There are a several industry myths that surround renewing expiring country certifications. It really starts with the term “renewal.” In most cases, manufacturers are actually required to re-certify products that have expiring country certifications by submitting new applications. It is rare for a country to offer an amended certification process for expiring certificates. This means starting the entire process over, from the beginning.
The good news for manufacturers, especially if the initial experience was less than great, is that you do not need to use your previous service provider(s) for country renewals.
In fact, despite what you may hear from them, there may be little to no value in doing so, especially when it comes to the most time-consuming aspect of the project, technical documentation. The unvarnished truth is, most GMA service providers are technology starved and do not have the ability to organize and securely store supporting country certification documents needed to complete renewal projects. The consequence to manufacturers is that all the same documentation provided previously, including test reports, will need to be provided again. If you have been through a renewal process previously, you are likely aware of this frustrating fact.
At Global Validity, our Access Manager technology features Smart Document Control capability that organizes and securely stores supporting documents by product, country, and certification. With just a couple of keystrokes, our expert project managers are able to retrieve the original documents that were used to obtain the certification and identify which of those documents can be reused to support the new application.
How Access Manager can Revolutionize your Product Certification Journey
Even if the initial certification was not done by Global Validity, there are still many benefits of using our Access Manager technology for renewals. Here are some of the features available to our customers that you can be using to help expedite the renewal process and support you throughout the validity of the certification.
- Documentation – Proactively upload technical documents before a project starts and leverage those documents for new country applications and/or next years’ renewals
- Status reporting – real time view into renewal progress
- Metrics tracking – Actively compare projected renewal ETA dates with the upcoming expiration date to ensure there is no lapse in certification
- Surveillance Audit support – Easily access and download the exact technical documents used to support a country certification application