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Adherence to high quality standards provides a competitive edge to any company: Lloyd Pitchford, Intertek

In this interview, Lloyd Pitchford, Intertek Group CFO and COO-South Asia, emphasises on the importance of quality and explains its relevance for consumers, companies and also countries

Lloyd Pitchford, Chief Financial Officer, Intertek

Last Updated : Jun 05 2014 | 4:43 PM IST

Increasing consumer awareness and vigilant regulators are forcing companies to adhere to high quality standards to withstand competition in the marketplace. According to Lloyd Pitchford, Intertek Group CFO and COO-South Asia,
quality will make a huge difference on what any company's revenue will depend on.

Before Intertek, Pitchford spent 10 years with BG Group Plc in various operational and corporate finance roles in the UK and Middle East; including five years as Group Financial Controller. He previously worked for Mobil Oil Corporation in various financial, commercial and management roles.
 
In this interview, Pitchford emphasises on the importance of quality and its relevance for consumers, companies and also countries.
 
What does quality mean both in terms of service as well as product?
Quality means different things to different people but if you go back to first principle, quality can be defined as ‘Fitness for purpose’. To elaborate, it is really around the surety of a product or a service fulfilling what it is intended to do.
 
As a global leader in providing quality, safety and testing services for over 130 years globally, at Intertek we have a thorough understanding of the parameters that can help businesses achieve highest level of quality assurance throughout the supply chain.
 

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If you trace back the history of our industry there are many different traits to the work that we do. Quoting an example, one of our businesses really started around trading of hydrocarbon, the tracking of oil. We at Intertek had to verify its quality and ensure the percentage of calorific content and the usability of the product in different engines. So quality in that respect really is around to fit in a purpose best described.
 
There are two aspects which come to mind when talking about quality. One is from the immediate customer that is your customer and then there is an end customer. How does Intertek ensure that all quality standards are passed on to the end customer?
At Intertek, both our customer that is the industry and the end customers that is the user are equally critical. Consumer trust, both at a business level and at a product level helps differentiate your products in increasingly commoditised markets. If you think about the work we do, the work breaks down into different areas, one being testing for regulatory standards and the other involves testing for brand quality.
 
For instance, we might test a toy that is perhaps produced in India or China. The experts at Intertek will test it against all the different standards of the consumer, the regulatory entities globally whether in North America, Brazil, Middle East or standards here in India. Our purpose is to provide to our customers, the surety, and the confidence that the product being manufactured and sold by any company is designed and tested to meet those regulatory standards. The other type is very much supporting in the brand quality; this is where we test not only the regulatory standards but the standards of the clients that support the brand’s proposition.
 
Our goal is to support our customers in the quality requirements and that will be the combination of those regulatory requirements and also the brand quality requirement.
 
To elaborate further, taking readymade garments as testimony in the textile industry, I would like to mention that there are some very particular chemical regulatory standards for textiles and dyes. Here the majority of quality standards are really specific to the customers. Let us take an example of an American size zero dress; some of the questions we seek to answer are, if you have a button this side onto a shirt, what force is required to pull off a button. Now, each of the retailers will have a bespoke standard for that button, how many times do you wash it before it shrinks or the dye perhaps fail, you do a scratch test to see, how often how many bubbles of cotton/wool would be produced, and all of these involve very detailed  bespoke standards of the retailers produced. The reason that produces these checks is the consumers’ demand for supreme quality. As a matter of fact, the demand for quality increases with the development of economies and rising GDP per capita.
 
What kind of the support initiative do you expect in terms of policy and how regulatory bodies can improve the performance in terms of ability to decide on the quality?
The quality standards are quite often driven by public welfare or by political drivers across different countries. Our goal is to ultimately work with policy makers to help them meet their goal. The support initiative that is intended here is how the policy goals get translated into regulatory standards to ultimately deliver the best for consumers. The support of policy makers becomes even more crucial in developing countries like India. The logistical ground work required in setting up labs and installing machinery can be streamlined with necessary support from the local and central Government.
 
Does validating not only product but also the processes provide an edge to any company or business in attracting foreign investments into the country?
It is a well-documented fact that strong adherence to total quality assurance, reliable testing and certification help any industry become a viable market for investment that ultimately leads to an even stronger incoming of FDI.
 
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In the Indian context, some of the recent changes to open up FDI in some sectors are very positive because we think that these will attract investments and really help in the development of these sectors locally. High level of adherence to quality standards provides a competitive edge to any company. This opens avenues for Indian brands to compete and develop in global markets and also enable local brands to automatically become global brands with a quality driver.
 
As a leading player in the quality testing and certifying industry, what has been the key focus for driving growth for your business?
At Intertek, we go beyond, testing, inspecting and certifying products. We help consumers improve performance, gain efficiencies in manufacturing and logistics, overcome market constraints, and reduce risks. We work in a wide variety of industries from aerospace and automotives to food and agriculture, from IT and building products to pharma, mineral and textiles as well as textiles, toys, games and hardlines.
 
Intertek is the industry leader and through our services whether the client business is local or global, we ensure that products meet quality, health, environmental, safety and social accountability standards for virtually any market around the world.

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First Published: Apr 03 2014 | 5:10 PM IST

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