Brandix Mercury Asia receives ISO 27001:2005

BRANDIX Mercury Asia, the sophisticated business services subsidiary of the Brandix Group, has obtained ISO 27001:2005, the global best practice specification in the sphere of Information Security Management Systems (ISMS), reaffirming its commitment to the continuous enhancement of systems and processes.

Brandix Mercury Asia becomes the first member of the Brandix Group across India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to receive this prestigious accreditation and joins a handful of elite corporate entities in Sri Lanka that have done so to date.

The certification, issued by International Certification Services (ICS) Pvt. Ltd. of Mumbai, covers Information Security Management Systems in the operation of a ‘Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO)/Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) centre to provide services for global apparel retailers, manufacturers, supply chain partners and associated industries.’

This is the second milestone achieved by Brandix Mercury Asia within a period of 13 months in its progression into a driver of process standardisation, process documentation and the harmonisation of accounting standards and practices across all businesses of the Group. In March 2010 it obtained ISO 9001:2008 compliance for its processes and documentation.

“Obtaining ISO 27001:2005 is an important achievement that could contribute significantly to the growth of Brandix Mercury,” said Ishan Pethiyagoda, Team Leader – Strategic Enablement at Brandix Mercury Asia.

“Information security is a key consideration of businesses when choosing a BPO/KPO services provider. Therefore, by leveraging this globally recognised standard, Brandix Mercury is now positioned to extend its services to external parties, either in the domestic market or in the international arena.”

He said that complying with the standard was a highly challenging task since, aspects such as physical access to information was considered in the evaluation process of awarding the accreditation.

Handing over the ISO certificate to Brandix CEO Ashroff Omar, Pethiyagoda pledged that the associates of Brandix Mercury Asia were fully committed to maintain and further enhance standards.

Brandix Mercury’s bid for ISO 27001:2005 commenced with a gap analysis in August 2010. The final audit was carried out eight months later in March this year.  

Brandix Mercury Asia is responsible for the alignment of all financial accounting policies with Group policy and goals. It provides centralised transaction processing and decision-support to the business units of Brandix with the objective of moving their respective processes from different schools of thought to best practices that lead to long term value creation. The Centre’s remit covers people, processes and technology and its role spans driving process excellence, customer satisfaction and cost reduction, managing risk and measuring and monitoring business performance.

The pioneer of the concept of ‘total solutions’ in Sri Lanka’s apparel sector, Brandix is a preferred solutions provider to some of the world’s leading apparel brands, including Victoria’s Secret, PINK, Gap, Banana Republic, Marks & Spencer, Lands’ End, Tommy Hilfiger, Hanes, Express, H&M, Old Navy, Intimissimi and Tesco.

The Group specialises in casual bottoms, underwear, lounge and sleepwear, bras, textiles, knitted and woven fabrics, sewing and embroidery thread, accessories and hangers, and also offers wet processing and finishing and fabric printing.