Certification programs are a tried-and-true strategy for many organizations looking to embrace new markets and garner authority within their industry. While they can be powerful mechanisms for growth, they’re also reliant on their underlying technology and the integrity of the information they provide. This article looks at 5 key ways you can scale your certification programs while maintaining consumer trust.

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- Invest in good infrastructure
- Streamline content creation with AI
- Harness trusted data for continuous improvement
- Embrace flexible and micro learning options
- Set channel partners up for success
- Conclusion
1. Invest in good infrastructure
Going global successfully with your certification program heavily relies on investing in technology that can scale with you and offer the features necessary to truly succeed. Choosing a robust method of managing your candidates, like a comprehensive CRM for example, is integral, and for those organizations managing high-stakes and skill-based certification programs, whether compliance or health and safety-based, an Assessment Management System (AMS) is also highly recommended to allow for deeper data insights and more complex assessment formats. Just as vital is how seamlessly these platforms, and the many others you will depend on work together and support your learner’s journey.
Of course, it’s not just about the base infrastructure requirements of managing new volumes of traffic and data storage; it’s also about technology that is secure at its foundations and able to support new market needs, from translation requirements to accessibility features.
In short, your success and ability to scale often relies on choosing a forward-thinking vendor that not only supports your program’s needs today but is constantly staying ahead of the curve so that you’re never left behind:
You’re looking for a cross-section in your vendors of reliability in terms of what they’re able to provide and trustworthiness in terms of what they are able to deliver. Just as importantly, you should be looking for organizations that are innovative in their approach and moving with the technology because the reality is once you adopt a vendor and they’re a key part of delivering your certification program to your test takers, you become hugely reliant on them and moving from that vendor can be extremely complex, costly, and difficult.
Neil McGough, Learnosity CPO
2. Streamline content creation with AI
A frequent barrier to scalability is the sheer volume of content required to fully branch out with a comprehensive certification program. Item banks and feedback all take huge amounts of time and require subject matter experts whose time is already stretched thin. While AI isn’t a magic wand, with a responsible vendor and a human-centric approach, it can be a huge boost to productivity without watering down the value. For example, with tools like Author Aide, content authors can generate questions from pre-existing and expert-approved training or source material to create item banks much more efficiently. By battling these bottle necks with AI support, organizations can scale much more rapidly without compromising on their certification’s quality.
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3. Harness trusted data for continuous improvement
Your certification programs can only ever be as good as the data they’re built on. To certify with confidence and develop respected programs that are built-for-purpose means having access to data you can rely on.
As such, it’s very often the role of an AMS to deliver the 360-degree perspective of what’s working, what’s not, and what’s next.
Whether it’s surfacing lackluster training modules, poor performing questions, candidate performance over time, or emerging skills gaps, the ability to surface these essential insights is vital to your program’s success. By allowing data to be your decision-maker, your organization and certification program can continuously improve, adapt, and scale.
4. Embrace flexible and micro learning options
Reaching new markets with certifications rests heavily on your ability to provide secure and flexible options to learners. From being able to deliver certifications online to digital badges and security features such as locked-down browsers and proctoring options, going global with your certification programs means opening the doors to online learning that’s mobile-ready and cloud-based.
Of course, flexibility isn’t just about where you conduct your program but how. Micro-credentials, for example, have become increasingly popular among all walks of learning, from higher education to the workplace, and are often cited as a powerful tool for scaling. By their nature, micro-credentials can be a steady but low-commitment means of stacking learning, encouraging new learners to engage with your program much more readily than they might with a traditional long-form program. Understandably, micro-credentials are often used as a gateway to attract new learners, encouraging them to join a program and gradually adopt your other certification offerings.
5. Set channel partners up for success
From expanding your market presence to boosting customer confidence, a successful channel partner program can be a potent method of scaling your business. The most effective and time-efficient means of doing so often entails a flexible, online, and bite-size approach, such as micro-credentialing, enabling partners to not only level up knowledge but continually build upon the foundations of it too.
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Conclusion
While scaling is a common and understandable goal, it’s often one put on pause for the ‘right time’. However, the right time is arguably the moment you create your certification program. While you may have the best-practice strategies for growth in place and an experienced and talented team, the truth remains that the wrong technology can hold you back for years, dulling your competitive edge and hindering your progress. But the right technology? That can be the gift that keeps on giving, setting you up for success and ensuring you never fall behind.
If you’re wondering how to scale your certification programs with speed and security, why not talk to us? We’d love to help.