What is ISO 27001 Certification, and why does it matter?
For all organizations, procurement practices involve sharing and analyzing data, including third-party data from clients and suppliers. Data from suppliers, but also data given to suppliers, must be continuously protected to ensure security in supplier relations.
The responsibility to protect and continually maintain this data falls on your procurement team, as well as the vendors and IT solutions they chose.
In this blog we will explore ISO 27001 Certification, what it is, what it means, and why it’s a key factor in vendor choice for many organizations looking to digitize their procurement function.
What is ISO 27001 Certification?
Put simply, organizations evaluating vendors for digital procurement solutions will look for ISO 27001 Certification as this guarantees that a vendor is dedicated to protecting and continuously maintaining the procurement data that will flow through their digital solution.
ISO 27001 is the international standard for information security and sets out the specific requirements for an effective ISMS (information security management system). To earn this certification a vendor must go through multiple audits that test their ability not just to protect data but to continually improve data protection for the future.
Organizations that have received certification have implemented an extensive array of information security measures and various risk management strategies to counter potential security risks.
Why is ISO 27001 Certification important in vendor selection?
When selecting a digital procurement solution, organizations should prioritize vendors with ISO 27001 Certification, here’s some reasons why:
- To Compete – Many commercial or government contracts will require ISO 27001 Certification as standard. For those who want to compete for certain contracts, partnering with a vendor that has ISO 27001 Certification will be key.
- Trust – While a vendor may provide a verbal guarantee that their security will be continually maintained, etc, this won’t always be the case and it can be hard to ensure this does happen. Yet, with ISO 27001 Certification you can remain certain that a third party will ensure this certification is upheld with the risk of being withdrawn.
- Reduce risk in supplier relations – While you want to keep your own data safe, suppliers do too. By ensuring you are partnered with an ISO 27001 certified vendor you can manage data security risks much more easily.
- Continuity - ISO 27001 Certification isn’t an isolated certificate, one factor this certification relies upon is that security is continuously upheld and managed, not just in an isolated period, but ensures that vendors are making a promise they can’t go back on.
Why you should partner with an ISO 27001 certified organization
Unit4’s ISO 27001 certified Source-to-Contract solution enables organizations to manage their data security and compliance measures easily. This is clear in the case of many Unit4 S2C customers who have consolidated these tasks within the Contract Management module.
Marston’s, a Unit4 S2C customer reported that: “tons and tons and tons of contracts were coming in, going into a physical signoff basket, and, each week, a director in the legal department needed to go through the pile and sign off the contracts by hand, causing delays and missed opportunities.”
With the confidence of partnering with a vendor, Unit4, who has ISO 27001 certification, legal and compliance tasks were streamlined, allowing opportunities to be realized quickly without getting stuck in the legal processes.
Colruyt, another Unit4 S2C customer, found that they could increase efficiency by standardizing sourcing processes based on best practices. ISO 27001 certification was key in this so security didn’t hold up procurement processes or affect supplier relations – supplier feedback highlighted their appreciation of transparency around security.
To learn how Unit4’s Source-to-Contract procurement solution can help your organization standardize and streamline security and legal processes with our ISO 27001 certification, visit our dedicated product page, or hear Colruyt and Marston’s story in full.
