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6 Challenges & Opportunities for Credentialing Organizations Volume 2 | July 2016
Transitioning Candidate Turnaround
From Handicapped to Healthy
When you’re
outgrowing your homegrowncredential management system...
Do You
Buildor Buyyour next system?
A BrightLink Insight Series
2
Executive Summary
Transitioning from homegrown manual processes to automation will always require strategic planning to confront significant challenges. There are generally three observable stages in the overall process for a credentialing organization:
● Discerning when your organization may be outgrowing homegrown solutions.
● Determining when to transition.
● Deciding to build or buy a credential management solution as part of the transition..
Our interactions with industry organizations reveal six typical challenges. Each one overlaps with the others creating some complexity. All of them uncover significant opportunities for stabilization and growth.
Each challenge and corresponding opportunity deserves its own distinct evaluation with key players and decision makers in the organization, and is thus presented in its own white paper in this series.
Solving each challenge gives momentum to solve more. Taking advantage of the opportunities in each challenge can bring exponential change. The transition path is smoothed, overhead is reduced, innovation is revitalized, and new growth enjoyed.
1. Employee Engagement: From Stagnation to Innovation
2. Candidate Turnaround: From Handicapped to Healthy
3. Business Processes: From Counterproductive to Coefficient
4. Cultural Ethos: From Entrenchment to Enrichment
5. Candidate Perception: From Negative to Positive
6. Technology Mindset: From Myopic to Modern
Six Challenges& Opportunities
in deciding whether
To Build or Buyyour next solution
BrightLink Insights | Volume 2 | July 2016 thebrightlink.com | Page 2
Introduction
Most organizations are aware of the ultimate need to transition from manual to automation. The challenge is always one of funding and timing. The biggest challenge is confronting the temptation to improve existing manual processes. Another iteration of improvement may be less challenging, but it always proves more costly, perhaps even as much as the decision to build a custom solution.
When presented with these options, the logical solution would be to build a custom solution. Why not build a system that can…
● integrate seamlessly with your organization’s existing website?
● meet the needs of your current workflow and processes?
● handle your exclusive needs? ● be implemented in stages?
Why not try to hire a vendor who can pull this off? Or why not try to do it yourself in house? These are great questions.. Our clients thought so as well.
Questions like these are a part of a necessary journey in discovering a transition pathway.
Our clients found that while their organization’s workflow and processes were unique in some respects, one common denominator remained apparent: they were each credentialing, certification or licensing organizations with an industry-typical workflow. As such,
our clients discovered there were industry standards and best practices that had developed across multiple vertical markets.
In the credentialing industry, assisting the candidate to move efficiently through the credentialing process is the common denominator among all organizations. While the stages or phases of this process may differ, industry best practices point to one primary need: create a candidate experience of simplicity and efficiency, based on the credential prerequisites.
Homegrown solutions that involve paper and manual processes will eventually become a bottleneck for this experience, if they have not already. The next solution should be preceded by careful inquiry into the process itself, focusing on any and all inherent delays creating problems with staff and customers.
Transitioning Candidate Turnaround
From Handicapped to HealthyCandidate Experience: A Number One Priority
A candidate’s relationship with your organization is generally brief in the grand scheme of their career. They interact with your organization at three primary points in time:
1. Inquiry: The candidate is exploring certification with your organization and/or learning about your credential(s).
For some, a credential is never an impulse purchase. For others, a certification or license is an industry or employer requirement. Regardless, delays in informing the candidate, providing industry value or in leading them toward applying will adversely affect your organization’s revenue and candidate pool and create a negative, unhealthy experience.
2. Applying: The candidate is making a financial decision toward earning your credential.
Once they’ve paid, they need to know what’s next. Any delays in communication or information will result in customer requests and complaints, customer service and recovery problems, and the associated staff labor required to resolve. Paper forms are fast becoming obsolete as 70% of customers in today’s market expect a self-serve approach. For candidates this translates into self-registration and self-pay. Once they have obtained the credential, their communication with your organization is virtually finished.
3. Renewing: The certificant is periodically repeats the previous two steps.
After a candidate has been certified, they will often not return to your organization’s website until it is time to renew, unless the credentialing organization requires prior login for credential maintenance (e.g continuing education units). Any delays in the renewal process will result in the same problems associated with the previous two steps.
