintain the data – this is where SharePoint can be utilised.
To successfully deliver ISO 9001, organizations need to ensure that their staff are all bought into the journey and understand the importance of quality management. This initially starts with management buy in which is critical to the Leadership Clause within the ISO 9001 standard.
Typically, the delivery of quality aligns with an organisations Mission, Vision and Values especially as the Planning Clause requires quality objectives to be set.
These are also key elements that are recommended to be displayed within a SharePoint Intranet so that they can be continually referred to by employees.
Furthermore, organisations would usually proudly display their Quality Policy (signed by the management team) and ISO certifications within their office.
However, in the current ways of working with a hybrid approach being more common, then what better way to display this content that on your Intranet?
If this sounds like your organisation, then please reach out so we can support updating your structure and give you the best return on investment (ROI) on your Microsoft 365 licences.
Microsoft Copilot will bring in documents from your personal OneDrive, inclusive of documents that are shared from other individuals OneDrive locations.
Therefore, my recommendation is to limit the data that is stored here and be cautious when sharing files amongst other users.
SharePoint as an Intranet allows various content to be displayed, from imagery to text to documents to videos.
This flexibility allows for organisations to use the differing mediums to build up content relating to quality management, as an example, why not generate a recording or the management team defining what quality means to the business and its importance, as what better way to show to an organisation that leadership are committed to the quality cause.
A number of organisations that I have built Intranets for will have a Quality & Compliance Department Site forming part of their Intranet, providing a location to push news, announcements and events surrounding quality e.g. when is the next surveillance audit?
This can also be supported with the use of Microsoft Teams to allow messages to be posted, which may surround changes in processes or new improvements that have been tracked.
Other systems and ideas will be suggested within this blog article, but if the communication piece is correctly configured then your users will be adopted and will have a simple location to allow them to navigate to the various other tools that support quality.
Further to an Intranet, additional solutions and systems can be built to manage quality. These services will align with clauses, such as Support due to the management of organisational knowledge and documented information. Documents and pages can be controlled through the user of Version History, and Power Automate approval processes. This ensures that the right version of information is always used, as well as ensuring that it is regularly reviewed and kept up to date. Solutions, such as SharePoint Document and Pages libraries can then be used to demonstrate to an auditor these processes that have been put in place. The Valto Controlled Documents Solution is a key example of a system that supports our customers in the management and control of their documented information. This solution contains the following features, all which are supportive of achieving ISO 9001, due to ensuring documents are created, maintained and communicated effectively: Homepage – To easily display your controlled documents. Review Date – Prompt your document owners to review documents every 3, 6, 12, 24 or 36 months. Approval – Once reviewed your documents will require sign off and approval by a named person or group. Version Control – Our system provides both major (1, 2, 3) and minor (0.1, 0.2, 0.3) version control. Ensuring document owners only see minor versions and everyone else sees the latest published version. Automated Emails – All actions required issue emails with links to the document. Actions can then be completed by buttons within emails, making the process quick and efficient. Audit History – A full audit trail of who, what, when changes have been made to every document. Tracker – Once a document is approved, automate emails to specific groups of employees to digitally capture who has read the document and automate reminders.Furthermore, in alignment with the Communications Section of this blog article the creation of a space to share information about the way an organisation works, inclusive of video will also support ISO 9001. Valto provide just that in the way of a Knowledge Base Solution, providing the following feature set: Homepage – To easily display key subject areas where knowledge will reside. Page Templates – Enabling users to create subject pages and/or article pages. Page Tagging – Providing an easy navigation interface to ensure that sub-pages and articles are easily accessible from their parent subject area e.g. a Recruitment Subject can be split into Job Adverts, Interviews, Contracts etc… FAQs – Providing key question and answer pairings that re frequently raised across the organisation. Controlled Documents – links with the Controlled Documents Solution, to ensure that users can find organisational knowledge as well as the latest controlled versions of policies/procedures or forms/templates that relate to it.
Organisations typically manage their risks assessments in large excel files. These files translate easily into SharePoint Lists, that then lend themselves to providing more functionality.
This is critical to the Planning Clause of ISO 9001 which covers the need to manage risks and opportunities.
A SharePoint List can reflect the same approach to managing risk, with the use of columns to define data that users can selected and calculations relating to these columns.
As an example, a list can contain the ability for users to select Likelihood and Severity scores and then calculate a risk score – this could be done pre and post risk mitigations, with this data also visualised to showcase the thought and actions that have been put into place.
