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UL DQS Inc. (Private) |
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October 15, 2012 Issue |
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The Most Powerful Name In Corporate News and Information |
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Providing Sustained, Value-Added Assessments of Management Systems and Business Processes through 45,000 Locations in over 100 Countries, UL DQS Inc. is Generating Confidence, Trust and High Technical Competency in the Market |
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www.ul-dqsusa.com
As a certification partner,
UL DQS strives to provide exceptional service and value to clients in order
for them to realize the maximum benefits from a certificate bearing the UL
DQS name. UL DQS Inc. works with clients seeking to independently assess and
certify their management systems to one of the many ISO standards and/or
evaluate their practices against their own internal expectations, hence
making them more efficient, competitive and profitable.
Mr. Rao began his career in 1986 in the chemical industry and later served as a Project Manager for consulting services in the areas of environmental management and pollution prevention. In this role he worked with small and medium enterprises in the Midwest for the automotive, furniture, steel, and real estate sectors.’
Mr. Rao holds a Master of Science Degree in Environmental Engineering from the University of Regina (Canada) and a Bachelor of Technology Degree in Chemical Engineering from Anna University (India). He is a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the American Society for Quality, and the Air & Waste Management Association. He has served on the ANSI Homeland Security Standards Panel and is a member of the U.S. Technical Advisory Group to the ISO for Social Responsibility, Nanotechnologies, Quality Management Systems, and Environmental Management Systems. |
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Telephone interview conducted by: Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor, CEOCFO Magazine, Published – October 15, 2012
CEOCFO: Mr. Rao, what is the focus at UL DQS today? Mr. Rao: Independent assessments by UL DQS enable companies to gain market access and acceptance. UL DQS Inc. helps its clients produce and deliver products that meet their customer’s needs and shareholder’s interests. Companies are also able to generate products and services that make the best use of resources in a customer and environmentally friendly manner, provide them in markets that meet or exceed customer expectations and develop effective and efficient business processes that minimize organizational risk.
CEOCFO: The UL mark is well-known. Would you tell us about the DQS part? Mr. Rao: Similar to UL, there are different organizations that focus on the development of standards. UL provides independent product certifications for global industries. UL is well- known and respected in the US and globally. Similarly, in Germany, there is an organization called DIN which also develops standards for industry needs. As part of industry expectations and industry requests, they established DQS to provide independent assessments and certifications. DQS has a strong reputation and presence in Europe. The merger of UL and DQS provided the opportunity to form a truly global company, share resources and take advantage of synergies. By independently certifying an organization, we have ensured that they comply and conform to those standards.
CEOCFO: Businesses are interested in the certification; are consumers interested as well? Mr. Rao: The level of awareness by the consumer at the point of purchase is low. It is seamless to them. The certification process is critical at the production stage. The manufacturing companies that provide products to end consumers are aware and thus, comprise our clientele. It is about reliability and inherent success of the certification process. The consumer expects a safe product, a green product and a risk-free product, whether it is the food they buy, a medical device that is used in their medical care or whether they are driving the car or taking a flight. In any industry, if you are using a product, a certain level of quality performance is expected. That confidence is enabled by the certification. The end-user does not see it because it is already built into the product that is created.
CEOCFO: What about the certification process? What goes into the mix for you and who is paying for your services? Mr. Rao: The certification process depends on the knowledge and awareness of the customer. For a company that is new to the certification process, we start with a general overview of the requirements for their executive team, so they become familiar with their role in this process and the commitment required to this process. It could then lead to a further training for their operational execution team so that they are aware and quite familiar with the requirements of the standard, of how they translate to their company’s benefit, what the expectations are and how they demonstrate conformance to their chosen standard. We may then return to the customer and provide a gap assessment to identify any gaps in their system and where they are in their state of readiness towards the certification. The next touch point with the client could consist of an off-site review to determine their readiness. The second stage of the review is a certification review where each phase of the business processes and the management system is assessed from interpreting their customer’s needs, understanding how they create their product or service, how they would design it, the materials they would procure, how they inspect, process or manufacture the product through to the point of shipping the product to their customer. Our goal is to make sure our clients are knowledgeable of the requirements of the standard they are looking to become certified to. The client is responsible for how they will implement those requirements. This is how we maintain our independence and is the key principle in this process. We provide confidence to the buyer. Our certification essentially demonstrates to the marketplace that company “ABC” has an internal control and management system in place that assures that there is a consistent, reliable service or product that can be expected from them. With the globalization of the marketplace, companies procure products from many different parts of the world. They are not always able to visit that particular supplier. That is where they rely on companies like UL DQS to provide that independent assurance that the company can indeed be relied on to supply them consistent and timely products, with the characteristics that the customer has specified.
