Collecting and maintaining the right credentials is of the utmost importance for any organisation, non more so than in sport. A good credential management system can help you to develop and grow whilst knowing your members are in safe hands. If you don’t know already, credential management is the act of validating credentials, whether it’s for coaches, instructors, volunteers, employees or any other group.

We all know about the importance of ensuring our members’ safety and so it’s in the best interest of all sports organisations to minimise risks, maximise their understanding of their member credentials and ensure they are managed in an efficient and effective way. This is where a good credential management system comes into play.

Apart from ensuring the validity of documents, credentials can help you in many ways. If you’re organising an important event, you might want to display the credentials of your coaches and instructors to boost participation or even create a sense of trust for interested ticket bookers. If you’re organising an advanced-level course, a certification may work as a prerequisite for another credential, allowing only qualified people to attend your course. 

With that in mind here’s our 7 top tips to find a credential management system that’s right for you:

1. Qualification Monitoring

Your credential system should help you complete the due diligence on your members. This includes collecting the proper paperwork from your members and establishing/verifying the expiry date of their credentials.

You might also want to set up a manual approval process for your safeguarding officers to allow you to check the necessary uploaded documents before issuing a valid stamp.

2. Data Capture

A good credential management tool should allow you to create as many fields as needed for collecting credential data. Many National Governing Bodies (NGB) require additional compliance documents and information from their members- and your system should possess all the features to support your data collection endeavours.

 3. Credentials as Prerequisites

Certain credentials may require prerequisite conditions. For example, a coach should ideally have at least a Level 1 Certificate in Coaching, relevant to your sport. A good credential management system will help you set smart conditions so that a person’s credentials are accepted only when they fulfil all the requirements.

 4. User Experience

Your system should be simple enough to be understood by all of your prospective users. It needs to be straightforward and easy to navigate. This will help your members get their admin done faster and encourage them to stay within your system. A smart and user-friendly system ensures members don’t have to jump through hoops to finish their work in time.

 5. Auto-issued Credentials

If you work at a National Governing Body, you or your colleagues will most likely organise and run courses to help get your members and your community certified and as highly skilled as possible. For example, a member interested in being a lifeguard will definitely benefit from a first aid course. Your system should support the creation of courses, and automatically issue certificates once a member completes it successfully.

Did you know? We recently partnered with Learning Management System provider etrainu to aid NGBs in providing coaching, first aid and many other relevant courses. Read more about our partnership here.

 6. Email Management

A good email management service goes a long way in helping you stay connected with your sports community. You can compose, personalise and schedule various emails in advance, which can be automatically sent to members later. For example, reminders to your members before their coaching certification expires to ensure they renew in plenty of time.

 7. Club Governance

As a sports organisation, you must comply with a multitude of laws and regulations. This includes qualified personnel, club accreditations, and insurance policies. Your credential management tool should support you in maintaining these policies as well, it does not need to be solely individual focused. It should help you paint a clear picture of all member, club, school and other credentials via a fully accessible slice and dice data reporting system.

At JustGo, we’ve considered all your credential needs and built a system in collaboration with almost 100 NGBs that automates and manages your compliance. We also offer a myriad of exciting membership management features to handle your admin for you. We work directly with NGBs around the globe, and we would love to have a chat with you about how we can help you manage your compliance. To know more about our credential management feature, learn more here.

Don’t just take our word for it. Here’s Francesca Carlo, Services Manager and Data Protection Officer at Scottish Swimming has to say –

“Scottish Swimming love the flexibility that credential management has afforded us. As one of the early adopters of JustGo in Scotland, this latest development has helped us take charge of our system, make any changes ourselves, and means the system now can be easily tailored to suit our needs. A great step forward.”

When you’re in charge of a large organisation full of people ranging from ages 5-100, the safety of all your members lies in your hands. It is nearly impossible to track everyone’s qualifications and certifications manually. An automated credential management platform takes the burden off your shoulders by prompting your members to share their updated credentials and validating their documents.

At JustGo, we understand the necessity of a dependable credential management software. If you’d like to know more about our credential management system, feel free to reach out to Phil at sales@justgo.com. He’d love to hear from you!

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