Learn how to achieve ISO 9001 certification without paper folders or Excel lists by using the right digital tools.

In our company, there isn’t a single paper folder — all information is kept fully digital. Nevertheless, we achieved ISO 9001 certification without any major findings or a helping hand from expensive consultants.

ISO 9001 used to be a static, heavy norm designed to produce folders full of paper processes that collected dust after the certification audit was over. Not so anymore. With its 2015 update, the ISO 9001:2015 norm became more actionable and practical, with more focus being put on living the processes in daily life rather than on completeness on paper.

Being practical people, we asked ourselves the following questions at the beginning of the certification process:

What information changes all the time, and what information needs to be kept consistent?

What information is so important that we have to communicate changes to our workforce?

Where is the “master copy” of each piece of information, and how can we make sure we don’t create inconsistent duplicates?

Only after answering these questions did we start to read the norm to find out if all the required information is available in our company.

Below are the exact steps we took to get ready for the ISO 9001 certification audit.

Step 1: Eliminate Excel lists and use interactive tools

Before starting to define and document our processes, we eliminated as many Excel lists as possible — information stored in Excel lists is often outdated. Instead, we rely on tools such as JIRA to organize important information that changes regularly, for example, risks and assets:

How to Build an ISO 9001 Compliant Risk Management Tool Using JIRA

How to Build An ISO 27001 Compliant Asset Management Tool Using JIRA

Dynamic tools such as JIRA allow us to aggregate information in different dashboards, which we then use to track progress in our regular leadership meetings.

Step 2: Distinguish between technical documentation, company documentation, and process documentation

We explicitly distinguish between technical documentation, company documentation, and process documentation:

• Technical documentation includes specifications, system documentation, etc. Since technical documentation is updated often and collaboratively, we use Confluence to manage technical documentation. Technical documentation is uncontrolled, i.e. all team members can contribute directly to Confluence without an approval workflow.
• Company documentation includes finance documents, marketing materials, proposals, etc. These are stored in our digital folder structure (see step 3 below). Company documentation is controlled only by the folder access rights, but all team members with access to a certain folder can generate, update and delete files without an approval workflow.
• Process documentation is kept short, where we use the power of the hyperlink to refer to technical documentation and company documentation directly from the processes (see steps 4 and 5 below). Process documentation is controlled, i.e. only the process owners can change process documentation. However, all team members can raise change requests to initiate a change to a process.

Step 3: Reduce duplicate information

It is imperative to keep every piece of information only available in one place. A well-organized digital folder structure is the key to reducing duplicate information. We use Google Drive for Business, which has the advantage that linking to a certain Google Drive folder from our technical documentation or process documentation is very easy, as the entire Google toolset is built around the core concept of the hyperlink.

Step 4: Set up process documentation

Only after steps 1 to 3 did we start to set up the process documentation. We set up one document for every core process in Yonder, our own content management solution:

• Leadership Processes
• Sales Processes
• Customer Processes
• Design Processes
• Development Processes
• Support Processes

Contrary to documents kept on a digital folder structure, these documents are much more interactive, as they are based on individual information modules.

The advantages of the modular approach are best explained in a real-life example: Whenever you ISO 9001 documentation, you probably think “flow chart” immediately. We killed the flow chart. Process flow charts might make sense in production companies, but certainly not in a SaaS company like ours. We created linear processes, where we used the checklists as we know them from aviation as a guiding principle. Of course, all processes are interactive — links allow one to jump between the process steps, and tags allow one to filter out information that is not relevant to a certain group of employees. The key to this approach is that each process step is an individual information module, which can be linked, filtered, and changed independently from other information modules.

Furthermore, many processes require forms and templates. We have embedded forms and templates directly into the processes, where the current version of a form or template can be downloaded directly from the affected process step — no more searching for the right form, or the latest version of that template!

Here is a sample screenshot from our recruiting process, where links, tags, and embedded templates are visible:

Step 5: Live the process

Once the process documentation is set up and fully linked, it’s all about keeping it up to date. Updates are initiated by a change request directly in our content management solution, and once approved by the process owner, the changes are communicated to all affected teams. When reading a document, changes are visually marked by a black bar on the right side of the text. Furthermore, all changes in a document are provided as a clickable revision list. In this way, both employees and auditors can see what has changed in the process documentation since the last version.

Here is a screenshot with the changes to our expense process, as we recently switched from Expensify to Yokoy:

Conclusion

ISO 9001 certification is less painful when the right digital tools are used. However, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution: it’s all about using the right tool for the right purpose, and about linking information in these different tools to avoid duplicates.

Kudos to the guys who invented the hyperlink.