Motivations and Expectations at the beginning of the Certification ProcessAPCER, the leading Portuguese certification body, carried out a study to find out which motivations and expectations influence a company at the beginning of the certification process.
The sample was composed of all companies that realised the certification audit between May 2002 and August 2003. In total, 198 questionnaires were analysed with the statistical package SPSS 11.5.
Most part of the analysed questionnaires were from companies that obtained the certification during the year 2003 (66,2%). Concerning the type of company, 89,4% were SME and 10,6% large enterprises. 67,7 % of the companies were certified by ISO 9001:2000 and 9,1% by ISO 14001:1999.
The objective of the first question was to determine why these companies had implemented a management system. 85,9% indicated that "Organisational improvement" was the most important factor, followed by "Image improvement" (63,6%) "Improvement of competitiveness" 54,5% and "Strategic orientation" (51%). All these motivations were characterized by response rates higher than 50%.
With a second question it was asked why companies decided to certify their management systems. 55,6% of the companies indicated that it was a mean to achieve added value.
This study allowed to determine if the motivations to implement a management system and those associated with the decision for certification are the same, comparing SME's and large companies results.
Concerning the implementation of management systems, differences were found in "Strategic orientation" (large companies - 76,2%; SME - 48%) and in "Economic group requirement" (large companies - 48%; SME - 10,2%).
For SME the fundamental motivation was "Organisational improvement" (87%) and for large companies "Organisational improvement" and "Strategic orientation", both with 76,3% of the answers.
The motivations for certification of SME's are certainly different from the ones of a large company. In these premises the following aspects were valid: "Involvement/motivation" (SME - 41,%; large company - 28,6%); "Access to new markets" (SME - 41,2%; large company - 28,6%); "Recognition of the system" (SME - 37%; large company - 52,4%) and "Economic group requirement" (SME - 10,2%; large company - 33,3%).
With this results, we can conclude that SME's use certification to get new clients and to access new markets. On the other hand, large companies use it as a possibility of recognition, by the market and all the interested parties, of their management system.
The highest motivation for a SME to certify its management system was "Obtain added value", with 55,9% of the responses, while a large company seeks the certification to "Obtain added value" too, plus "Marketing argument" and "Recognition of the system". All the options had a response rate of 52,4%.
With this study, APCER had contributed to evaluate why companies implemented and certified management systems, something that, in the authors opinion, is very relevant for the success of the certification business.
The authors propose, for future works, the evaluation of client motivations and expectations after the delivery of certification services.
Pedro Alves and Paulo Sampaio,
APCER
Associação Portuguesa de Certificação
www.apcer.pt