A guide to digital certificates for in-person training and workshops - Case Example [Product Training]

More and more companies are looking to implement a digital certificate solution for their in-person and on-site training.

Especially nowadays with the high acceptance rate of digital documents, digitizing certificates is a great way to reduce unnecessary costs and administrative overhead.

Furthermore, features such as LinkedIn integrations and cryptographic encryptions get rid of other problems that analog certificates brought along.

In this guide, you will learn about a process for in-person and on-site training providers and how to successfully implement a digital certification solution that reduces cost, and admin overhead while at the same time providing a great experience for your recipients.

Case Introduction and Problem Statement

The introduced process is from an on-site training provider in the medical tech industry. Before implementing a digital certificate solution, the training certificates were manually created and sent out after receiving the participant data from more than 300 different trainers that trained external audiences.

The participants, in this case, were nurses and technicians. The only data that the administrating department had were the customer data that didn’t equal the recipient information.

For clarification let’s take a look at the situation in a simplified and graphic way:

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As can be seen in the graphical analysis there were multiple steps in which the process was very inefficient, time-consuming, and error-prone. The resulting problems were long waiting times for the recipients, high administrative overhead, costly handling processes, and error-prone certificate creation. For simplification, the support overhead by recipient requests (e.g. lost certificates, waiting times, etc.) was left out.

In short, the client has multiple hundreds of trainers that are providing on-site product (complex machinery) training at their customer’s facilities.

After the training, the trainers were required to fill a list with the training participant’s personal information and further meta data about the training provided. After this process, they had to forward the information to the certification department administration (in this case an operations manager).

This project manager delegated the task of reviewing the data, choosing the right certificate template, and manually starting the process of filling the correct information into the prepared certificate templates.

Afterward, the certificates were printed and sent out to the participants and to the participants’ employers.

The solution approach

For on-site training providers like in this example, a one-size-fits-all solution has proven difficult, because components such as trainer organization and clearance process structures vary a lot and might need to compromise for rigid out-of-the-box tools.

Therefore, for the customer at hand, our solutions architects built an efficient extension on our base certification tool*.

The new process had to reduce the process inefficiencies and take all security requirements regarding the clearance under consideration.

Together with the client’s project managers, the following solution was elaborated:

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1. Right after the training the trainer can create a QR-code that has all the metadata with regard to the given training:
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2. After the Code is scanned by the participants, the information needed for the certificate is collected directly by them via a form submission.

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3. The trainer can review the data and give clearance to start the certificate process:

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4. The trainer can simply manage the access to all certificates via the QR code overview:

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5. After the trainer gives clearance all participants automatically receive their certificate access via email:

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6. The administration can create new certificates and build up the logic in the backend and efficiently administrate the access for the trainers/representatives:

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The result of this digitized and specialized process led to multiple hours being saved on a weekly basis, substantial error reduction, and elimination of waiting periods for the certificates on the recipient’s end.

Conclusion and actionable advice for product training companies

The certification processes of on-site and hybrid training formats tend to be very distinct from online-only training formats. The more providing trainers and the higher the security importance (with regard to copy-proof technologies and clearance processes), the more important a scalable solution becomes. Our team is committed to finding the perfect solution for you and presenting an optimized process. Within our free consultancy session we guide you within 30 minutes through the relevant questions you need to ask yourself before implementing a solution. This simple call already prevents 95% of all potential pitfalls in your digitization process.

It is designed to give you an actionable plan that you can realize with any partner or by yourself. Book your free session now via the following link:

https://calendly.com/virtualbadge-demo/certification-consultancy

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