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There are standards for every Kiwi business. Whether you want to boost the efficiency of your operation, improve product or service quality, cut costs and increase profits, toughen up IT security, or build customer confidence, using standards can help.

The benefits of using standards

Standards are voluntary or mandatory ‘best practice’ guidance developed by those who use them. 

Using standards can offer a set of powerful business and marketing tools for organisations of all sizes. You can use them to fine-tune your performance, demonstrate quality and manage the risks you face while operating in more efficient and sustainable ways. 

There are standards to help:

Discover standards to help your business

Standards New Zealand is New Zealand’s national standards body that helps develop and provide access to standards. From broadly applicable standards to those that are industry-specific, standards help guide you on the right way to do things and can be used towards accreditation for competitive edge. Find the standards you need or discover curated collections or make your own online library.

Buy or subscribe to standards and find over 150 sponsored standards for use with building and construction, healthcare and energy efficiency.

Get standards

Discover curated collections of popular standards to help drive specific business needs. Find a collection to suite or build your own with an online subscription.

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Take a step further with accreditation or certification

Certification represents an assurance by a third party of the conformity of a product, process or service to specified requirements. Accreditation, on the other hand, is the formal recognition by an authoritative body of the competence to work to specified standards.

Both follow a formal process based on measurable evidence – standards help determine what this evidence could look like or include. Both are a seal of approval that gives consumers — retailers, wholesalers and individual consumers — confidence that their purchases meet required standards. 

Depending on your product or service certification may be voluntary or mandatory – for example and organisation claiming a product is ‘organic’ must meet strict criteria to demonstrate the accuracy of the claim.  Another example is an organisation following ISO 9001 Quality management. They may wish to follow the advice of the standard to ensure their systems and processes are well documented and protected for business resilience, however they do not need to be certified. Certification does demonstrate however that they do things well.

There are many certification and accreditation bodies that specialise in particular industries or standards. The Joint Accreditation System of Australia and New Zealand (JASANZ) can help you find one to match your needs:

Joint Accreditation System of Australia and New Zealand(external link)