Overcoming Scalability Roadblocks in Certification Program Growth
Is your certification program growing slower than expected despite positive feedback and interest from industry professionals and employers? It’s possible that your internal limitations are holding you back from achieving your goals. Maybe you don’t have enough resources. Perhaps you’re wasting precious resources through process inefficiencies, or you’re focused on activities that don’t result in growth. Identifying your internal roadblocks is the first step.
What Does a Scaling Problem Look Like?
Before we get to some practical ideas for optimizing your internal structures for growth, let’s look at the possible issues from a couple of standpoints: professionals seeking certification and your association’s leadership team.
From the professional’s perspective, candidates may be struggling to navigate your certification process. Complex or stringent eligibility requirements, confusing procedures, outdated preparation options, and inconvenient testing centers can all discourage candidates from starting and completing the certification.
From your association’s perspective, your team might lack the resources and expertise to manage the certification program efficiently. Certification programs require subject matter expertise, project management, research, content updates, application and exam management, training development, customer support, marketing, IT, and more. You can’t ask one person to succeed at all those tasks.
Additionally, if your decisions aren’t data-driven, you may not be addressing the right issues or making the most of your resources. What data are you capturing and what insights are you getting from that data? Do you understand candidates’ certification paths and timelines? What exam topics or questions are too difficult or easy? Are your exam preparation resources elevating pass rates? What’s keeping your customer service team busy? Your data can help identify roadblocks so you can take action to eliminate them.
Being introspective isn’t easy, but internal issues are more controllable than external ones. Let’s take a look at some practical solutions to these challenges.
Three Strategies to Better Scale Your Certification Program
- Audit your candidates’ certification process. Go through your candidates’ process step-by-step or reach out to recent certification earners and ask about their experience. From application to exam preparation and testing, what steps are confusing, inconvenient, or difficult to navigate? Provide clear and concise information about eligibility requirements, offer efficient and effective exam preparation materials, and ensure your candidate management system is user-friendly.
- Establish realistic roles and resources. Determine the expertise needed for each aspect of the certification program. Hire additional staff or partner with external organizations experienced in certification management as needed to avoid overburdening one individual or a small team.
- Leverage data for decision making. Making data-driven decisions will help you use your time and resources wisely. By collecting data and analyzing industry trends, exam performance, training programs, earner demographics, sales and marketing conversions, and customer service inquiries, you can pinpoint what’s working and what’s not and prioritize your action items.
Let’s see how some of these strategies made a significant impact on a real association.
Growth in Action: Outsourcing Expertise to Overcome Resource Limitations
Consider the example of a healthcare association that faced resource limitations but needed to develop high-quality certification preparation materials. In 2022, the association offered two certifications and planned to introduce a third. They realized their existing preparation materials didn’t meet their standards or the needs of their candidates; however, they lacked the internal resources to create, deliver, and maintain new training programs.
The association partnered with Holmes Corporation (HC), an external expert in certification preparation. HC helped develop study programs for in-person, virtual, and hybrid courses. The collaboration included creating reading materials, online study tools for individual candidates, and class resources for instructors. Additionally, HC helped deliver marketing resources, sales tools, IT support, and a team of trained customer care representatives.
Within 14 months, the association launched three new certification preparation programs without adding staff. All three programs exceeded revenue expectations and received high customer satisfaction ratings. Candidates who previously struggled with the preparation process now had a clear and manageable path to success.
If you’re looking for better results and faster growth from your certification program, ensuring your certification processes and resources are scalable is crucial. By streamlining the workflow, establishing realistic roles, and leveraging data-driven decision making, you will make your program more appealing and accessible for candidates, while also ensuring systems are in place to manage future growth.
External partners can also provide the resources and expertise needed to reach your goals without overextending your internal resources. The team of experts at Holmes Corporation can help. Reach out to us at [email protected] to get started.
