case study
Today, ABRET operates a Credentialing Board and three accreditation boards covering EEG laboratories, long-term monitoring, and intraoperative monitoring. Over approximately 25 years, ABRET has grown from three credentials to eight, with three more in development, and now credentials technologists and accredits laboratories internationally.
ABRET began in the 1960s as the American Board for Registration of EEG Technologists, a credentialing board for professionals working in electroencephalography. As neurodiagnostics expanded to encompass a wider range of tests involving the brain and nervous system, ABRET grew with the profession and became ABRET Neurodiagnostic Credentialing and Accreditation.
ABRET credentials neurodiagnostic technologists and accredits laboratories, with each laboratory accreditation requiring renewal every five years. That cycle creates a recurring operational demand: every accredited laboratory eventually returns for reaccreditation, while new applications continue to arrive.
For years, ABRET managed the process through individual staff inboxes, personal contact lists, and spreadsheets. By 2025, two decades of five-year EEG accreditation cycles had produced a significant wave of renewals alongside a steady stream of first-time applications. On one occasion, a large health system submitted eight new applications on the same day for satellite facilities. At another point, multiple applicants with similar organizational names were active at once, making it increasingly difficult to determine which facility, location, and stage of review an email belonged to.
The pressure was concentrated on a lean team. Anna Bonner, ABRET’s Senior Director of Operations and Programs, is the primary staff owner of the accreditation process across the three accreditation boards. ABRET needed more than a place to store applications. It needed a sustainable way to coordinate applicants, reviewers, records, and recurring accreditation cycles without adding another full-time administrative burden.
ABRET found a specialized accreditation product that came close to its functional needs, but its annual maintenance cost was not sustainable relative to ABRET’s approximately $1,500 accreditation fee. The challenge was therefore both operational and strategic: create a solution sophisticated enough for ABRET’s requirements, but appropriately sized for a nonprofit credentialing organization.
The relationship began when ABRET’s Executive Director met Ashish Malik of 108 ideaspace at an ASAE Texas Chapter event. A conversation about ABRET’s accreditation bottleneck grew into a plan for a purpose-designed Salesforce solution that could support ABRET’s specialized requirements and provide a foundation for future growth.
The work was not a simple lift-and-shift. ABRET’s workflows had evolved over two decades around the limits of documents, spreadsheets, and email. Moving to Salesforce required ABRET and 108 to examine which steps were essential to accreditation quality and which existed mainly because they reflected the way the work had always been done.
“They were really good at holding my hand and helping me envision it in a different way, but with the same end goal in mind.” — Anna M. Bonner, Senior Director of Operations and Programs, ABRET |
That process-design work allowed the team to protect ABRET’s essential review requirements while identifying opportunities for a more consistent, visible, and ultimately more automated process.
108 ideaspace built an accreditation management solution on Salesforce for ABRET’s three accreditation programs and their distinct requirements. The solution brings applicant information, accreditation activity, and organizational history into a shared platform while creating a foundation for workflow automation, reporting, and more coordinated service.
ABRET tested the applicant-facing experience in a sandbox environment throughout the build, allowing that part of the system to become familiar before launch. Training therefore concentrated on the more complex administration and configuration functions and has continued as additional capabilities have been introduced.
The platform soft-launched in June 2025 for new laboratory applications. Given the volume and historical complexity of reaccreditations and the capacity of the staff member responsible for managing the transition, ABRET chose to keep reaccreditations in the existing process temporarily. The planned 2027 transition provides time to prepare historical accreditation records, build staff and board familiarity, and introduce the higher-volume workflow responsibly.
ABRET is still in the early stages of adoption, so the most important result is not claiming a finished transformation. It is creating a practical foundation the organization did not previously have. Early value includes:
For ABRET, the quality of the working relationship has been as important as the technology. Implementing a robust platform while managing three active accreditation boards requires patience, accessibility, and a willingness to work through details with the person who understands the process best.
“They’ve been phenomenal, easy to get in touch with and very responsive. I don’t know that I’ve ever gone more than a workday without an answer, or at least a response saying they were looking into it.” — Anna M. Bonner, Senior Director of Operations and Programs, ABRET |
As ABRET prepares for the next phase, it has a working solution for new applications and a long-term platform to build on. The engagement shows how a specialized organization can modernize complex processes through phased change, and how the right partner can turn institutional knowledge into a scalable operating model.
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