You know your organization needs new credentialing software to achieve all of the big goals you’ve set for the year ahead. Fortunately, your team has committed to the planning and discovery work needed to select the best software vendor for your needs.
As part of that work, your certification leaders have diagrammed your cycles and requirements, so everyone understands exactly what is needed in a new platform. It might look something like this:
This exercise is helpful for visualizing the overarching logic of your certification program, because it clearly lays out all of the different cycles, statuses and requirements that go into the certification process. But it also means you will need multiple logic charts to accommodate all of the certifications under your organization’s umbrella.
That complexity may lead you to think you need totally customized software to manage it all. But what you really need is configurable software.
Customized vs. Configurable Credentialing Software
What’s the difference between these two ways of describing a software platform? It’s a potentially big one, depending on your organization’s goals:
- Customization refers to the gathering of specific requirements about your certification cycles, and then building or modifying an existing software platform to meet those specific needs.
- Configurability means having options and choices built into your software, so you can configure the platform in various ways to suit your needs at a specific point in time. This may be handled through the software platform itself, or accomplished through integrations with other third-party systems.
The biggest benefit of a software platform built for configurability is that it can be tailored to meet your current needs, and evolve to meet your needs in the future as your certification needs or requirements change (which they inevitably will).
We saw this frequently during the pandemic, as many organizations pivoted to an online or virtual exam; it’s also a common theme for those moving from case reviews to oral or scenario exams for their certification exams. If you have been operating on a custom piece of software, made exclusively for your longtime workflows, making that jump to a new process or modality will be harder than for those using configurable software that can adapt to your new requirements.
This flexibility allows high-performance organizations to innovate and work on the cutting-edge of professional credentialing. When coupled with intelligent automations, like those found throughout ROC-P’s systems, you have the ability to truly remake your systems so they serve users accurately and efficiently, while also saving your team time.
With custom software development, you are not always guaranteed that flexibility—indeed, even seemingly small changes to accommodate a new process or integration, like an additional application, continuing education option or changing the order of requirements, can require months of costly development work.
If one of your goals is to move faster as a credentialing organization, you won’t get there with rigid software.
What Does Configurability Look Like?
Many credentialing management systems say they are tailored to your specific cycle needs, but the devil is in the details. How do you know you’re looking at a truly configurable system?
Adaptable Platform Logic
A truly configurable platform makes it easy for users to see and change settings. Look for switches, radio buttons, and other easy-to-use ways to toggle options and features within the platform.
Be wary if the vendor says options are available but need to be enabled on the back-end. This means certain features or settings are not accessible and require the company’s assistance to make changes for you to the underlying system or server settings. This can require costly resources and time to make changes.
To be truly innovative, your teams need to be able to experiment and build their own processes in fast iterations—you can’t do that waiting for a development or support team to process your request and activate a feature.
A configurable platform should also adapt easily to non-standard cycles and accommodate all of the exceptions and grandfathered statuses found in real life. Your software should have enough flexibility to handle them without tweaking the program’s logic or design.
A Thorough Onboarding & Discovery Process
You should expect your vendor partner to take a real interest in the details and idiosyncrasies of your certification cycles. The best partners understand credentialing isn’t a straight-line process from application to certification—it’s a collection of cycles, statuses, and exceptions that combine to get someone through the credentialing process. Your partners need to invest the effort it takes to truly understand your workflows and their implications for other parts of your certification program.
A Future-Focused Approach
Truly configurable software is built to evolve and change with your organization. Look for modular architecture and frequent build releases that demonstrate platform growth—and a responsiveness to your changing needs.
Also consider how prospective vendors talk about your organization and their platform. If it is all about the state of now and being reactive to current problems, don’t expect them to focus on your future growth once you start working together.
If you’re searching for new credentialing management, make sure you’re thinking about the long game and how your software will adapt to your changing work—the most innovative organizations need the most configurable software to power their goals. We can help with that, as the team behind the industry’s most configurable credentialing platform. Reach out for your personalized demo, or download our free guide to building a better certification application.