Integrated Mailing Solutions (IMS) has strengthened its position as an internationally accredited communications division with the achievement of ISO 9001:2008. IMS has been working hard to achieve the accreditation over the course of seven months and has now received official notification of its success. ISO 9001:2008 is by far the world’s most established quality framework, currently being used by 1, 064, 000 organisations in 178 countries worldwide. It sets the standard not only for quality management systems, but management systems in general. It provides organisations with the foundations to better customer satisfaction, staff motivation and continual improvement. In addition, the accreditation gives IMS the framework it needs to monitor and improve its performance in any area it chooses. To achieve the ISO certification, IMS had to demonstrate to the accrediting body LRQA (Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance) that it can meet the regulatory requirements and apply the system effectively to be of real benefit to its customers. The accreditation follows the success of the ISO 27001:2005 data security standard IMS was awarded for all of its services in 2009, including mail opening, document management and scanning, data capture, bespoke printing, fulfilment, franking and the supply of stationery. IMS have also recently successfully passed a six-monthly surveillance audit carried out by LRQA for ISO 27001:2005. The audit ensures the continuing compliance to the standards required by the International Standards Organisation and was carried out with no major or minor nonconformities. Ongoing compliance and monitoring is essential to ensure IMS continues to comply with the standard and all IMS employees are highly trained in quality management, briefed on the system and all are expected to adhere to its requirements. IMS is now subject to six monthly reviews and regular surveillance audits. It must also perform internal audits between these official assessments. On recommending IMS for the accreditation, Tony Smith, Management Systems Lead Assessor, LRQA said: “Evidence of the effective implementation of the quality management system (QMS) was provided. It was shown that QMS requirements have been successfully added to the existing information security management system. There is a strong top-down “right first time” culture which has been in place for many years and helps to maintain very low processing error rates with related good customer satisfaction.” As part of IMS’s efforts to achieve this new accreditation, a customer satisfaction survey was conducted among all IMS clients from the last 12 months. The results showed that an impressive 96% of customers would recommend the use of IMS’s services. Additionally, customers were also asked about their satisfaction regarding six of IMS’s primary services in order that IMS can continue to improve the service it delivers to customers, in terms of value for money, timeliness, reliability, flexibility, convenience and security and confidentiality. Tony Randle, General Manager IMS said: “We are delighted to have achieved this further accreditation which provides peace of mind to our customers and of course potential customers that IMS not only takes data security seriously, but realises the importance of having robust quality management systems in place.” He added: “The results of the customer satisfaction survey are also very pleasing, it’s vital we know how we are performing and if there are any changes we need to make in order to improve our service delivery. IMS prides itself on being a specialist business communications division and with so much competition in today’s marketplace, it’s important IMS stays ahead of the game.” -Ends-