Qbase Data Services has been certified to the ISO 27001-2005 standard by the British Standards Institute; the international standard for an Information Security Management System (ISMS), reflecting the company’s long standing commitment to providing an ultra robust and secure environment for customer data.

ISO 27001 is a globally recognised, audited standard that ensures Information Security applies to ALL the information in an organisation, and that rigorous controls are applied to information storage, usage and distribution. This standard compliments ISO 9001:20085 for quality management and ISO 14001- 2004 for Environmental management, that Qbase is already certified for.

Protection of personal and corporate information is a cornerstone of the services provided by Qbase to its customers in government, charities and commerce. Qbase was one of the first European companies to provide secure file transfer and data distribution. In 2005 Qbase developed a secure file transfer application that is still used today to collate and distribute information, from online payments and transactions, through to web forms, subscriber data and conference registrations.

Qbase IT Director, Nick Kelly, commented; ‘Qbase provides all its products and services online, as a secure web service. ISO 27001 is proof positive that these services and the information contained in them, is safe, full stop.’

The ISO 27001 is the security standard increasingly demanded by IT security specialists for the handling of payment and personal information.

Qbase is fully certified by BSI to this quality standard. All projects are managed under our formal project management structure using the Qbase Extranet as the project management resource allocation and project status monitoring tool.

The extranet allows us to place daily progress updates on each project task and also to raise non-conformities and corrective action requests in the event of project delay or process failure. We also use a formal change management process to manage the process of specification change.

The project management process is controlled via the Qbase Extranet which is part of the ISO 9001:2008 audited development process that controls all Qbase projects.

The system of task definition, project update, quality control, non-conformity, corrective action request and change management is fully audited every six months by a BSI auditor. In addition to the external audits, Qbase have regular internal audits across the business - all projects are reviewed at key stages by the Qbase Quality Manager to ensure compliance with the agreed project specification.

All clients are able to monitor the progress of their projects on the Qbase Extranet, via direct access to the system. Clients can view project progress at a detailed task level and make and amend project change requests through the Change Management function.

Our status as an ISO 14001 compliant company is something we are extremely proud of. Our ISO 14001 status is recognition of our on-going commitment to improving our environmental management.

ISO 14001 is environmental management standard issued by the International Organisation of Standardization. It is designed to encourage large and small organisations to become more environmentally friendly and show them how to effectively reduce their environmental impact. This has benefits to the organisation as well; there are many costs to be cut and more efficient and productive ways to go about daily business. It also demonstrates to our customers that we are dedicated to managing our environmental duties responsibly.

To achieve this certification an organisation has to follow a number of steps.

• First we as an organisation had to identify our operations, products and services in terms of their environmental impact.
• Then we have to examine how we can start to improve our actions to reduce this environmental impact
• Next we had to improve our performance continually and implement a systematic approach to setting environmental objectives and targets
• These targets had to be med and the success of their implementation demonstrated before we achieved the accreditation

CAESER (Corporate Assessment of Environmental, Social and Economic Responsibility) is an inclusive programme of supplier engagement in environmental, social and economic issues.

Qbase is a Business Intelligence & Direct Marketing services company based in the north west of England whose primary business areas include data management, application development and data aggregation. As a supplier to the Home Office, Qbase was invited to complete a CAESER sustainability return in March 2009. As a successful small/medium enterprise (SME), Qbase recognised that completing the CAESER questionnaire would demonstrate its sustainability commitments to both current and potential public sector clients.

As a positive step to ensure comprehensive recognition of its CSR practices and to further develop local understanding of the agenda, Qbase chose to complete a CAESER Verification in August 09. The Verification process provided the organisation with an independent assessment of its self certification responses to the CAESER questionnaire. Qbase opened its business to a CAESER verifier who interviewed key staff and requested evidence to verify the statements Qbase made in its self certification return. It also enabled the organisation to reaffirm the importance of the agenda to senior management and staff.

The verification process provided Qbase with a detailed report highlighting the findings from the review and gave Qbase the opportunity to improve its score where practices had not been reflected within the initial CAESER response. The verifier found a range of evidence that Qbase could utilise as part of the CAESER return enabling an increased score from 56% to 80%. The scores achieved by Qbase compare favourably in their industry sector falling well above the industry average. Verification also provided the organisation with specific recommendations on how the score could be further enhanced for their next return in 2010.

Ian Johnstone, Managing Director for Qbase confirmed that "the verification process has enabled us to, once again, positively demonstrate our CSR practices, and has also provided independent confirmation of our self certification responses. The fact that we are both CAESER certified and verified will provide us with a useful competitive advantage that we can utilise in the future."

For further information please contact Rob Mclean, Management Systems & CSR Consultant, or Rob Jones, Commercial Manager.

PAS 2020 has been developed as a response to the high levels of waste produced through direct marketing. It has been estimated that 4.3 billion tonnes of direct mail are sent out every year using 550,000 tonnes of paper. The percentage of this waste which ends up in landfill from this figure was as high as 87% in 2003. This level of waste is unacceptable and simply cannot me maintained.

The DMA (Direct Marketing Association) developed PAS 2020: Direct Marketing- Environmental Performance standards, in order to establish a set of environmental objectives, performance level targets and indicators to the direct marketing industry.

Unsubscribe

Each stage of a Direct Marketing campaign requires specific attention in order to comply with the new PAS 2020 Standard. One of the stages, which are perhaps for many, the last link in the chain, is Unsubscribe. The Unsubscribe feature is a key part of PAS 2020 as it ensures that communication remains relevant and, where it is not wanted, can easily be suppressed from future campaigns thus avoiding unnecessary waste.

Operating Unsubscribe well will achieve positive results across 3 key business goals all focused around reducing waste - Efficiency: waste reduction minimises costs; Effectiveness: greater focus increases campaign performance; and Environmental: meeting CSR obligations.

PAS 2020 demands that all businesses must, as a minimum, provide an unsubscribe option in ALL prospect or customer communication - this enables the recipients to register their desire not to receive further communication.

Data Integrity

Trust in the provision of data is important. Qbase can effectively provide the individuals name and address to ensure immediate suppression from future communication is possible (at company or brand/product level). Qbase can take data, clean it, maintain it, while allowing the client access to it at every step. Trust in the quality of data is essential to achieving the PAS 2020 standard, knowing the data you use for Direct Marketing campaigns is correct is a weight off an environmentally conscious mind.

Implementing PAS 2020

As companies progress through the PAS 2020 implementation and make the switch to a sustainable marketing future, Qbase can work together with you to understand the demands of environmental legislation and achieve best practice: full audit capability and certification can be provided to validate PAS 2020 compliance.

For more information, please contact Rob Jones