ISO Template Toolkit vs Consultant – What’s the Difference?

Scott Naisbett
Sep 2, 2024
3 min read

Updated: Mar 6

ISO template toolkit vs consultant comparison for ISO 9001 implementation

ISO Template Toolkits vs Consultants — Are You Actually Saving Money?

Over the years we’ve often found ourselves competing with ISO template toolkits — large bundles of pre-written policies, procedures and forms that promise a quick route to ISO certification.

At first glance they can look attractive. They’re relatively inexpensive and appear to contain everything needed to build a management system.

However, the reality is often very different.

This month we thought it would be helpful to outline some of the practical differences between using an ISO template toolkit vs consultant support.

Who Actually Does the Work?

When organisations purchase a toolkit, they are usually presented with a large number of policies, procedures and forms.

The responsibility for turning those documents into a working system then sits entirely with the organisation.

By contrast, when working with a consultant, the consultant typically completes the vast majority of the system development work. In our case, we usually carry out around 95% of the technical work involved in building the system, leaving the organisation to focus on providing business-specific information.

Avoiding Over-Engineered Systems

One of the most common issues with template toolkits is overwritten systems.

Toolkits are designed to work for any organisation, regardless of size or sector. Because of this they often contain far more documentation than a business actually needs.

The result is a system that becomes an administrative burden rather than something that supports the organisation.

When a consultant designs the system, the focus is usually on building a system that fits the business, rather than forcing the business to fit a pre-written structure.

The Difficulty of Building a System from Templates

Template documents can sometimes be useful when an organisation needs a specific policy or procedure.

However, building an entire ISO management system from a collection of generic templates can be extremely challenging.

Many toolkits include:

documents that are irrelevant to the organisation
duplicated processes
policies that do not align with how the business actually operates

As a result, organisations often spend significant time trying to adapt the templates into something usable.

Certification Audits vs Document Libraries

Operating a quality “system” from a toolkit is very different from preparing for a certification audit.

Certification auditors are not assessing individual documents — they are assessing a system of interrelated processes.

They want to see that processes:

work together
are appropriate for the organisation
are neither overly complex nor insufficient

A template toolkit is typically just a collection of independent documents. It rarely forms a fully integrated management system without substantial modification.

ISO 9001 and Documentation

Another important point is that the current ISO 9001 standard does not mandate a large set of procedures.

In fact, the standard:

does not require a quality manual
does not require documented procedures
requires only a single policy statement

Because of this, it’s often surprising to see toolkits still being sold containing large numbers of procedures and policies that may not actually be required.

Certification auditors today are far more interested in how the organisation operates, rather than the number of documents it has.