Business Assurance Methodology
Our unique assessment methodology - Business Assurance - helps you manage your systems and risks to improve and protect the current and future performance of your organisation.
Business Assurance is built on three pillars and extends the focus beyond the certificate to an assessment approach designed to help organisations meet their strategic objectives through
- Risk-based methodology
- Meeting stakeholder's expectations
- Continual Improvement.
Risk-based methodology
Developing an understanding of your strategic and operational plans, alongside our knowledge of your industry, allows identification of the key risks pertinent to your sector and organisation. This enables the design of the management system to be continually evaluated to ensure that it takes account of, and addresses, such risks. It also ensures that the system is, and remains, complete, robust and appropriate. This approach allows you to build trust and enhance your reputation among stakeholders.
Meeting stakeholders' expectations
Businesses have many stakeholders: they include shareholders, customers, regulators and employees. All of these people want and need to know the business is run properly, and is protected from risk.
An important part of Business Assurance methodology is providing stakeholders with evidence that their interests are being looked after. That is why certification from LRQA is such a significant benefit: it tells your stakeholders that you set the very highest standards. At LRQA, we don’t just verify that systems meet the requirements of the relevant standard. We go one step further by providing ‘added value’ beyond what you would expect from a traditional assessment process:
- an impartial assessment you can trust
- insight into the effectiveness of your systems through the knowledge and technical expertise of our assessors
- enhanced credibility - LRQA is a globally trusted brand with a portfolio of internationally recognised clients.
Continual improvement
Left alone, the effectiveness of a management system can diminish over time. However, when continual improvement is effectively implemented the benefits are measurable.
How is Business Assurance different?
We always set out to:
- understand your business
- deliver real value
- demonstrate the links between business objectives and audit findings
LRQA introduced Business Assurance to the certification market in 2004. This initiative had significant influence across the industry, expending the focus beyond the certification to an assessment approach linked to strategic objectives.
We tailor our assessments so they match your business, its sector, its level of maturity and its aims. That might mean helping you achieve certification. Or it might mean helping you use your management systems in a far more strategic and meaningful way. It's about what is right for your organisation, right now.
We look at what matters most
Business Assurance approach involves focusing on what really matters most. We take a systematic approach in determining what risks your business faces, so we can tailor the assessment to make it directly relevant to the maturity and effectiveness of your management systems.
How do we do it?
With conformity underpinning everything we do, Business Assurance turns assessment into a powerful management tool to improve and protect performance. By understanding what really matters to your organisation and stakeholders, we help you improve your management system and your business at the same time.