Certification of Organizations and Designs

Comment

Comment by TwitterFeed @hfjm - Jimmy Morgan on August 5, 2010 at 6:47am

Very Excited about this next step for the User Experiece industry.

Since 1990 at the start of my business career in user centred design, I have worked closely with certification programmes during the process of designing systems, software and processes.

Initially this was with BSI (British Standards) and ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation), designing systems, software and processes for the high-tech manufacturing sector. The standards and management systems that used the software I developed, then led to business improvement and regulatory approval.

Five years later, I specialised in providing this help to financial organisations, working with the Financial Services Authority (the regulator of all providers of financial services in the UK), during the process of designing systems and software.

Throughout this period, I observed that the ‘early-adopter’ companies that first certified their staff and departments, obtained rapid and significant business advantage for doing so. Moreover, although certification initially gave them this lead, it later became a ‘hygiene factor’ that was more of a ‘must have’ to keep market share.

Most importantly of all, not only did certification ensure more professionalism in these manufacturing and finance companies, but their employees suddenly had a profession. This did far more for employee retention than anything else I’ve ever seen.

So we’ve got a triple win of …
• Keeping your best staff
• Creating a new competitive advantage
• Maintaining Market Share when the rest of your industry follows you

I’m thinking gold rush …