The accreditation landscape in the United States is supported by approximately 88 organizations recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) and the U.S. Department of Education (USDE). These organizations play a vital role in maintaining quality standards across sectors such as higher education, healthcare, and engineering.
Yet, in our experience many face persistent IT challenges, including working with time consuming manual workflows, trying to manage thousands of clients while delivering personalized communication, all on limited resources.
However, with the right tools, it is possible for accreditation organizations to streamline workflows, automate manual tasks, improve customer engagement, whilst ensuring data security and compliance—all within their existing Microsoft 365 environment.
Let’s take a look how…
Your Challenges, Our Solutions
1. Manual and Inefficient Email Communication
Your Challenge: As an accreditation body you’ll need to send thousands of emails daily, from renewal reminders and accreditation determinations to regulatory notices. Yet, without automation, this process is time-consuming and prone to errors. Perhaps you’re still relying on outdated on-premises systems or third-party email tools that require significant manual effort.
Our Solution: Implementing Microsoft Power Automate and Dynamics 365, we will enable you to automate email generation and delivery. By leveraging our custom-built templates and conditional formatting, you will be able to create personalized emails that include relevant account details, status updates, and dynamically generated PDF attachments. Using native Microsoft 365 tools ensures seamless integration while reducing dependency on costly external software. Additionally, by using Dynamics 365 to send emails, you will be able to see statistics like whether the email was opened, etc. in the trackable timeline area related to your accounts and contacts.
2. Data Fragmentation and Lack of Integration
Your Challenge: It’s likely you’re struggling with scattered data across multiple platforms, including custom-built systems, spreadsheets, and third-party applications. This fragmentation is making it difficult to access real-time insights, increasing inefficiencies and errors.
Our Solution: Using Microsoft Dataverse, integrated with Dynamics 365, we will provide you with a unified data management solution. It will synchronize data across platforms, consolidating client records, accreditation statuses, and correspondence history into a single source of truth. By centralizing data within Microsoft’s ecosystem, your teams can improve reporting, streamline workflows, and enable cross-department collaboration.
3. Over-reliance on Costly Third-Party Software
Your Challenge: If you’re paying for expensive third-party applications for functions such as document generation, CRM, and workflow automation, you could be unnecessarily paying twice. Not only do these tools not integrate well with existing Microsoft 365 environments, many duplicate the existing functionality within Microsoft 365, as well as being expensive and costly to maintain.
Our Solution: By fully utilizing the Microsoft 365 suite, Cloudwell helps accreditation organizations like yours to significantly reduce reliance on external applications. We’ll use Power Apps to create custom, no-code solutions tailored to your accreditation needs, and Power Automate to replace third-party workflow automation tools. We’ll use Dynamics 365 for document generation automation and SharePoint will eliminate the need for costly external services, saving your accreditation organization thousands of dollars annually.
4. Inefficient Document and Accreditation Letter Generation
Your Challenge: As an accreditation organization, you must generate and send various types of documents, including accreditation determinations, renewal notifications, and withdrawal letters. Without automation, manually creating and managing these documents is time consuming and likely to increase the risk of errors.
Our Solution: By implementing Power Automate and Cloudwell’s custom-built document generation API within Azure, organizations we work with now can automatically generate Word, Excel, and PDF documents based on predefined templates. These documents are dynamically populated with the latest accreditation data, ensuring accuracy and consistency. By integrating document generation with SharePoint Online, your people can easily store and retrieve documents, improving your workflow efficiency.
5. Limited Customer Engagement and Feedback Collection
Your Challenge: We know that gathering and analyzing customer feedback is crucial for continuous improvement in your accreditation services. However, like many, you may lack a structured way to collect real-time feedback from members and clients, leading to missed opportunities for service enhancement.
Our Solution: Introducing Microsoft Dynamics 365’s “Customer Voice” feature, we will enable you to automate survey distribution after site visits or accreditation decisions. Responses are aggregated into user-friendly dashboards using Power BI, allowing your teams to easily analyze trends, identify areas for improvement, and address concerns promptly. Automated workflows ensure that negative feedback triggers follow-ups, enhancing customer engagement.
Accreditation Success Story: How we helped CHAP
The Community Health Accreditation Partner (CHAP), a leading accrediting body for home and community-based healthcare organizations, faced similar challenges to those outlined above. Managing 14,000 clients, CHAP needed a solution to automate daily correspondence while improving data integration, and reducing reliance on third-party software.
What We Did:
- Deployed a custom-built document generation API in Azure.
- Automated email workflows using Power Automate, sending personalized emails with PDF attachments.
- Integrated Dynamics 365 and Dataverse to synchronize data across internal systems.
- Enabled document storage and versioning in SharePoint Online.
- Enhanced customer engagement with Dynamics 365’s “Customer Voice” survey tool.
The Results:
✅ Faster accreditation cycles with automated workflows.
✅ Increased email response rates, improving customer engagement.
✅ Reduced costs by eliminating third-party applications and reducing software licensing fees.
✅ Improved document management, security, and compliance.
Accreditation Success Story: How we helped nursing accreditation organization
A national nursing accreditation organization needed a solution to streamline its accreditation review process. The manual collection and review of accreditation documentation was time-consuming and prone to human error. The organization sought a more efficient process to ensure compliance, improve communication with healthcare institutions, and accelerate accreditation timelines, so they reached out to Cloudwell for help.
What We Did:
- Configured Microsoft Dynamics 365 to centralize data and automate document collection.
- Developed workflow automation using Power Automate to schedule and track site visits.
- Implemented secure document storage and versioning in SharePoint Online.
- Enhanced stakeholder communication with automated status notifications and feedback requests.
The Results:
✅ Streamlined accreditation cycles, significantly reducing review times.
✅ Improved compliance tracking and documentation accuracy.
✅ Increased transparency and communication with healthcare institutions.
✅ Reduced administrative burden, allowing staff to focus on higher-value tasks.
How Cloudwell Can Help You
If you choose to work with Cloudwell, we take a personalized approach to understanding your unique accreditation needs. Our team collaborates with you to identify challenges, streamline workflows, and implement tailored automation solutions using Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform.
Here’s how we’ll support you every step of the way:
- Evaluate Your Current Process: We start by assessing your existing workflows to identify manual tasks and frequent email templates.
- Centralize Your Data: Using Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Dataverse, we’ll ensure all your client information is securely stored and accessible in one place.
- Automate Your Correspondence: Our team configures Power Automate to trigger personalized emails using data from Dataverse, eliminating manual email creation.
- Simplify Document Management: We’ll set up SharePoint Online to store, version, and easily retrieve documents linked to specific client accounts, ensuring secure access and compliance with industry regulations.
- Enhance Customer Engagement: Using Dynamics 365’s Customer Voice tool, we’ll help you deploy automated surveys and track responses, helping to improve client satisfaction.
Ready to Transform Your Accreditation Process?
Watch our demo: Implementing Accreditation Solutions in the Power Platform
Cloudwell’s expertise in accreditation solutions can help you streamline workflows, reduce costs, and improve client communications—all while ensuring data security and compliance. If you’re ready to unlock the full potential of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform, contact us today for a personalized consultation.