CEOCFO: What are some of the unique aspects that you are looking at, some of the things that people would not even think about? Mr. Rao: One of the most unique aspects that we assess is the ability of the company to sustain their performance. With change, whether it is internally driven by the customer or externally driven, changes in personnel or chronic conditions, what they are looking at is whether the management system properly leverages the growth of their operation and it’s sustainability with an improvement over a period of time. There is an expectation that there are always opportunities to improve and by visiting them periodically, you can see evidence of the company’s capability to sustain their performance. It is not just at a point in time or the point of the audit where they need to demonstrate this conformance, but for the buyer to know that this is someone who we can rely on over the long-term and we can also expect some improvement through this journey.
CEOCFO: Does it happen often to find companies that are not living up to the expectation? Mr. Rao: We do find companies that are unable to maintain their certification. There are all types of companies. Globally, it is true for every market. Companies in a variety of industries often must provide evidence of conformity to certain standards in order to bid on or accept new work from different customers. Certification is a necessary component of being part of a supply chain. There are companies who will use it just for the purpose of proving conformance, but then do not live up to it and keep that system going. At the end of the day, the management system has to enable that company to achieve its own organizational goals and attain its business objectives. We are just a catalyst. We are independent, we provide the stimulus and the client is responsible to sustain it. Some companies do “let it fall” for a variety of reasons, either the economic conditions change and they are no longer able to provide that effort and focus internally, or top management have lost the interest in keeping them going. It takes a lot of internal effort to sustain certification. It has to be embedded in their culture and DNA - that there is a right way to do things. All standards are good business practices. Conforming to any of these standards will essentially help them succeed and continue to improve. You can do the right thing at a point in time and let it slip, and that happens, but the ones that do benefit over the long-term are the ones that make it part of their normal operating processes, so it is no longer a burden for them. Essentially, it becomes how they operate their business.
CEOCFO: What is the competitive landscape for you? Are there many companies that do similar certifications? Mr. Rao: Yes there are several companies that we compete with both nationally and globally. In the US marketplace, there are a few hundred certification bodies. Some are fairly small and cater to a few hundred customers and others are larger ones, like us, who have customers in the thousands. Our differentiating point here is we have the ability to provide our services anywhere in the world. In any large economic center we have operations and resources. We do have competitors who are European based companies also operating locally in the US similar to our operations in Europe. Among the larger certification bodies there are a few that do compete head-to-head with us.
CEOCFO: Do you do much outreach to potential customers or do people know about you at this stage of the game? Mr. Rao: It is a balance. There is a very strong word-of-mouth customer outreach for us, where our customers buy our services and through their own experience, they share that with their customers or suppliers. We also engage in various industry forums through conferences. We focus on exhibiting thought leadership, technical leadership and we have speaking positions at different conferences and meetings. Our outreach focus is through more directly engaging with specific industries.
CEOCFO: Are there geographic areas where you would like to have a stronger presence? Mr. Rao: We operate nationally. It is very much focused on where the customer base is. Our staff and operations are distributed throughout the country. Our customers are in over forty states. If there is economic activity, typically we would have our focus there. We are concentrated on the eastern half of the country by the nature of where industries that need are services are located. We would like to improve our outreach in the northwest and southwest.
CEOCFO:
With the changes in technology, manufacturing and materials, how do you as
an organization keep up?
CEOCFO: How have you fared with the current economic scenario? Mr. Rao: We are part of that. Fortunately, we have had a fairly strong and robust growth for the past three or four years since the downturn. It takes a different effort. Because we cater to industry, manufacturing in particular, their ups-and-downs do affect us. What has been unique in this change in the past few years is that companies have to stay alive and operational but they have cut back on head-count and their own internal resources. We are driven very much by the size of their operations. As the size shrinks, our own level of effort is diminished. The larger the organization, the greater the effort from our side to perform an assessment and certification. A large organization will need a greater level of effort for us to perform an assessment and certification. Therefore, although we might keep the customers, if they have gone down by about 20 or 30 percent in the volume of their business or the number of people that they have employed, then we decrease our onsite time. We have been impacted in that manner. However, what we have done is compensated by seeking new customers and new industries where there is stronger growth.
CEOCFO: Why should investors and people in the business community pay attention to UL DQS today? Mr. Rao: We are a very well recognized brand with a high degree of market acceptance as a company that can provide confidence and trust in the marketplace. People rely on us to be able to judge their buying decisions. Companies rely on us to provide an in-depth, independent assessment of how they are performing and to share best practices with them. It is risk management. Any incident that reflects on the quality of your product can have a very disastrous effect on the company. Wherever you are able to put in a management system and business processes that are reliable, that have top management attention, that are sustainable over the long-term, those are critical assets to the company. It is our mission to become part of this process. We provide these services globally so large organizations with multiple locations, have a level of confidence and recognition with our brand name. UL DQS presents a degree of confidence.
CEOCFO: What should people remember most when they read about UL DQS?
Mr. Rao:
Trust. When they read
about us, when they see our name, they know that when we verify a customer’s
business and processes, it can be relied on. What we generate in the market
is confidence, trust and high technical competency. |
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What we generate in the market is confidence, trust and high technical competency. - Ganesh Rao |
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