Reducing or eliminating turnaround handicaps in these three candidate interactions is crucial to attracting new candidates and maintaining existing credential holders.
As the technological landscape shifts and changes, organizations increasingly face the need to transition from homegrown systems which adversely affect the candidate’s perceptions of delays. Credentialing organizations should never leave a qualified candidate asking, “why is this process taking so long?”
BrightLink Insights | Volume 2 | July 2016 thebrightlink.com | Page 4
Removing every unnecessary obstacle from the credential pathway is key to winning happy candidates and keeping happy certificants.
Expect a company’s website to include
a self-service application.
The Real Self-Service Economy Report, 2015
Of customers have received no response to a service request
at some point in time.
The Real Self-Service Economy Report, 2015
Probability of organizations selling
to a first-time customer.
Marketing Metrics
Of small-to-mediumsized businesses
have responded to a customer’s email in an incomplete way.
Marketing Metrics
36%
Expect an email responsein 6 hours or less.
Forrester Research, Inc., 2008
50% 83%
of consumers
5 to
20%70%
Identifying Current Process Challenges& internal inefficiencies
The following questions have been found helpful in determining whether an organization may be outgrowing their current homegrown processes and systems.
● What is your organization’s current turnaround time for application processing?
● How often are staff required to initiate communication with candidates regarding eligibility requirements?
● What is the turnaround time for processing exam results? ● Can you measure the sum of each item above in hours, days,
weeks, or months? ● Where do you perceive there is wasted time spent in non-value
added tasks?● Do you have the tools to measure these things?
See Figure 1 on page 8 for more helpful questions.
As already stated, a decision to apply for an exam or renew is rarely an impulse buy. The challenge is to discover how each phase efficiently enables a person to become a paying candidate.
● If the qualifications and prerequisites are not clear, the pre-application phase will reflect sluggish candidate activity.
● If a pre-application phase takes too long, a person is less likely to convert to a paid candidate.
● If the communications activities in each phase are too slow or too infrequent prior to recertification, the credential holder is less likely to renew, further affecting revenues.
Regardless of the phase, the effects of a handicapped turnaround within that phase may be felt in the preceding or following phases, often making it difficult to diagnose and perform process improvements.
Maintaining a homegrown system will ultimately create a handicapped organizational framework, in turn creating significant and often undetectable ripple effects. It is precisely because of this difficulty that organizations should keep the transition from their homegrown systems a priority until it is completed successfully.
Outgrowing homegrown systems will cripple each phase, some more than others. Subsequently, all phases become dysfunctional as your needs outgrow the capability of the framework that once supported it.
Never is this more evident than in candidate and staff communications. Missing or incomplete data, qualifications shortages and special procedures are just three examples of “black holes” where candidates get delayed and are difficult to recover and convert. Simultaneously staff become frazzled in the fray of troubleshooting how, when, where, and why it happened or keeps happening.
BrightLink Insights | Volume 2 | July 2016 thebrightlink.com | Page 5
Preapplication
Application
Exam Eligibility
Examination
Certification
Recertification / Renewal
The above general phases are outlined in more detail in Roger Brauer’s essential work, Exceptional Certification (2011, p. 87 ff.) . The processes in each phase will inherently contain opportunities for “process black holes” to develop, which are delays in turnaround.
Major Certification Phases
ExamScheduling
Exam Results
Industry best practices refer to process delays as waste. Learning to recognize waste in workflow is the single greatest challenge in analyzing organizational process improvements. It also affords some of the most rewarding opportunities. There are at least three areas in which waste occurs in the credentialing organization.
1. Extra Processing: Any effort that doesn’t add value to the credential from the customer’s perspective..
Description: Any process that leaves customer’s thinking, “there’s got to be a better, easier, faster way to get this done.” Extra processing is usually reflected in complex process requiring unnecessary and redundant steps or multiple levels of approval that do not add value. This is usually reflected in too many staff members to accomplish the steps in a phase or workflow.
