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It’s easy to say you have high-quality anything – but how many companies can unequivocally back such a claim up with proof? Well, BroadSoft can. We recently earned the prestigious TL 9000 and ISO 9001:2000 certifications.

While this is a significant accomplishment we are proud of, the purpose of this post is more than chest-beating, it’s about why putting proof behind quality claims are important across the industry, beyond the issue of integrity.

Quality of Excellence for Suppliers of Telecommunications (QuEST) Forum’s TL 9000 defines measurements as an industry standard way of benchmarking various products. Results are sent monthly to QuEST and compiled along with all other companies in the same product category. Measurements include indicators for things such as the number of software defects in a product, the reliability of a product in terms of outages, quality of software fixes delivered for defects and on time delivery, and how fast product issues are resolved.

TL 9000 also means a company can CONSISTENTLY meet a set of quality expectations that parallel rapid technology changes and customer expectations. Consistency is so important here because it proves a long-term commitment to quality, not something that a company can adjust products or services to quickly achieve.

A committed team at BroadSoft, spearheaded by Vice President of Engineering Bob Weidenfeller, invested over a year in the certification process (although creating a culture of quality has been a company focus since inception). The investment paid off as the team reviewing the audit noted that our business practices went above and beyond the compliance requirements. An interesting thing to point out was that BroadSoft Engineering and our Technical Assistance Centers (TAC) already had most of the processes in place and documented and were following them in our day-to-day routine.

TL 9000 is not only important to telecommunications providers who demand products and services with ever increasing quality. It benefits the industry as a whole by enabling technology providers to be more efficient and deliver innovative products to market in a shorter time frame. This supports business growth and provides end users access to better, more reliable products sooner. In today’s need-it-yesterday society – these are values coveted by companies. However, very few can attest to this level of commitment, BroadSoft is one of only three U.S.-based, and ten worldwide to have been certified in the 1.2.7 application server category. So to use a cliché… quality really does count.