Much like the control of documents, these lists can have their version history enabled, to easily showcase how risks have been adjusted over time – with the aim to bring their risk score down through continual improvement.
Furthermore, risk records can be allocated to business areas or individuals with key dates for renewals or actions.
All data that is recorded can then be used with Power Automate to trigger notifications and escalations, meaning that there will be no risk that is forgotten about. This will evidence the importance of risk management to your auditors and align with ISO 9001 requirements.
Keeping this data within SharePoint will also enable it to be linked with other areas. Therefore, risks can be supplemented with links to Knowledge Articles or Controlled Documents.
Hopefully you can begin to see how each of these elements are beneficial to the organisation, but also, they work well together to build a feature risk and complete Quality Management System.
The use of Power Bi is also beneficial in this area, as reporting on the current risks and opportunities within the organisation, as well as how they are changing can be critical to business KPIs.
A popular request I have received throughout my consultancy career relates to the build of systems that can manage Corrective Actions and Preventative Actions, aligning with key ISO clauses such as Operation, Performance Evaluation and Improvement. These systems are key to the delivery of continual improvement in alignment to ISO 9001.
This is another area in which the use of SharePoint Lists can support, but these are frequently extended with the use of a Power Apps front end to enable validation of input fields and permissions of fields based on the item’s status.
A key element of building out a CAPA process is to ensure that items follow a strict process like that defined below:
Users can create an issue/improvement item.
Items can be reviewed and approved by the compliance team.
Items can be assigned to individuals to action.
Assigned individuals will complete root cause analysis, corrections and preventions.
Updates will be reviewed and approved by the compliance team, with the inclusion of verification statements.
Items will be reviewed and approved at a later stage to confirm that the update has been fully embedded into the organisation.
Valto work closely with organisation to define the precise process that they follow, as these can differ in relation to the industry areas e.g. a focus on product quality. These processes can be mapped out, with recommendations made as to how SharePoint and the Power Platform can be utilised to support. This processes typically follow the same foundational elements that are defined above but will have some nuances.
Find out more information by watching our YouTube video that provides an example of this process in action here. (opens in a new tab) .Some further examples of applications can also be seen below.
No Microsoft 365 blog is complete nowadays without some mention of Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially with the rise of Microsoft Copilot. So how can AI support the goal of achieving ISO 9001 within SharePoint?
My main recommendation would be to use this to further advance the various systems that have been defined above, such as the Controlled Documents and Knowledge Base solutions. This is something that Valto have been working on as part of these solutions.
As an example, the use of Copilot Studio will enable a chat bot to be generated that pulls in key organisational information, policies and processes etc… This will enable users to potentially “Ask an Auditor” and be provided with the answers they need specific to the problem at hand.
AI can also be used to aid in the review and approval of organisational documents, as AI itself can act as a reviewer.
As an example, I may generate a prompt which says “You are an ISO 9001 auditor, that specialises in product quality. You are responsible for delivering surveillance audits that cover the ISO9001:2015 standard and specialise in reviewing quality documents to highlight opportunities for improvement and errors” following this I could provide by newly generated persona with a document to review, and then receive feedback as to what can be updated.
This of course cannot be the only review that is relied upon, but it does help to shine a light on updates you may have missed and help improve efficiency during the review process.
Finally, the use of SharePoint Premium will enable data to be extracted from structured documents which could assist with metadata/tagging. As an example, it is common for organisations to produce specific documents, such as their 8 Disciplines (8Ds) and Fishbone Diagrams.
Were these documents to be uploaded to a specific location, metadata could be defined, and AI could be taught to draw out these values and automatically tag the documents for ease of sorting, filtering and searching, whilst minimising user input.
As a platform, Microsoft 365 lends itself to many different needs. Therefore, if you are thinking of reviewing system and solutions to help achieve ISO 9001 then I would advise to first look at what you have available, and what you are already paying for to allow for the best return on investment (ROI) for your existing licences.
This would also minimise the need for multiple suppliers/support agreements and allows you to build a system that is fit for your organisations purpose as opposed to having to change the way you work to align with a 3rd party solution.
If anything in this article has piqued your interest, or you have any further questions then it would be great to hear from you and discuss how Valto can help you on your quality journey.
I am sure there are many other use cases for SharePoint and other Microsoft 365 technologies in alignment with achieving ISO 9001 certification.
It should also be noted that other ISO accreditations may also benefit from these suggestions or other more specialised processes built within this platform.
It would be great to hear some additional ideas from readers of this blog post!
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