Why you need to define interested parties for your ISO Management System (MS)

Clause 4.2 of the ISO standard requires you to understand the needs and expectations of interested parties.

Interested parties or ‘Stakeholders’ are people or organisations that influence your ability to meet your quality and regulatory requirements consistently. By understanding their needs and expectations, your MS will help you to identify risks and prevent quality issues from happening or at least determine how to deal with any nonconformities when they occur.

Title & Activity

The Title column includes a list of the most common types of interested parties an auditor would expect to see in your MS. The Activity is a summary of what the Interested Party does. You can easily tailor these to match your organisation or add new interested parties:

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There is no requirement in the ISO 9001:2015 Standard for you to consider interested parties that are not relevant to its quality management system. It is for the organisation to decide if a particular requirement of a relevant interested party applies to its quality management system.

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Needs, Expectations and Requirements

This column lists the Needs, Expectations and Requirements of your interested parties in your MS. For example, standards, contracts and performance specifications, workplace needs, industry standards or codes of practice for the products and services. Understanding these needs will help you to identify opportunities for improvement.

Can also consider implicit expectations.

For example, customer expectations could include:

• ​​​Good quality product and professional service
• Clear lines of responsibility
• Good communication and accountability
• A clear understanding of costs and additional fees that may incur
• Clear terms and conditions​​​

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How we meet those needs

This column lookups at the Controls list enabling you to easily select all the measures in place that ensure you meet the needs of your interested parties in your MS.

For example, customers could include:

• ISO 9001 certification
• Quality Management System​ (QMS)
• Documented Policies and Procedures
• Training and awareness
• Records of customer feedback
  

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Communication

This column lists all the forms of communication required to ensure your interested parties know the quality expectations.

For example, customers could include:

• Email
• Telephone conversations
• Regular progress meetings
• Key project documentation
• Customer Satisfaction Surveys
  

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Requirement Requiring Compliance

This column looks up to the Legal Register, enabling you to easily select all the quality compliance requirements of interested parties in your QMS.

For example, customers could include:

• Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008
• Consumer Rights Act 2015
• Data Protection Act 2018 / GDPR Regulations (with amendments)
• Sale of Goods Act 1979
• Trade Description Act 1968
  

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Management Reports

The Interested Parties list data can be filtered and sorted to provide management reports by interested parties, influence, trends, or legal obligations so you can quickly identify the information required for audits and reports.

Having determined roles, responsibilities, and authorities for your ISO MS, you can now move to the next step:

Step Implementation Guides:

1: Roles & Responsibilities

2: Aims and objectives

3: Controls

4: SWOT Analysis

5: Interested Parties

6: Legal Register

7: Processes & Procedures

8: Key Performance Indicators

9: Risks & Opportunities

10: Audit Programme