Service Analysis
If your ‘product’ is a service, a QMS and QA is as important. Your brand will depend on a uniformity of quality offered to your clients.
Your service might be assessed by an industry body (e.g. FORS or ER for transport) or a public body's QA standard (OFSTED, CQC, the Environment agency…the list is long). Complying with the requirements of external auditors is essential to your business' success.
Compliance and high standards, while safe guarding your business, will also protect your staff and reduce staff churn. In any service industry, your staff are your profit, your most valuable asset.
Risk assessment underpins safe practice and its reach is far wider than health and safety considerations.
Case Sudy
Installing fibre cables in Europe
The main issues services relate to the UK's (new) ESG matrix: Environmental impact; Social responsibility – employment law and regulations, health and safety, local taxes; Governance – the lawful running of your company. The same issues will arise in any country you are working in: the matrix to explore, however, are the country's and/or wider bloc (federal laws in the US&59; EU laws and regulations in an EU member state's) regulations and laws. In a number of US states and in EU countries, it is necessary (or at the very least, preferred) if your company has a registered subsidiary in that country (or state) through which to trade. For example, trading in a German Bund through a company registered in Poland would not be acceptable.
Exporting services is in many ways far more problematic than ImpEx for products.
Our consultancy worked on the issues of laying cables in an EU country which has a shortage in trained engineers. The conclusion was that the UK company could be contracted as a UK company to train engineers, and could be contracted to oversee work – because the contract itself would be run by an EU operator and the UK company would be sub-contracted to ensure the European company's QMS.