When you’re

outgrowing your homegrowncredential management system...

Do You

Buildor Buyyour next system?

A BrightLink Insight Series

6 Challenges & Opportunities for Credentialing Organizations Volume 1 | July 2016

Transitioning Employee EngagementFrom Stagnation to Innovation1

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 1 | July 2016 thebrightlink.com | Page 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:

● 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 credentialing 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 and taking advantage of the opportunity presented leads to the next. Confidence deepens, the transition path is smoothed, overhead is reduced, innovation is revitalized, and new growth enjoyed.

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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.

When it comes to the staff in a credentialing organization, putting industry best practices in place automate repetitive administrative work is crucial. It is also the natural step toward enabling staff to unlock and exercise their potential creativity and innovation. In turn the organization can organically stabilize, optimize, and grow.

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 current processes and systems that engage staff in work that could otherwise be automated.

Transitioning Employee Engagement

From Stagnation to InnovationAn organization may discover they have outgrown their homegrown system when they feel stuck in one or more of three ruts.

1. Putting out too many customer service fires.

2. Doing customer service recovery.

3. Working hard to prop up processes that their gut tells them are too complex.

The symptoms are generally evident in a staff that is often left feeling frazzled by frenetic work and generally unfulfilled in their roles. Consequently, they stagnate as passion and purpose denigrates.

Organizations may also detect the need for transitioning out of a homegrown system when employees are engaged in rote, low-challenge work and subsequently prevented from more enriching, innovative work.

In a 2011 study by the Maritz Institute, two of the three recurring attributes among multiple experiences contributing input on workplace enrichment were:

1. The opportunity for self-discovery, self- improvement, skill mastery, learning and personal growth.

2. The ability to do something that made a difference and contributed to the well-being of others...within the organization.

Arising from a basic understanding of humanity and respect comes a principle known as “the eighth waste” in the organizational management model known as Lean Six Sigma. This waste is identified by underutilized talent, or non-utilized talent.

The eighth waste indicates that talent and people can be engaged in tasks where they are not a match, or are being utilized to perform processes that are largely outside the scope of their role. When all employees are engaged to the best of their ability, an organization has a lean team.

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60%

Of engaged employees are not directing their efforts toward the organization’s top priorities.

20%

Of employeesare disengaged

from their current assignments.

25%

Of employeesare actively looking for

new employment opportunities.

人間尊重

The original Japanese words for “respect for people.”

“Holding precious what it is to be human”Jon

Miller

Lean Expert

“Many factors influence employee retention. [One] way to help keep employees is by enriching job functions. The organization can contract repetitive, low-challenge work.

“That leaves a position with the intellectually challenging work. It enriches the positions and makes work experience positive.”

“Another approach...is to brainstorm with staff about improvements. Employees may have ideas for changes that eliminate the less desirable duties.

Non-utilized talent can be identified in an organization’s failure to leverage people’s skills, talent, knowledge or creativity. It is reflected in the following ways among employees.

● Failure to engage their brain fully.● Absence of asking hard questions.● Absence of suggestions, recommendations, or original thought.● A “That’s not my job” attitude.● A belief that their opinion doesn’t matter● Feeling that they are simply expected to come to work and do

what they are told.● Spending too much time on low-level tasks that should be

automated, while customers are left waiting on staff expertise.● Stating there’s too much to do without much evident value-add

in the work they are given to do.● A deep sense that some or much of their work is complex and

should be much simpler.

A crucial element of the eighth waste is that employees are left feeling unfulfilled. When many employees are unfulfilled, the quality of the organization’s output decreases. A symbiotic relationship between the organization’s mission and engaged, fulfilled employees is the “sweet spot” for both.

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Exceptional Certification By Roger L. Brauer

Copyright 2011, p. 47

“I want people to come to work and feel great about themselves

and their organization... to build their skills and capabilities—

everyone striving to be their best, to be an artisan at something.”

Norman Bodek

Just as candidates value the quality of their credential and the process it took to earn it, employees in the credentialing organization value the quality of their work-life and the processes they use to serve the candidates. Performance enhancement management coach, Robert A. Brown believes that “self-esteem, sense of mastery, accomplishment, teamwork...positive interactions with others and a sense of well-being” are the desired outcomes. The goal, according to Carlos Venegas, in his book, Flow in the Office, is to liberate “hidden talents and capacities in everyone involved, even as it unleashes value.”

Employee development happens not only in the training that organizations offer or require to fill skill and knowledge gaps. It also happens through making sure the right people are in the right spots so they can flourish in what they do best. CPI seeks to discover how to do both and eliminate waste. Respecting the basic nature and needs of employees will enhance and improve the inner attitude of the people, affecting the outward production of the organization.

Building a Custom Solution

Building a custom solution with staff input may bring reinvigoration and innovation, perhaps eliminating the eighth waste. Coming together to solve common problems with mutual effort and input creates something new, thereby rejuvenating employees, spreading new energy to candidates as well.

However, as some organizations will attest, there can be a painful failure to accurately and thoroughly analyze results in a custom solution with built in problems, change requests and ballooning estimates and invoices. A blowback effect occurs, yielding even more frustration and budget blows, possibly creating deeper morale challenges than existed previously.

Buying an Existing Solution

Some organizations find a wiser move in choosing an existing solution with industry best practices baked in, thus resolving many of the eighth waste reflections on the previous page. In so doing, staff are able to finally surrender low-challenge work to an automated solution that can autopilot rote tasks. This allows staff re-engage their brain, creativity, innovation, knowledge, and skills more fully to the original mission of the organization.

The amazing yet obvious result ofan existing software solution is that

more “headspace” is created. The amazing outcome is that both employee

and organization mutually grow.

...it cangive your

organizationan edge

over your competitors.

...you arebuilding a large

credentialing organization

and are able to spread the

building costs over a number

of years.

Build your own

custom solution if

and when...

BrightLink Insights | Volume 1 | July 2016 thebrightlink.com | Page 6

Use an existing solution if your

organization has...

a limited budget

lack of technical proficiency

a limited timeframe access to

a great product already available

No need for a competitive advantage.

Choose a solution that engages the strengths, talents, giftsand skills of your employees and doesn’t just keep them

busy with low-level, l0w-challenge, rote administrative tasks.

Build?Or Buy?

Client Studies

Our clients indicate that after implementing Clarus, employee satisfaction increased with three noteworthy results.

1. Some are innovating and initiating process improvements and making customers happier.

2. Most are taking ownership to evolve in the organization as their industry evolves.

3. A few are transitioning into other roles where they perform customer-facing responsibilities to innovate other growth.

Most employees have also reported an increased satisfaction in their own lifestyles with restored sense of work-life balance.

With one or more of the above results unfolding, a surprising common denominator appeared among clients who used Clarus:

a net reduction in work-force never occurred.

Invoicing team consisted of 12

employees. Without Clarus today that team would be 20.

Invoicing team reduced to 5 people

and concurrently handled a 2x

increase in revenue and invoicing.

Client Example

In one client’s experience, an invoicing team of twelve persons was reduced to five, with the remaining seven persons transitioning to other meaningful opportunities in the organization (see figure 1).

Figure 1

Figure 2

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Without Clarus, that same team today would require twenty employees along with the associated labor costs.

With Clarus, the team was cut by 60% while revenue was doubling concurrently. Thanks to automated and integrated invoicing, that team of five today is 25% of what it would be without Clarus, given that organization’s current revenue (see figure 2).

● 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: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.