Photo credit: <link http: www.bransononline.com>www.bransononline.com For a number of years now, Rwanda has started a new era to promote quality service- driven economy. This endeavor has called to instigating the culture of customer care and quality service in all lines of businesses. Service delivery campaigns, including the notorious “NaYombi” by the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), have been launched. Organizations are doing their best to meet customer expectations by providing timely response, and collecting customer feedback for service improvement. In all ways, customer satisfaction has become a major requirement.

 According to the Rwanda Governance Board (RGB) note of 16th December 2015, currently Rwanda stands at 72% away from its 85% target by 2018 on offering good service to clients by all service providers. With the current situation, much has been done and more still needs to be done to keep improving the performance of the service sector. The Government of Rwanda, through Rwanda Standards Board (RSB), is committed to providing standards based solutions in order to promote trade and protect consumers; and achieve social-economic development in a stable environment. It is in this regard that the ISO 9001: 2015 Quality Management System (QMS) - requirements, commonly known as ISO 9001 was identified as a pillar in meeting or exceeding customer expectation.  

 ISO 9001 is an internationally recognized Quality Management standard, which was published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). It provides guidelines on how to develop, implement, and manage a quality system.
Its purpose is to facilitate and enable consistency of services and products by ensuring that customer requirements are met.

Most of organizations acquire ISO 9001 with the target to access new businesses.  However, once on the pathway, they quickly find benefits in terms of improved internal processes, more consistent delivery, and finally observe reduction of loss in rework once they successfully implemented it.

Benefits of implementing ISO 9001 requirements are enormous. An organization that implements that standard gains improved productivity and efficiency, competitive advantage and increased marketing and sales opportunities. Also, cost reductions are adhered to through minimization of waste and rework, improved consistency of product and service performance through the control of  internal processes, improved communications, morale and job satisfaction within the organization and with customers, higher customer satisfaction levels, as well as improved customer perception. Entities implementing ISO 9001 requirements maximize the benefits through acquiring Certification of their system. Rwanda Standards Board offers its customers ISO 9001 certification, amongst other system and product certification services.

With all the efforts put in fast-tracking development of the national service-driven economy, it is due time for Rwanda private and public sectors to consider implementation of ISO 9001: 2015 Quality Management System (QMS) requirements to maximize their business profitability, sustainability and gain a competitive edge in the market.