Customers
In an ever increasingly competitive environment, it is now more important that ever to meet customer requirements on a consistent basis.  Some of the more popular management tools used today include:

ISO 9001
The most widely known and used standard ever produced by the International Organisation for Standardization, ISO 9001 is the most popular quality assurance and business management standard in use today.

Total Quality Management (TQM)
TQM is a combination of quality and management tools aimed at increasing business and reducing losses due to wasteful practices. An important part of TQM is its philosophy toward continually improving your business and products

ISO 17025
SO/IEC 17025 is the main standard used by testing and calibration laboratories.  There are many commonalities with the ISO 9000 standard, but ISO/IEC 17025 adds in the concept of competence to the equation.  And it applies directly to those organizations that produce testing and calibration results.  The standard was updated in 2005 to ensure closer alignment with ISO 9001:2000

ISO 27001 (Information Security Management)
ISO 27001 provides best practice recommendations on information security management, risks and controls - similar in design to management systems for quality assurance (the ISO 9000 series) and environmental protection (the ISO 14000 series).

European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Model
The EFQM Excellence Model embeds the principles of Excellence in a framework that helps organisations assess their capabilities and strengths in order to achieve their particular goals. The model was launched in 1991 and is based on the Fundamental Concepts of Excellence.  Today, the EFQM Model is one of the most widely used organisational, non-prescriptive management framework in Europe, used by at least 30,000 organisations in more than 25 European countries and, increasingly, outside Europe.

The Balanced Scorecard
The Balanced Scorecard is a performance planning and measurement framework, with similar principles as Management by Objectives, which was publicized by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton in the early 1990s.  By focusing not only on financial outcomes but also on the operational, marketing and developmental inputs to these, the Balanced Scorecard helps provide a more comprehensive view of a business, which in turn helps organizations act in their best long-term interests.