As new staff are added, the credential fees must increase. Consequently, potential candidates will reassess the value of a voluntary certification. Required licenses or certs could make customers disgruntled. In both cases, their perception of value changes. If they perceive they are paying more and getting the same or less value, their attitude toward the organization may decline. Communication will follow suit impacting growth and stability.
Challenge: Examine your processes that involve approval steps, or a series of handoffs. Think critically about each approval or handoff. Would your customers think that each of those steps is adding value? Would they be just as happy if the item only needed one signature, one handoff, so it could get to the quicker? If so, then you’re over processing.
2. Motion: The needless movement of people from one place to another.
Description: Motion may show up as organizational staff constantly switching between different computer domains, servers, or software applications; having too many keystrokes to accomplish a computerized task.; repeating the same tasks over and again, etc.
Challenge: Examine your processes that involve shifting paperwork between team members, attention between various database and information sources, or administrative tasks between various staff.
3. Waiting Time: Any delay between when one process step /activity ends and the next step/activity begins.
Description: A fair amount of the work in the credentialing process is invisible to the naked eye, making it difficult to accurately identify wasted time. Most of the delays occur either in staff waiting to execute a particular task or step in the process, or in candidates waiting to submit information or reply in communication.
Challenge: Investigate process mapping techniques and value stream mapping to find delays in processes. Such maps highlight where work sits waiting for someone to do something with it..
BrightLink Insights | Volume 2 | July 2016 thebrightlink.com | Page 6
Five Wastes in the Credentialing Organization
The five wastes are adapted from the book,Lean Six Sigma for Service:
How to use Lean Speed & Six Sigma Quality to Improve Services and Transactions
by Michael L. George (2003, pp. 259-261).
Recommended Reading
Extra Processing
Motion
Waiting
Defects
Talent
4. Defects: information, products, or services that are incomplete or inaccurate..
Description: Failure to obtain all the information required from a candidate requires more effort to obtain it. A candidate submitting the incorrect information causes organizational staff follow up. Receiving documentation unnecessary to the certification process creates additional effort to review before disposing. Any process in which there are recurring errors, customer dissatisfaction, fixing paperwork errors, tracking down the right people to get the right information, or entry errors that cause wrong actions are examples of process defects.
Challenge: Examine the means by which candidate or renewal information is gathered. Inspect the process and system for ways in which additional labor is required to follow up or review.
5. Talent: Underutilizing people’s talents, skills & knowledge.
Description: In the effort to move candidates and recertifications through the process, an organization may be utilizing staff in the wrong places, or underutilizing them by requiring attention to rote, manual processes that could be somehow automated.
Challenge: Read Volume 1 in this series for assistance in thinking through this common waste in credentialing organizations.
When waste has been identified, an organization is better positioned to determine which activities, tasks, or steps may be standardized, optimized, or eliminated with a new system or solution that can automate as much as possible. The decision will then turn to whether to build or buy such a solution. See figure 1 on the next page for a helpful tool in discovering wastes and delays.
Build?Or Buy?
BrightLink Insights | Volume 2 | July 2016 thebrightlink.com | Page 7
Attract
the candidate pool
Abide
by the standards
Assist
In efficient credentialing
Choose a solution
that fuels theprimary mission.
Want to learn how to discover these wastes affect your business
systems and processes?
See Volume 3Transitioning from Counterproductiive
to Coefficient Processes
Coming Soon:August 2016
Opportunities & Solutions
Building a Custom Solution
Building a custom solution might be the answer. Reducing workflow waste and customizing a new solution may enable customers to convert more quickly, get approved faster, and get results sooner. The challenge however is one of assumption: how do you know there’s not already a better way that increases the turnaround speed?
Buying an Existing Solution
Buying an existing solution from a partner exclusive to the credentialing industry usually yields a product built from “baked in” best practices reaching across a variety of industries and sectors. As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. Achieving higher customer conversions and candidate throughput happens efficiently along the rails of an existing solution built from industry experience.
Troubleshooting Waste &Process Blacks Holesin Your Turnaround
Turnaround is defined asthe time required to
advance the candidateto the next phase in the workflow.
What are the wastes that cause delays in each phase of your organization’s process?
Which wastes or delays arecaused by
candidates?
Why are candidatesdelayed in
that area(s)?
Which wastes or delays are
caused internally by
staff?
