International certifications are the gold standard to assess the quality of an organization’s products and services. Since companies in the field of IT and ITES cater to a wide range of industry sectors, international certifications become imperative to assure customers of the international quality standards that they adhere to. In short, certifications provide an internationally approved and accepted reference framework for dealings between manufacturers, vendors and customers.

Business benefits

When businesses possess international certifications like the ones mentioned below, it proves to their potential customers that they can expect some of the highest international quality standards in the products and/or services that the business provides.

Customer benefits

The flip side of these certifications is that customers do not need to worry about the quality of products and services to expect from a producer/service provider. If they possess an international certification, it means they have earned it only by maintaining the highest standards that applies to their industry. In short, such certifications serve to remove all doubts regarding an organization’s ability to deliver on its promises.

Certifications in the field of IT/ITES sector

ISO 9001

The ISO 9001 is an internationally recognized quality standard that covers all aspects of a company's business including design, development, production, sales and marketing. It also covers the vital aspect of effectively meeting customer needs. In fact, the ISO 9001 is the only implementation for which third-party auditors grant certifications. The latest version of this is the ‘2000’.

ISO (International Organization for Standardization) is the world’s largest developer of standards. It is a network of the national standards institutes of 156 countries, with a Central Secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland, coordinating the entire system.

BS7799

BS 7799 is the British Standard for information security. The 7799 standards are particularly pertinent to corporate governance in an "e-biz" context, where risk management not only has to contend with the usual risks of doing business.

• BS 7799:1999, also known as BS 7799 Part 1, was the standardized code of practice for information security management that was issued by the British Standard Institute (BSI). In 2000, the ISO and the International Electro technical Commission adapted the BS 7799 as ISO/IEC 17799. Both BS 7799:1999 and ISO/IEC 17799 essentially mean the same standardization but issued by two different institutes of standardization.

• BS 7799-2:2002, also known as, BS 7799, is a specification for an information security management system information security management system (ISMS) is, as the name suggests, a system of management concerned with information security.

Senior management can use ISMS monitor and control their security, minimizing the residual business risk and ensuring that the existing security framework continues to fulfill corporate, customer and legal requirements. It forms an integral part of an organization’s internal control system.

SEI models of quality contro

A.  CMM

The Capability Maturity Model for Software (also known as the CMM and SW-CMM) is used by many organizations to identify best practices useful in helping them increase the maturity of their processes. The SW-CMM was upgraded to CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) in the year 2000.

Devised by the Software Engineering Institute, Pittsburgh, as a model of standard certifications, the CMM describes an evolutionary improvement path from an ad hoc, immature process to a mature, disciplined process. It covers practices for planning, engineering, and managing software development and maintenance. When followed, these key practices improve the ability of organizations to meet goals for cost, schedule, functionality, and product quality.

This certification establishes a yardstick against which it is possible to judge, in a repeatable way, the maturity of an organization's software process and compare it to the state of the practice of the industry.

CMM is a framework that describes the key elements of an effective software process including business process management, quality improvement concepts and software development and maintenance. It is a community-developed guide to help the culture of engineering excellence evolve into a model for organizational improvement. It serves as the underlying structure for reliable and consistent software process assessments and software capability evaluations.

There are various CMM certifications for non-software processes as well, such as Business Process Management (BPM).

B.   P-CMM

The People Capability Maturity Model was designed as a model of standardization by the SEI to silence critics who argued that the CMM placed too much emphasis on process and technology and not enough on the people who did the actual work.

The pioneers of CMM too felt the need to prove that organizations that achieve the CMM could progress to that state only if they managed their people efficiently. The P-CMM, therefore, is an assurance that an organization lays great importance on efficiently and satisfactorily addressing issues regarding the management of their human resources.

The P-CMM is an adaptation of CMM concepts focused on developing an organization's human capabilities, especially talent in software and information systems development. The motivation for the P-CMM is to radically improve the ability of software organizations to attract, develop, motivate, organize, and retain the talent needed to steadily improve software development capability.

COPC

Founded in 1995, the Customer Operation Performance Center (COPC) focuses on improving call center operations, monitoring best practices in call centers, and training contact centers and vendors for certification. With almost 700 operational audits in 30 countries, the COPC is the worldwide authority and expert on operating and monitoring best practices in call centers.

Six Sigma

First used by Motorola, in its manufacturing division, where millions of parts are made using the same process repeatedly, Six Sigma stands for Six Standard Deviations (Sigma is the Greek letter used to represent standard deviation in statistics) from mean. Six Sigma methodology provides the techniques and tools to improve the capability and reduce the defects in any process. (

Eventually Six Sigma evolved and applied to other non manufacturing processes. Today you can apply Six Sigma to many fields such as Services, Medical and Insurance Procedures, Call Centers.

Six Sigma in an organization simply means a measure of quality that strives for near perfection. Six Sigma is a disciplined, data-driven approach and methodology for eliminating defects in any process from manufacturing to transactional and from product to service.

Applying Six Sigma methodology in any organization ensures that a measurement-based strategy focuses on process improvement and variation reduction through the application of Six Sigma improvement projects is implemented.

Two Six Sigma sub methodologies: DMAIC (define-measure-analyze-improve-control) and DMADV process (define-measure-analyze-design-verify) help companies achieve the Six Sigma levels.

The DMAIC is an improvement system for existing processes falling below specifications and looking for incremental improvement.

The DMADV is an improvement system used to develop new processes or products at Six Sigma quality levels. It can also be employed if a current process requires more than just incremental improvement.