At Zertic, we work with our clients to enhance and optimize the certification process. In this journey, the user and the implementor are central figures in the process. To gain insights into both perspectives, we interviewed Nazim Chowdhury, who has extensive experience in both roles.

Nazim Chowdhury
Certification specialist
Managing Director USA

“My name is Nazim Chowdhury. I have spent the last twenty years in the conformity assessment industry. My journey has allowed me to develop and grow my skillset skill spanning areas of strategy development & implementation, operations, P&L management, M&A, key account management, and people development. Alongside engaging with customers on both commercial and technical levels, I work in close partnership with leading assessment bodies to provide innovative cloud and on-premise SaaS solutions designed for inspections, audits, certification, accreditation, and standards compliance.“


How

was your experience

with Zertic?

I was on both sides of the fence. From first-hand experience, there is no other solution on the market like it.

What is your experience as a user?

As a user, Zertic streamlines the audit process by automating scheduling, notifications, and report generation. Users can easily plan audits, assign tasks, and track progress in real time. The system’s design focuses on minimizing the learning curve, allowing users to quickly become proficient with its features.

What is your experience as an implementor?

As an implementor, Zertic integrates smoothly with existing systems and processes. This reduces disruption and helps organizations transition to the new platform with minimal downtime. The process of migrating data from legacy systems to Zertic is usually straightforward, with tools and support provided to ensure data integrity and accuracy.

Zertic allows implementers to configure the platform according to the specific requirements of the certification body meeting accreditation requirements.

This includes setting up audit templates, workflows, and compliance checklists tailored to the organization’s standards. The ability to customize dashboards and reports ensures that users have access to relevant information at a glance.


Industry challenges

Based on your experience in the Conformity Assessment Industry.

what are some of the main challenges certification bodies face today?

Certification is a people business, not a capital-intensive one. Building and maintaining strong relationships with clients is essential for successful certification bodies. Growth comes with the challenge of scaling with the right people.

However, often productivity and efficiency are lost as the right set of tools or systems are not applied. For example, ISO certification requires the ability to connect with customers and relies heavily on the expertise and judgment of auditors and each organization seeking ISO certification is different, with unique processes, culture, and challenges.

Certification bodies must adapt the audit process to fit these specific contexts.


In-house
vs. External Solutions

“Zertic is built with compliance and security in mind, ensuring that it meets industry standards for data protection and audit integrity. Maintaining such high standards can be challenging and costly for in-house systems.“

Why are certification bodies seeking external solutions like Zertic even after having developed their own in-house systems?

Certification bodies are moving beyond in-house development. The in-house solution requires significant resources, including skilled developers, ongoing maintenance, and updates.

Certification bodies often prefer to allocate their resources towards their core activities rather than software development. Commercial solutions like Zertic are designed to scale with the growth of an organization. In-house systems may struggle with scalability, leading to performance issues as the number of audits and clients increases.

Zertic also leverages industry best practices and insights from working with multiple certification bodies. This collective expertise ensures that the platform incorporates innovative features and stays ahead of industry trends, something that in-house teams might find challenging to replicate.


The secret Benefits of Zertic

What were the most significant benefits

that companies can realize using Zertic?

While there may be an upfront investment associated with adopting Zertic, it often proves more cost-effective in the long run.

The costs associated with ongoing maintenance, upgrades, and troubleshooting of an in-house system can add up significantly overtime.

By using a specialized solution like Zertic, certification bodies can focus on their core competencies—delivering high-quality audits and certification services—rather than getting bogged down by IT and software management issues. Zertic is built with compliance and security in mind, ensuring that it meets industry standards for data protection and audit integrity.


Maintaining such high standards can be challenging and costly for in-house systems. Zertic is ISO 27001 certified.
Zertic provides detailed analytics and customizable dashboards that give certification bodies insights into their operations, audit outcomes,and performance metrics. This data can be used to identify trends, areas for improvement, and strategic decision-making.

A real-life Example:

Streamlining Processes

There are many topics like audit scheduling, documentation, client communication, and quote generation.
For example, before using Zertic auditors manually coordinated schedules with clients.

However, after using Zertic’s automated scheduling tool, auditors could input their availability, and clients could book audit slots directly through an integrated calendar system. This eliminated scheduling conflicts and significantly reduced the time spent coordinating schedules.

One of the most obvious areas that Zertic helped was creating quotes. Before using Zertic, it was lengthy questionnaires, on average 30 minutes to do a proposal and lengthy approvals. By using Zertic, we had 25 minutes of productivity per proposal. Zertic client acquisition process reduced proposal turnaround to under five minutes.


What about integration?

How did our product integrate with other systems or software?

Zertic ensures it can fit seamlessly into the existing technological ecosystems of certification bodies. This flexibility helps enhance operational efficiency, improving data accuracy, and ensuring smooth workflows across different departments and systems. Zertic offers robust API support, allowing it to communicate and exchange data with other software systems. Through APIs, Zertic can integrate with various tools and platforms such as:

ERP Systems: To sync financial data, client information, and resource management.

CRM Systems: For streamlined client management, tracking client interactions, and maintaining comprehensive client records.

Document Management Systems: To ensure seamless access to and management of documents across different platforms.

Zertic allows users to import and export data using common file formats like CSV and Excel. This facilitates easy data transfer between Zertic and other systems that certification bodies might be using for record-keeping, reporting, or data analysis.

It can integrate with SSO providers to enable users to log in using their existing credentials from other systems. This simplifies the user experience by reducing the need to remember multiple passwords and enhances security by leveraging existing authentication frameworks.

For systems that do not support standard APIs, Zertic can develop custom connectors. These are tailored integration solutions designed to work with specific software or proprietary systems used by certification bodies.

“In conclusion, I would say that Zertic significantly enhances the efficiency, consistency, and quality of the ISO certification process. By leveraging Zertic, certification bodies can improve their operational performance, ensure compliance with standards, and deliver better service to their clients. These benefits make Zertic a valuable tool for any certification body looking to modernize and streamline its operations.”