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Does your recertification or renewal program accept CE? If so, why not upstream your process and formalize a CE approval program?

A CE approval program connects your community to relevant educational resources and creates the framework for your educational market’s quantity, quality, and variety to grow. Certificants reap the benefits of more choice, and you cover more of your program’s domain areas. You don’t have to develop those offerings yourself, but they can still be a source of revenue.

The benefits of launching a CE approval program within your credentialing ecosystem are many, but the last one — revenue potential — often tops the list for organizations we’ve worked with. With the right technology solution, you can choose and implement the right CE approval revenue model for your organization, your certificants, and your education providers.

Revenue Based on Provider Approval

If your membership or credentialing organization already has a process to review and approve CE, you’re likely aware of which providers in your industry deliver CE that meets your standards. An approved provider program helps connect your certificants to those providers and eliminates time spent reviewing and rejecting individual practitioner submissions. Of course, it’s also an opportunity to collect fees from those providers in exchange for an elevated status within the CE marketplace.

When planning to collect fees for provider approval, we see one of two approaches: CE providers can apply to submit courses and then pay a fee per course or credit hour. Or, providers can pay an application fee and then offer an unlimited number of courses once approved, perhaps paying a yearly fee to maintain approval. Do your providers offer a high volume of CE activities? Or will they submit fewer courses overall?

Revenue Based on Course Approval

Whether or not you establish a provider approval process, you can also generate revenue with a course approval process. This revenue model allows providers to either directly submit discrete courses for approval or apply for pre-approval and then submit courses. Often, the course approval approach is based on the staff level of effort in reviewing the course.

Course approval focuses much more on course content, delivery, and the qualifications of the instructor than the evaluation of an organization and its standing, accreditation, and institutional integrity. Since you will likely have more courses to review than providers, this method can be time and labor-consuming, especially if you require provider pre-approval before course approval. However, it also offers the ability to compare and classify CE activities to your specific exam blueprint.

As with provider approval, you can price course approvals per course or course hour. You can offer reduced fees to pre-approved providers who have paid an application fee to submit courses, or charge both an application fee to be evaluated and a listing fee to appear in your course directory.

Revenue Based on Attendance Records

Have you considered pricing your approval program based on course attendance rather than providers or courses? An emerging model of third-party CE approval collects payment per attendance record, calculated according to rosters shared by the providers. With this model, your practitioners don’t have to upload their CE credits or activities, and staff reviewers won’t have to audit certificate submissions. The accountability shifts to your approved providers.

An attendance-based pricing model captures the actual market value of the course, accounting for the actual seats filled for any given CE offering. This can be an attractive prospect for all providers, especially if many different providers offer varying quantities or kinds of CE activities. Smaller providers with smaller classrooms have a more even footing with larger providers that dominate their industry. However, success with this model ultimately hinges on the data flow between parties and their systems. Before considering this framework, ask yourself: Do you have a portal for providers to log in and upload attendance records? Can you import data in bulk without affecting your system performance? Can bulk import trigger actions within your larger approval workflow?

How LearningBuilder Supports Third-Party CE Approval Programs

At Heuristics, we have direct experience implementing revenue-earning models based on provider approval, course approval, and attendance upload. We’re ready to help build the solution for your program needs. Here are just some of the ways that LearningBuilder makes third-party CE approval not just possible, but profitable:

Applications for approval: With LearningBuilder’s Visual Rules Engine and Workflow Editor, we can tailor all applications to your specific standards and rules, including deadlines and required documentation. Providers will register in the system, enter the demographic information you define, and complete an application or submit a course for evaluation according to your required standards and pricing. If necessary, applicants can upload relevant documents and even course materials. Your reviewers won’t waste time with incomplete applications, because LearningBuilder prevents submission until all required information is in the correct format.

Staff review: The review stage is often where an approval workflow gets complicated. We can help! LearningBuilder removes roadblocks in the review process so that your staff stays productive. Easy-to-navigate dashboards, queues, and automated notifications keep all parties in the loop. Staff can assign reviewers with the expertise to determine whether an application meets your requirements. Reviewers can use the system to send an application back to applicants to request clarification on ambiguous or incomplete responses. Applicants can upload documentation to fulfill those requests. The process moves forward with a click of a button.

Searchable directories and course catalogs: Depending on your program needs, LearningBuilder has several methods to publish a course catalog or directory. Once a course is approved, it automatically becomes available in your course catalog as a searchable activity. Should it benefit your certificants, LearningBuilder’s elastic search/open search functionality can further enhance the search experience.

Data exchange: Interested in an attendance-based pricing model for your CE approval program, but worried about wrangling that much data? Our new Learning Hub and Enhanced Data Import tool make it easy to safely and securely handle a high volume of attendance records. Even if your CE provider releases 100,000 CE records at a time, your system performance will be unaffected. We also offer extended data functionality: When providers publish attendance records to the Learning Hub, LearningBuilder can automatically update a candidate’s application with their earned CE credits.

Reporting: LearningBuilder’s Reporting Engine puts all program data at your fingertips, and we mean all program data. Not only can running program reports help support your billing activity, they can also help you determine the appropriate approval pricing model.

Easy renewals: Like certifications, CE approvals must be maintained and updated over time. Once approved, providers can select courses to renew and checkout as a single transaction. Want more from your renewal process (like updated documentation and additional review)? We can do that, too.

Secure Payments: LearningBuilder supports a seamless checkout experience that integrates with several PCI-compliant payment gateways. Our Workflow Editor can calculate fees based on your rules and requirements, and we also offer automated refunds — all while keeping personal data completely secure.

Don’t Let Your Technology Limit Your Options

Are you interested in expanding the horizons of your membership or credentialing organization’s growth potential? We’d love to connect with you in Cleveland at this year’s August ASAE Annual Meeting — we’ll be at booth #437. If we miss each other, just use our scheduling tool to find a time that works for an exploratory call!