A management system for your business provides structure, accountability and direction for the employees who work within it. It is the framework that your business uses to establish strategic goals and the tools that you employ by your team members to achieve the results you want, whether to meet legal requirements related to occupational safety or to improve profits through leaner processes.
Management systems are built on the belief that tasks can, in theory, be handled by themselves if all processes are documented and responsibilities assigned. This is not always true in practice, however this is the aim that companies aim for when they introduce their own management systems.
This is the case for virtually every management system, regardless of whether they are for sustainability, quality, energy or information security. They all have the same essential tasks: plan activities, carry them out, evaluate metrics, and then improve them systematically. This is why you will discover a myriad of similar tools available on the market.
Since management systems impact all aspects of the business and most often have an inter-functional focus it is a waste of time to run multiple systems simultaneously. It’s not a good idea to develop an idea management system on top of the quality management system you currently have. This will only add unnecessary burdens on your employees and is not a good idea from an ISO standpoint. Because of this, it is becoming increasingly important to use a management system application that combines several existing and new systems under a single umbrella.