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Westcon's European units net ISO certification

Westcon Group has announced that its entire European sales organisation has achieved the ISO9001:2000 certification, meaning the networking distributor's sales methodologies and processes are now officially recognised by the non-governmental organisation.

ISO9001:2000 is part of ISO's 9000 family of standards – the generally accepted basis for establishing quality management systems. Westcon Group's sales operations in the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, France, Spain and Germany all received the certification between March and June of this year.

That was thanks in part to Westcon's European Process Management System (EPMS), which was developed to bring visibility to the distributor's European procedures. Audits recently carried out by Lloyds Register Quality Assurance also focused on Westcon's European Continuous Improvement System (ECIS), which enables the company to request and monitor business process improvement for reporting and auditing purposes.

Gaining the ISO9001:2000 certification means Westcon's European subsidiaries' sales methodologies and processes are now officially recognised by the ISO, points out Westcon Group European Operations COO Simon Minett.

Vincent Povey, Westcon's European facilities manager, adds: 'Now that we have achieved ISO certification, we plan to move forward with regular European group-level quality forums, where common processes can be further refined and the culture of continual improvement can mature further across all of our European companies.'

Westcon Group witnessed an 11pc growth in revenues to $2.3bn (€1.8bn) in its fiscal year to February, reporting 'continuing improvement' in Europe in the second half of the review period. The bottom line also picked up as EBITDA more than doubled to $67m (€53m).