Ticket for Business Excellence

Many medium-sized companies that have been certified for many years see their previous structures called into question by the changes in the industry and in the markets they serve. The increased demands placed on management by these circumstances require, in addition to a great deal of technical and market know-how, a structured management system that can respond to these circumstances. In addition to the internal challenges, these companies must also take into account the revision of the standard and expand the system that is already in place.

Similarities between the ISO 9001:2015 standard and the EFQM Excellence Model
What is striking about the revision is the convergence of the ISO 9001:2015 standard with the EFQM Excellence Model. If one compares the principles of the ISO 9000 standard in Figure 1 with the basic concepts of the EFQM Excellence Model as in Figure 2, the first similarities are already apparent. Both the ISO 9001 standard and the EFQM Excellence Model require a clear customer focus, including other stakeholders such as employees and partners. In addition, leadership and process orientation play central roles in both the standard and the model.

Approach and differences of ISO 9001:2015 to the EFQM Excellence Model
But what changes did the revision bring? In addition to the introduction of the risk approach, the stakeholders and the context of the organization of a company were not mentioned in the previous version of the standard. Furthermore, the term service has found its way into the ISO 9001 standard. This terminology is well established in the EFQM Excellence Model. Also new in the standard are the inclusion of the term knowledge and the focus on results. These two components have also been anchored in the EFQM Excellence Model since the beginning. But do the standard and the model differ only in their certifiability? Or did the Excellence idea form the basis for the further development of the ISO 9001 standard? Figure 3 shows the chapters of the ISO 9001:2015 standard in the criteria model of the EFQM Excellence Model.

The alignment of the ISO 9001:2015 standard is thus again visually clarified.

If one reads more deeply, it becomes clear that there are decisive differences. The ISO 9001:2015 standard still defines the basic requirements for a quality management system. Whereas the EFQM Excellence Model formulates an ideal state of a company.

The entry to the sub-criteria always begins as follows: "excellent organizations...". This terminology implies: Other organizations are leading this practice to success. Based on these descriptions, a desirable goal is created for users. The model does not focus on the base, but shows a desirable and promising future. The EFQM Excellence Model is a development-oriented model. This is evident in the assessment of results through the radar methodology. The results are supposed to show a positive trend over 3 years (EFQM Organization, 2013). The ISO 9001 standard, on the other hand, is intended to stabilize the performance of an organization. Among other things, since the revision, it now requires users to set measurable objectives for relevant functions, levels and processes. This is a clarified requirement through which the objective is no longer discretionary, but where the objectives and the results must be relevant in the context of the organization (CEN European Committee for Standardization, 2015). This specification is an approximation of the EFQM Excellence Model, but the results focus is still exclusively on the context of the company and is not divided into the categories of customers, employees, societal and key results. Furthermore, the cause-effect principle can already be grasped more quickly visually through the enablers and results pages. The principle is also present in the ISO 9001 standard, but less obviously described and presented.

In addition to certification, another major difference is the requirement for comparisons in the EFQM Excellence Model. Active benchmarking with other organisations is mentioned again and again in the EFQM Excellence Model in various sub-criteria. It is intended to provide an incentive, both at the strategic level and at the management and value creation level, to develop further and to measure oneself against the "best in class" and to continuously improve one's own performance. CIP is also part of the ISO 9001 standard, although the requirement only calls for internal performance evaluation as a metric.

Sustainability is another element that is exclusively anchored in the EFQM Excellence Model. "Excellent organisations shape the future in a sustainable way" is one of the eight basic concepts (EFQM Organisation, 2013). The demands on organisations include economic, ecological as well as social conditions. The ISO set of rules has its own standard for this requirement. ISO 14 000 deals with environmental management, in which the topic of ecological sustainability is an essential component.

This brief and non-exhaustive description is intended to show where the two systems ver-here a "mass business" is conducted. "The

Conclusion
Which path an organization chooses depends on various influences. For example, the expectations of the stakeholders must be taken into account, the environmental factors must be evaluated, the changes in the markets and the organisation's own goals must be included in the evaluation. Furthermore, in a worldwide comparison, the ISO series of standards is more widespread than the EFQM Excellence Model. However, this is precisely the reason why a certificate is no longer perceived as a competitive advantage and degenerates into an obligation (Moll & Kohler, 2013).

If the chosen path is followed consistently and the system is used optimally to develop one's own organisation, the choice of management model is no longer the decisive factor.