There’s a polite version of this story. The version where we hold up two new certificates, say we’re delighted, thank the auditor and post a group photo.
We did get the photo. But the more honest story is the more interesting one.
This time last year, Telescope Group was a small, busy business: twelve people, a developing PIM and DAM system, a book of long-standing clients, and a business leader with a quiet conviction that we should be operating to a higher standard than anyone was actually holding us to.
We now formally are. As of last month, Telescope Group, including Clearsilver, is certified to ISO 27001 (information security management) and ISO 9001 (quality management). Both certifications cover the whole group. Both were awarded by NQA, one of the UK’s most established certifying bodies. Both have changed how we work.
This isn’t entirely new ground. When we acquired Clearsilver in 2023, ISO 27001 came with the business. What we’ve done since is bring Telescope onto the same audited footing, brought further improvements to Clearsilver, then added ISO 9001 across the board. Every part of the group, every client, every project, now operates to the same standard.
Why we did it (and why now)
Telescope handles a lot of consumer data through its direct marketing work, and a lot of client assets through its PIM and DAM system. We already operated in line with GDPR. So the reason for going through ISO wasn’t that we’d fallen short. It was that we wanted external proof we don’t, and we wanted ISO 9001 to ask whether our processes were genuinely the best they could be.
Spoiler: not always.
The year we don't talk about much
We started in February 2025 but then proceeded to do not very much for several months until our consultant Sandy Domingos-Shipley of The Systems Link came onboard. Sandy is a force of nature, and exactly the right person to take a business through ISO without letting it cut corners!
Serious work began in October 2025 and ran flat-out to April 2026. Jane Day, one of our Senior Account Managers expanded her role to include “ISO Lead”, driving the implementation alongside her client projects. Four other members of the team also went through formal training. The rest of us pitched in wherever we could. Five hundred-plus documents were created, organised and put in their correct homes.
Then the auditors came.
The bit that surprised us
Walking into a two-day external audit feels a bit like a school exam. You expect trick questions.
What actually happened was two auditors, spent two days asking us open-ended questions about how we work. They explained why each question mattered. They recognised what we already did well, and they were straight with us about what we needed to tighten.
What they singled out at the end of the audit was the bit we hadn’t expected.
“What struck me most,” Jane Day, our ISO lead, has since said, “was how much the whole team got involved. The auditors specifically mentioned our culture as one of the strongest things they’d seen.”
For our leader, Carl, who has spent years quietly building Telescope around its people and its values, that mattered. The certifications were the goal. The endorsement of how we got there was the bonus.
What's actually different now
The work behind the scenes has tightened in ways clients will benefit from, even if they won’t necessarily spot them.
Consumer data retention is now automated. Where someone previously had to remember to dispose of data after the retention window, the system does it. For direct marketing, that’s a meaningful change.
We’ve partnered with a new IT provider, Concept IT, who are themselves ISO accredited and have been, in the team’s words, a breath of fresh air. And we’ve developed our PIM and DAM platform to give clients more functionality, including AI-powered search, improved look and feel, and better self-service over access permissions.
Maybe the most important shift sits at the team level. We now run an NCCI register, short for non-conformance and continuous improvement, where anyone at Telescope can flag something they think could work better, and it gets discussed. Improvement is no longer top-down.
What this changes for clients
On a day-to-day basis, less than you might think. The accounts you work with, the creative thinking, the production know-how, all stay the same. We still pick up the phone. Designers still answer emails directly.
What sits behind the work has tightened. Onboarding is more structured. Data is handled more autonomously. If something doesn’t go to plan first-time, the route to put it right is clearer and properly evidenced.
For procurement, IT and compliance teams asking the question, our paperwork is in order. We’re particularly happy to talk through what this means for clients, particularly those in the education sector and those using our data-led services like direct marketing, where the question gets asked most often.
Carl Garnett, MD: “We haven’t done this for the badge. We’ve done it because we believe in process and doing things in the right way. The fact that we now have a certificate is useful for the clients who need to see one. The fact that we operate this way day to day is the bit that actually matters.”
A big thanks
ISO certification is rarely written about as a team achievement. Ours was. To Jane Day for steering it, to Sandy at Systems Link for keeping us honest, to NQA for the audit, and to the people at Telescope and Clearsilver who got the work done while keeping every client happy: thank you!