When Chemonics received ISO $9001$ certification in September $2010,$ it sent them down a path of honing those values and realizing their full potential. The implementation of a quality management system afforded them the opportunity to look at their business practices in totality, and to set a standard of excellence for their core services. It has connected them around the concept of continuous improvement and pushed each employee to think about what exceptional looks like for those services, and then to set even higher goals for what they could achieve. It laid the groundwork for creating global operations systems that support their technical and operational work in the field and that build the capacity of their staff and partners worldwide. And it is broadening their understanding of what continuous improvement can mean if we apply it in targeted ways for greater operational efficiency and development impact. What can we learn from this example?

Organizations will not realize any benefit from registration because their quality system is at a much higher level.

Compliance means having a system that meets the requirements of the relevant ISO $9001$ standard.

It$$s only good for large companies that can afford the cost of adopting the standard.

ISO $9001,$ like any quality management methodology, is simply a framework for good management practices.