What is a Certification Body?

What is certification?

Certification relates to an audit to confirm whether an organisation, a product or an individual meet the criteria laid out in a recognised standard or scheme. Effectively, it is third party confirmation via an audit that all is as it should be.

What is accreditation?

Accreditation is a higher standard of proof which involves the assessment of the competence and impartiality of an organisation and compliance that they work to a recognised standard or scheme.  Accreditation checks that the organisation has the competence and impartiality to perform specific technical activities such as certification.

APM Group Limited have been assessed by UKAS (United Kingdom Accreditation Service) to confirm that we work in accordance with international standards of ISO17024 and ISO17065 ( Reg No 126) when we develop and run certification schemes.

This means that anyone we work with and their partners can have confidence in what we all do i.e we provide assurance throughout the supply chain.

What do Certification Bodies do?

APM Group is a Certification Body which works in partnership with organisations to develop high quality training and qualification courses and solutions based on their Intellectual Property (IP). Together we translate their IP into Best Practice that can be shared through training courses and qualifications.

We accredit training organisations to ensure they have the appropriate material, skilled trainers and internal systems to provide consistent and repeatable experience to their clients.

Clients prefer to buy training from accredited trainers because they have demonstrated their training materials and trainer's meet quality standards.

We also provide assurance to the clients of those training organisations whether they are organisations or individuals who purchase training courses and the associated qualifications.  They can have confidence that both the training company and the qualification that they are taking have been developed to the highest possible standard and truly mean something in the field of Best Practice qualifications based on “ accredited by APMG”.

How do we certify and accredit training organizations?

Certification and Accreditation isn’t a one-off activity. It is a continuous process.

Is certification and accreditation for anybody?

For organizations or individuals with intellectual property who want to work with APMG to develop a high quality certification programme there are some pros and cons.

How will being accredited help grow your business?

Multiple sources of research suggest that organizations choosing an accredited supplier receive the following benefits:

• They are much more confident of certainty and reliability from their chosen supplier.
• They know that the assessment of quality and conformancy has been carried out independently thereby saving them time and effort in vendor assurance.
• They can compare like with like when choosing between two accredited organisations so competition remains at the point of delivery and the accreditation pre-screens potential suppliers.
• The risk of not getting what was expected is greatly reduced and is supported by independent appeals processes to underwrite the quality that is delivered from an accredited provider.

Will accreditation work for you?

If you have an idea regarding the development of a qualification or training course in any field of management, we would be delighted to speak to you to see how we can help. Why not fill in the form so we can have a conversation to convert your ideas into reality.