As of October 2025, Pro-Networks Ltd is an ISO 9001:2015 certified company.
We are incredibly pleased about this and have been spreading the news. Some people have reacted with surprise that we did not already have this accreditation, so we thought we'd put some context around our latest achievement.
We have always had internal processes and procedures. Some of these were operational, some of them were implemented to satisfy legislation such as DPA2018 (UK GDPR). Our operational procedures govern processes such as on-boarding new customers, performing cloud migrations, handling support calls, and the day-to-day running of the business.
Writing good procedures isn't easy. They need to be short and pithy, and still cover all the important points. They need to be accurate and sufficiently detailed, without being impenetrable. Procedures are no use at all if your staff can't bear to read them. If your procedures are not easily understood and simple to follow, you might as well not have them. We'd taken a lot of effort with our procedures, and as a result our processes ran smoothly.
Given all of that, ISO 9001:2015 didn't seem to offer us much benefit. For us, it was more important to obtain Microsoft Partnership status. (Currently we are both a Microsoft Modern Work Solutions Partner and a Microsoft Security Solutions Partner.) In a similar fashion, we're accredited partners with Dell, Cisco, Unifi, and other market leaders. As well as providing access to their top-tier product streams, it shows their recognition of our knowledge and skills.
Recently however, we have seen a growing trend with customers (and tender documents) with a requirement that their business partners have ISO 9001:2015. Given that we'd already wrapped procedures and governance around our important business processes, the feeling in-house was that it wouldn't be that big a task to satisfy the standard and get certified.
Thankfully, that belief was borne out.
Less a Ground Shift, More a Transition
Obviously, we still had to do work, but it was a fraction of what we'd have needed to do if we were starting with a blank slate.
We needed to adjust some of the language used in our procedures, to formally document our stance on quality, and define the scope of the certification. There were process diagrams that needed creating, and we combined our Cyber Risk Register and Operational Risk Register into a single Master Risk Register. We had to kick-off internal audits and adjust the induction process for new employees to include a grounding in our quality management system. And so on, and so on.
None of these were particularly troublesome or onerous.
The biggest difference between where we were and where we are now, was in treating our procedures as a single cohesive system. A system that could be monitored for effectiveness, reviewed by senior management and the board, and still deliver the level of quality we want our customers to enjoy.
The Proof of the Pudding: The External Audit
As far as we could see, we were addressing and satisfying all the requirements of the standard. But, until you’ve been audited and rubber-stamped by a certification body, there’s always a nagging doubt you’ve missed something or misunderstood a requirement.
Obviously, we passed. The first sentence of this blog post was a bit of a spoiler.
The way we’re viewing it is, the first assessment and the certificate show us we’ve got a compliant quality management system in place. What we need to do now is ensure it is maintained, followed, and if possible, improved.
Even though this does tick the ‘we’ve got ISO 9001’ box, it was more than a box-ticking exercise. We’ve invested the time and effort to put the framework in place, and we want to reap the benefits of using a formal quality management system.
The next external assessment will focus entirely on whether we’re running the system or not. And that’s fine. It doesn’t present us with any concerns.
We’ve always been committed to delivering quality. And that means we’re equally committed to embracing anything that helps us to achieve our end goal of exceeding our customer’s expectations.