Corporate Report 2023

Dear reader

There is no future without a past. That's why we used our 40th anniversary in 2023 to look back and forward. To think about: Which factors have contributed significantly to the success of SQS since it was founded in 1983 and which will (also) be relevant in the future? The short answer is: We are a key player in a regulatory system that enables a normality in Switzerland and other countries that is anything but «normal». By auditing competently, honestly and impartially, we make norms and standards effective. These in turn make it easier for companies and other organisations to reliably meet high expectations. The result is a highly competitive economy and an everyday life characterised by quality, comfort, safety and prosperity.

As important as this regulatory system is, public awareness of it is low. This applies all the more to our role as a conformity assessment body! We therefore took the anniversary as an opportunity to publish the first non-fiction book on this topic with NZZ Libro: «Wheels of Normality. Building trust through standards».

More important than the (book) form is the content. It fills us with pride and confidence. We used it to better understand the past and present with employees, clients and other stakeholders and thus consciously shape our future. However, the events that we organised on Bern's local mountain, Gurten, at the Wankdorf stadium and at The Dolder Grand in Zurich were not just for joint reflection. We also wanted to celebrate and enjoy what we had achieved.

This brings us to some success factors that have had an impact in the past and are expected to or should be relevant also in the future:

We are a human community. SQS is exposed to market competition. Performance-orientation is necessary, pressure to perform unavoidable. However, we never forget that we can only survive externally if we look after people internally and see ourselves as a community of solidarity. This requires a sense of community - and a lavish celebration now and then!

We are an association serving the Swiss economy. SQS was founded to enable credibility and trust in the area of quality and thus facilitate cooperation. We also fulfil this mission in the area of sustainability - the transformation topic of our time. With the 2023 revision, we explicitly included it in our statutes, created a contemporary normative framework and renewed our commitment to the association form. This has great advantages. Our focus on collective needs creates meaning and motivation. We can act in the long term. And we are broadly supported and legitimised by our members, which include the majority of the relevant organisations in the Swiss economy as well as other important players.

We do not regard rules as an end in themselves. From the very beginning, SQS has been committed to the practice- and market-orientated development, application and review of norms and standards. For us, rules have never been an end in themselves. Of course, this also applied and still applies to those who are subject to conformity assessment. We are therefore all the more critical of the fact that requirements are increasingly being set for specialised standards - for example in the automotive and food sectors - that are difficult to implement economically for the relatively small Swiss market or lead to cost increases that undermine the acceptance of the entire system.

The last point refers to the overall good business results for 2023. Turnover grew by almost 9 per cent year-on-year to CHF 48.0 million, a new record in the history of SQS. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) even rose by 51.9 per cent to CHF 1.8 million compared to 2022. This is all the more pleasing because we are experiencing considerable and increasing cost pressure from the regulatory environment. The accreditation and authorisation bodies are imposing an ever-increasing administrative burden on us. In the name of impartiality and high qualification requirements, they are also limiting our ability to deploy auditors in a wide range of scopes. This reduces economies of scale, exacerbates the shortage of skilled labour and thus drives up costs.

However, we do not want to end this editorial on a negative note. The year 2023 showed us impressively: SQS has a lot of history and even more of a future! Together with all our employees, to whom we would like to express our sincere thanks, we are tackling it.