Issue 33 – November 2011
A new series of international case studies on 11 companies show that implementing Standards can provide economic benefits from between 0.5% and 4% of their annual sales revenues.
Conducted by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and partner organisations, the case studies are based on the experiences of companies operating in a variety of business sectors in 10 countries – Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Botswana, South Africa, and Germany (two case studies).
The size of the companies varies from a small business with 25 employees and annual sales revenue of around $US 4.5 million to companies with several thousand employees and annual revenue of over $US 1.5 billion. The sectors include agri-food, chemicals, construction and construction materials, electrical appliances, electrical power transmission, food retail/food logistics, industrial automation equipment, and information and telecommunication.
Over the last decade, several studies have been conducted to determine the economic and other benefits of the use of Standards. These studies were undertaken by ISO member bodies and other organisations and had mainly a macroeconomic focus. Although each of the studies confirmed that the use of Standards had positive effects and resulted in economic and other benefits, it is difficult to compare the results achieved by the different studies because each used different approaches to measure the impacts of Standards.
These case studies, published in an ISO book, Economic benefits of Standards – International case studies, used a newly-developed ISO methodology for the assessment and quantification of the economic benefits of Standards. In this way, it is expected that the results of the different studies can be compared to build a common stock of knowledge about the economic benefits.
Download the case studies below:
→ To read the BERL report commissioned by the Standards Council on the economic benefits of Standards to New Zealand go to http://www.standards.co.nz:/news/Associated+news.htm.