ISO 9001

At MDI, human beings come first. That's why in January 1998, when the MDI team decided to implement quality standards, our first goal was to create an environment in which our clients and team members could benefit from improved quality of life, through reduction in undue stress linked to information technologies. Equally, we aimed to reduce our operating costs in order to pass on more savings to our clients.

We at MDI believe that technology should be a natural extension of daily operations, one that is harmonious and maximally available, in order to interact with and advise our clients accurately. In keeping with our mission to offer our customers superior quality services, we optimized every operation in the quality process. Our management group analyzed, structured, developed and documented every operational process in MDI. Then, in cooperation with our personnel and with outside specialists, we validated, specified, optimized and then adopted each improved process. Finally, everyone went through training.

In April 1998, MDI appointed a specialist in quality management to help design the quality process and edit our quality assurance manual, so we'd meet ISO 9001 (1994) international quality standards. The ISO 9001 quality commitment is the highest level of quality certification in ISO 9000, and MDI's certification encompasses all our operations, ensuring consistency and uniform quality at all levels of the organization.

MDI professionals gave their full support to quality processes and objectives, developing technological tools to support our interventions and automate key processes. The major tools are:

• A "knowledge manager" that gathers all pertinent information on each intervention, making it easy to quickly identify similar situations and find solutions.
• The "MDIDOC" documentation tool, which lets users group, classify and trace pertinent information when they need it.
• An auto-installer and "MDIINS" auto-updater that simplify installation and personalizing of different modules.
• The development of a unique technology that optimizes installation, configuration, replacement and personalizing of equipment and software, over networks and in Windows.

Because it's known that well-timed training can help users fully benefit from the advantages of technology, our quality process led MDI to hire a professional instructor (university-accredited) to train MDI instructors as well as orchestrate course design.

An ISO commitment is a process of continuous improvement and implies that MDI will relentlessly pursue its search for excellence in the products and services we supply to our clients. Even though our ISO 9001 certification, publication of our MDI quality assurance manual and the implementation of methods and procedures are all relatively new, we're proud of the results! As of September 1998, we'd already had many successes, such as:

• Improvements in installation, configuration and personalization processes were so substantial that MDI was able to transfer the savings to brokers in the form of a substantial discount.
• The quality of our training programs let our clients better capitalize on unique MDI technologies.
• Our quick response time and accuracy in responding to the after-sales needs of clients classed MDI among the best in the industry.

MDI feels that if process optimization continues at the current rate, that even with new clients joining us and the addition of new Internet services, we'll be able to offer lower support fees or reinvest savings in technologies to help our clients become even more productive.

Our ISO 9001 commitment is an assurance to all our clients of superior quality service at a fair price!