However, this was not to be as we were chosen as one of the departments whom the British Standards Institute (BSI) would visit in relation to us earning an ISO 9001 Quality Management accreditation. Essentially, this is to ensure that our practices adhere to an international set of standards and are focussed on delivering customer satisfaction in some key areas:
- Customer focus
- Leadership
- Involvement of people
- Process driven approach
- Systematic approach to management
- Continual improvement
- Factual approach to decision making
- Mutually beneficial supplier relationships
In preparation for the visit we ensured we pulled together all of our 20+ processes into one document alongside an overview of the key objectives and responsibilities of our department, examples of all of our communications (newsletters, marketing council follow ups), analytics (for all of our internal and external channels) and live examples of our project management tools (currently in Trello).
The interview was going to last 1hr 45mins and would be attended by the Marketing Manager for Services/Infrastructure and myself. On the day we were the first of four departments to be quizzed and this took the following structure:
- Talking through our Central Marketing overview document
- Providing evidence of how we plan and work together (not in isolation) with the business
- Evidence in everything of testing and learning/evidence based decisions
- How we live monitor and measure all tasks
- An in depth Q&A
So, how did we do? Well - we passed with flying colours! Whilst detailing that we demonstrated a clear definition of roles and responsibilities the report concluded that we showed:If you have a written down process that no one ever follows, then you do not have a process.— Meeting Boy (@MeetingBoy) January 6, 2016
"A systematic, process based approach to marketing, provided as a centralised support function - January 2016"This was a massive achievement for us to be recognised as professionals in our field with an international award that is valid for three years. Importantly, it confirms our commitment to our colleagues. Finally, the auditor commented that he was particularly impressed as Marketing is not generally an area to demonstrate this process driven approach (e.g. in the same way as health and safety departments do) and that he usually arrives to find a few bullet points written on the back of a beer mat! Extra kudos for us then and now the fun work begins of using our 'approved' marketing skills to promote our way of working to other departments!
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