Accreditors abound! Our children go to accreditors schools. We receive care at accredited hospitals. We take our children out to an accredited zoo or an accredited park. Our apartment building safety is reviewed by an accredited surveyor. A military jet flying overhead has parts that were provided by an accredited supplier. In all, the US has over 150 accreditors providing their stamp of approval to very diverse organizations. Accreditors are non-profit organizations that have the potential to generate high revenues and often do it in a captive manner.

We asked a diverse group of accreditors what would make an accreditor successful. This is the summary of their thoughts.

Vision and drive of a founder who came up with the idea and received a blessing from an existing body which could be a government agency. Just like any entrepreneur these founders relentlessly drive the organization forward to add new members, expand and strengthen its ecosystem, and dream up new member services.
A small market usually means that there is no competition, at least, for now. Outside of education and healthcare markets which are very large and competitive, many accreditors focus on very specific areas which simply do not have any space remaining for a possible competitor to emerge.

Building an ecosystem of members, supporters, and stakeholders builds a framework of interdependency. Disrupting an ecosystem by a few bad decisions can jeopardize even the most captive accreditor and give rise to an idea of a replacement, while for accreditors in the competitive accreditation fields of education and healthcare, the impact could be member loss which may be difficult to reverse.

Relentlessly offering new products and services is the path to strengthening member bonds and increasing revenue. Increased revenue is important as it gives an accreditor the freedom to continue innovating.
Digitization of all the routine functions to achieve member intimacy, operational ease and transparency, and increased service speed could be the most critical success factor. Some of the early technology adopters are successful today because of their embrace of digitization AND either retraining their staff or attracting new employers with a digital skill set. Examples of failures are many, as some accreditors let their existing systems deteriorate due to lack of proper management, bought into expansive and expensive visions offered by unscrupulous technology partners, allowed silent sabotage by their long-term staff threatened by the rise of technology, or over-hired developers thinking that this is all that was needed for the project’s success.
Pragmatism is my favorite feature of a successful accreditor. Taking into account all the above considerations in a pragmatic manner, building a model and mapping out the processes accordingly remain the key success factors for an accreditor.

Stratuspeer invested heavily in building out our accreditation specialty. Our pragmatic, member-focused, and ecosystem-anchored approach to building accreditation platforms has been winning loyal followers, and to them, we are deeply thankful. We hope our posts may spur discussion or debate which may benefit us all.

Please visit our website for more information or contact @Pavel Karelin on LinkedIn for an introduction and demo.