The document discusses challenges that credentialing organizations face when transitioning from homegrown credential management systems to automated solutions, specifically around reducing delays or "turnaround times" for candidates going through the credentialing process. It analyzes common sources of waste and delays that slow down turnaround, and provides examples from client organizations that implemented the Clarus credential management system and were able to significantly reduce turnaround times for application registration, exam result processing, and other areas.

1. 6 Challenges & Opportunities for Credentialing Organizations Volume 2 | July 2016
Transitioning Candidate Turnaround
From Handicapped to Healthy
When you’re
outgrowing your homegrown
credential management system...
Do You
Build
or Buy
your next system?
A BrightLink Insight Series
2

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 Buy
your next solution
BrightLink Insights | Volume 2 | July 2016 thebrightlink.com | Page 2

3. 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.

4. Transitioning Candidate Turnaround
From Handicapped to Healthy
Candidate 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-medium
sized businesses
have responded to a
customer’s email in
an incomplete way.
Marketing Metrics
36%
Expect an email response
in 6 hours or less.
Forrester Research, Inc., 2008
50% 83%
of consumers
5 to
20%
70%

5. 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
Exam
Scheduling
Exam Results

6. 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

7. 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 the
primary
mission.
Want to learn how to
discover these wastes
affect your business
systems and
processes?
See Volume 3
Transitioning 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.

8. Troubleshooting Waste &
Process Blacks Holes
in Your Turnaround
Turnaround is defined as
the time required to
advance the candidate
to 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 are
caused by
candidates?
Why are
candidates
delayed 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
delays
can you
resolve?
Which staff
wastes or
delays
can you
resolve?
What do you feel you would need
to 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
Exam
Scheduling
Exam Results
Figure 1

9. 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

10. ● 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.
Clarus
A Credential
Management
Solution
BrightLink
502 Bombay Lane
Roswell, GA 30076
thebrightlink.com
Phone:
678.392.3317
Email:
info@thebrightlink.com
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.
10