We take you behind the scenes with our Corporate Quality Team, to learn about what they do and why it’s central to our daily operations at NavInfo Europe.  

Hi team, thanks for joining us! First off, can you elaborate on your team’s role at NavInfo Europe?

The NavInfo Europe Corporate Quality Team is responsible for process management, process improvement, quality management, and quality assurance within the entire organization. We establish, implement, and maintain the quality management system. This way, we support the business by meeting legal requirements, necessary industry standards, as well as customer and stakeholder requirements to maximize quality, functionality and ensure on time delivery.

The quality and security policies that we manage provide guidance to our employees, suppliers, customers, and other relevant stakeholders on how we uphold the quality, security, and privacy standards in our daily activities.

The policies and associated activities are part of our integrated Quality Management System (QMS) and Information Security Management System (ISMS) which helps us in our efforts to continuously improve the processes, products, and services within our organization.

Can you tell us more about the team members?             

We are five in total, our team consists of four senior quality managers Bjorn, Daniela, Shelton, and Esma and we are led by the Head of Corporate Quality, Hans.  We have a strong background and work experience in the automotive industry, as our primary customers are renowned OEMs, and they have stringent requirements and high expectations for process and product quality – which we are very familiar with.

As the Corporate Quality Team, you are very involved in daily operations of the company. How was the experience working during the pandemic?

As the quality team, it is our nature to be flexible and adapt to new circumstances. At the start of 2020, all NavInfo Europe teams, including our team, could move our daily operations, almost entirely to our home offices. Being a technology-driven company, we had the support necessary to be able to adapt to the new situation where our team worked from home full time. This experience has displayed to us the resilience and drive of our team to support the delivery of high-quality products and services to our customers, as they have always expected from us. We’re now looking forward to welcoming the “new normal” of hybrid working styles.

Tell us something about Corporate Quality roles that many people might not know?

Many might not know that our team is involved in every project within the company to ensure the process, products and services fulfill all requirements and expectations of quality and functionality as well as ensuring on-time delivery to customers. As well as setting policy for the quality of process, products and services and quality monitoring in all departments, we also set the company strategy at executive and operational levels, which ensures that the quality settings meet or exceed all applicable requirements.

To do so, we established a management system to ensure that the quality requirements and standards are fully adhered to. Additionally, we perform regular internal audits and assessments as quality control mechanisms, and we support external audits and assessments. Our approach to quality enables us to continually improve the organization’s effectiveness and efficiency through the processes that are implemented.

Could you tell us about some achievements you’re proud of?

We are happy to state that we have been able to achieve compliance using our mature QMS along with our knowledgeable and experienced team. We are proud to have achieved a highly quality driven company culture, which makes it easier to deliver on the desired quality goals. Our management system is compliant with the requirements of the International Organization for Standardization ISO/IEC 9001, information security standards ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 27002, and including the ISO/IEC 27017 standard for cloud security. In addition, we are proud to have a management system compliant with the Automotive SPICE and TISAX standards.

In fact, our QMS has been certified against the ISO/IEC 9001 since 1999, and against the ISO/IEC 27001 and TISAX since 2019. We are quite proud of these accomplishments. The ISO certificates have been successfully renewed in 2021. Moreover, we have passed the assessment for capability level 3 Automotive SPICE. We are proud of these great achievements. Most of all, as an organization, we manage to deliver products that meet high quality requirements and expectations set by our customers. This is a continuous, organization-wide effort, and our quality-oriented mindset enables this.

What challenges does the corporate quality team face in terms of meeting standard requirements?

To outperform at our job and support our customers in their business goals, we follow the latest developments in the industry and proactively respond to the trends we notice. We connect with our industry peers to increase our knowledge and we also closely align with customers to learn about their requirements and expectations.

In line with this, we have been an early adopter of the information security standards and achieved compliance and certification for the relevant standards: ISO27001/ ISO27002, and ISO/IEC 27017 standard for cloud security.

Furthermore, as a supplier in the automotive industry, we have the opportunity to improve processes, products, and services due to the numerous external audits and assessments performed by certification bodies and customers.  To achieve this, we are maintaining and continuously working to improve our processes, products, and services, as our customers expect us to do so.

How would you say customers can benefit from NavInfo Europe?

Our customers can always be reassured by the fact that quality, privacy, and security are a main priority at NavInfo Europe, as we emphasize the right to privacy to customers when using our technology. To this end, we follow a privacy and security-by-design approach to our operations, through our Information Security Management System, which ensures that the full lifecycles of our products and services are designed to enable user privacy in a standardized manner.

Furthermore, we apply the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on a global scale. The GDPR is the most extensive privacy regulation in the world, so we are proud to offer a high level of protection to our customers. Therefore, we ensure that GDPR compliance is embedded in our management system.

Overall, the quality team ensures that all stakeholder requirements, standards and regulations are translated into policies, procedures and work instructions and are included in our Quality Management System and Information Security Management System. By applying the Management System, compliance and fulfillment of requirements is ensured. Our team’s robust quality management process allows us to keep a very close watch on trends, as we take the lead in maintaining customer confidence and satisfaction.