ISO 20000-1 process: from self-assessment to verifiable certificate

There is no site visit and no audit calendar. The whole route runs in your browser, and you can start it today without creating an account.

1. 01

   Open the self-assessment

   It is free and needs no registration. You see the questions before you commit to anything.

2. 02

   Answer 36 yes/no questions

   The questions follow the requirements of ISO 20000-1:2018 for a service management system.

3. 03

   Reach the pass threshold

   All 13 mandatory questions must be answered yes. Of the other 23 questions, at least 16 must be yes.

4. 04

   Pay for the certificate

   You can buy without opening an account. Billing details follow further down.

5. 05

   SICE reviews your assessment

   Every assessment is checked by SICE before a certificate exists. G6 Agency AG then issues it under licence from SICE.

6. 06

   Receive and share the PDF

   The certificate arrives within 4 hours of passing and payment. It carries a number and a QR code that lead to a public verification page.

• Start the free self-assessment
• How Zertify works

ISO 20000-1:2018 describes a service management system for IT services. It builds on ITIL practices, but unlike ITIL it can be certified. The questions are grouped around the areas where an auditor would look first.

Each question has two possible answers. That keeps the result clear: either a requirement is in place in your organisation, or it is not.

Service portfolio and catalogue

Do you know which services you deliver, to whom, and is that written down in a catalogue your customers can refer to?

Service levels

Are response and resolution targets agreed with customers as service level agreements, and do you measure against them?

Incident and problem management

Are disruptions recorded, handled and traced back to their causes, so the same fault does not return every month?

Change and release management

Does a change to a system or service pass through a defined approval and release step before it goes live?

Capacity, availability and improvement

Do you plan capacity, watch availability and keep a log of improvements to your services?

Once you pass and pay, your answers go to SICE for review. When the review is complete, G6 Agency AG issues the certificate under licence from SICE and sends you the PDF. The whole sequence takes up to 4 hours from the moment you have passed and paid.

Every certificate is listed on a public verification page. A customer's purchasing department can type in the certificate number or scan the QR code on the PDF and see the company, the standard and the status. Nobody has to write to you or to Zertify to confirm it.

The certificate is valid for 3 years. Each year a short online re-audit confirms that your service management still meets the requirements. It is the same format as the first assessment, so there is no auditor to book.

• Certification without an on-site audit

The classic route means an on-site audit by a certification body. It suits some situations better than an online assessment, so the differences are worth seeing side by side.

• Compare the certification routes
• What certification costs

Zertify covers the whole path described above: the assessment, the review, the issue and the yearly re-audit. The standard itself is explained on the ISO 20000-1 page, including who it is meant for: managed service providers, internal IT departments, cloud and SaaS providers, data centres and IT consultancies.

The price is CHF 799 (€799) in the first year, then CHF 529 (€529) per year including the yearly online re-audit. Customers in Switzerland and Liechtenstein pay 8.1% Swiss VAT, which is included in these prices. If you certify two standards the discount is 20%, for three or more it is 30%, and it also applies to the yearly fee.

Billing runs as an automatic yearly subscription. You can cancel at any time in your customer account, effective at the end of the current year. The certificate then ends with the year you have paid.

• ISO 20000-1 certificate
• Pricing
• Start the self-assessment

The assessment goes faster if the evidence is within reach. Keep your service catalogue open, along with a sample SLA, the log of recent incidents and the record of your last few changes. If you work with an ITSM tool, the reports from it are usually enough to answer most questions.

Two areas tend to decide the result. The first is performance evaluation, clause 9 of the standard: do you measure your services and review the figures? The second is improvement, clause 10: is there a record of what you changed because of those figures? If either is missing, close that gap before you run the assessment.

Small teams can pass. The standard asks for defined and repeatable practice, not for a large service desk.

• ISO for small and medium businesses