Why are staff causing
wastes or delays in
turnaround?
Which candidate wastes or
delayscan you resolve?
Which staff wastes or
delayscan you resolve?
What do you feel you would needto resolve these wastes and delays?
STAFF CANDIDATES
BrightLink Insights | Volume 2 | July 2016 thebrightlink.com | Page 8
Preapplication
Application
Exam Eligibility
Examination
Certification
Recertification / Renewal
Major Certification Phases
ExamScheduling
Exam Results
Figure 1
Client Studies
BrightLink clients indicate that after implementing the Clarus credential management system, turnaround times decreased significantly in three noteworthy areas.
1. Registration and application happens in minutes, and is self-guided by the candidate.
This has almost eliminated staff involvement. In cases where staff assistance is requested, staff either direct the candidate back to their profile, or handle the matter appropriately within the candidate’s profile. Regardless of who updates the profile, updates are logged for accountability.
2. Application, eligibility requirements, and exam scheduling information are now automated by an active data management (ADM) system with customized preventive communications between the candidate and the system.
An active database management (ADM) system is able to perform many of the administrative tasks normally required of staff using a passive data management system (e.g. spreadsheets, paper tracking forms, database records, etc.). Clarus is an ADM system, functioning as an operational, smart, intelligent system that handles many of the business rules and administrative tasks for automating the management of a certification process.
Preventive communications are a part of an ADM system, which utilizes pre-built business rules to anticipate at anytime a candidate action and automatically respond via email with the customized, appropriate and accurate information. This reduces customer service problems and recovery challenges.
3. Exam results are processed and released in hours instead of days or weeks.
Operating with an ADM system like Clarus means integrating with third party test center systems so that exam results are sent to Clarus and displayed in a variety of configurable ways. Staff may then use Clarus to determine when to release results to the candidate(s).
Client Example
One client advertised rapid results release to their candidates.
Without Clarus, using their homegrown system, the total turnaround time from exam completion to results processing and release was 21 days. Include timeframe did not include postal system delivery of the paper results. Include the paper registration processing time and exam scheduling time (approximately two weeks), and the organization’s ability to compete in the marketplace was significantly hindered (see figure 2).
With Clarus, exam results are available to the organization in 24 hours or less. Additionally,, candidates register themselves online in just minutes and select their exam schedule and location with ease. The result? The client reported an increase in conversions from customer to candidate, giving them a distinct advantage over their competitors. (see figure 3)
BrightLink Insights | Volume 2 | July 2016 thebrightlink.com | Page 9
Figure 2
Figure 3
● Cloud-based: accessible by permissioned users from any location with an internet connection.
● Secure Scalability: securely growing with you as your organization grows.
● Industry Exclusive: developed and maintained by a company exclusively devoted to the credentialing industry.
● Baked-In Experience: built from the ground up with industry best practices across a variety of credentialing markets, including healthcare, financial, construction, utilities, safety and more.
● Integrated Systems: unifying the workflow from profile to application, eligibility verification to approval/denial, exam registration to payment, exam scheduling to exam results, recertification to renewal and termination.
● Pinpoint Accessibility: locating and accessing any candidate information at any point in the lifecycle, at the click of a mouse in seconds.
● Customized Reporting: using innovative business intelligence “Perspectives” to manage any candidates in any workflow phase.
● Third-Party Accessible: offering secure access to third-parties for credential original source verification.
● Accelerated Consolidation: defragmenting disparate sources of candidate information into rapidly, flexibly and securely updated information.
ClarusA CredentialManagement
Solution
BrightLink502 Bombay LaneRoswell, GA 30076thebrightlink.com
Phone:678.392.3317
Email:[email protected]
Web:getclarus.com
If you believe you may be outgrowing your homegrown systems, partner with Clarus to help your organization confront challenges and identify the opportunities associated with the “build or buy” question. The Clarus solution is...
BrightLink’s Clarus services and solutions help transition your homegrown-but-outgrown credential, candidate and certification
lifecycle management information systems to an autopilot experience.
What’s your next step?
As a starting point, consider Clarus Navigator, a technology-neutral consultative service with the Clarus team, designed to discover where you are, where you want to be and how to safely navigate the path there.
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