Clear Assured, a DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) certification platform, rebuilt their legacy application on EROM to eliminate manual processes, unify fragmented systems and scale their operations. The project delivered automated compliance tracking, AI-powered client guidance and an integrated client experience in just a few months
Key results:
- Automated progress calculations
- Enhanced client self-service with AI guidance
- Unified submissions, support and administration
- Streamlined consultant workflows
The Challenge: Fragmentation and Manual Overhead
Clear Assured helps organisations measure and improve their DEI compliance through a structured certification process. Clients work through compliance tasks, submit evidence and track their progress toward certification levels.
But their existing platform couldn't keep pace with their growth, taking a toll on operational efficiency:
- Manual Progress Tracking
Calculating organisation progress was a slow, labour-intensive process. Consultants spent weeks each quarter gathering data and processing it in Excel spreadsheets—time that could have been spent on client support and business development.
- System Fragmentation
Data scattered across multiple platforms created constant context switching. Client progress, support requests and administrative tasks lived in separate systems, forcing consultants to navigate between tools to complete basic workflows.
- Mounting Technical Debt
The legacy system had become increasingly difficult and expensive to maintain, limiting the team's ability to add new features or respond to changing business needs.
The Solution: Governed Automation on EROM
Clear Assured chose to rebuild on EROM rather than continue patching the legacy system or building custom from scratch.
Why EROM?
- Speed and Cost
Custom development would have been significantly more expensive to build and maintain. EROM's pre-built components (workflow automation, data management, integrated CMS) meant the team could focus development effort on business logic rather than infrastructure.
- Governance Built In
As a compliance certification platform, Clear Assured needed complete auditability. EROM's event-sourced architecture provides an immutable record of every action, making it straightforward to demonstrate who did what and when during audits or client reviews.
- AI Integration
Clear Assured wanted to integrate AI safely to reduce support burden. EROM's AI agent framework allowed them to deploy AI assistance while maintaining oversight, ensuring responses stayed aligned with their policies and certification standards.
- Unified Platform
EROM's full-stack approach meant they could consolidate fragmented systems into a single governed platform, eliminating context switching and data silos.
What was built?
The rebuild delivered a complete compliance management platform with automated workflows:
- Automated Progress Tracking
Custom development would have been significantly more expensive to build and maintain. EROM's pre-built components (workflow automation, data management, integrated CMS) meant the team could focus development effort on business logic rather than infrastructure.
- Blueprint-Based Onboarding
Instead of creating bespoke action plans from scratch, consultants now use task blueprints. The system automatically assigns relevant tasks based on client industry and organisation size, ensuring consistency while giving consultants flexibility to customise when needed.
- AI-Powered Client Support
Clients use an AI agent to find relevant resources from the knowledge base, while an AI-driven task assistant helps them understand control requirements and provides completion guidance.
- Unified Data Platform
All operational data now lives in one system. Evidence submissions, support requests, certification status and administrative workflows are accessible from a single interface.
- Integrated Financial Management
The billing system connects directly to Clear Assured's accounting platform, allowing consultants to issue invoices, check subscription status and track revenue from one place.
- Content Management System
EROM's integrated CMS allows the marketing team to manage website content easily from a single platform, eliminating the need for developer involvement in routine updates.
The Results: From Manual to Automated
- Eliminated Progress Calculation Overhead
Tasks that once consumed hours of manual effort now complete in minutes or seconds. This acceleration compounds across hundreds or thousands of process instances, freeing teams to focus on strategic initiatives rather than administrative busywork.
- 30% Reduction in Support Time
AI-powered search and task-specific guidance handle routine questions automatically. Clients find answers themselves rather than waiting for consultant responses.
- 20% Reduction in Administrative Overhead
The unified platform eliminates constant context switching between systems. Consultants report faster response times to client queries and reduced administrative burden. Financial management automation saves approximately 10 hours per month.
- Improved Client Experience
Clients now have real-time visibility into their progress and clear, transparent paths to the next certification level. AI assistance gives them instant access to high-level support, while the unified platform provides self-service access to their submission history and status.
- Scalability and Maintainability
The platform is now easier to maintain and extend. Adding new features or adjusting workflows no longer requires expensive custom development. The team can scale their client base without proportionally increasing operational overhead.
Technical Approach: Governance Meets Efficiency
While the focus was on business outcomes, EROM's technical architecture delivered specific advantages that made the transformation possible.
Every action in the system—from task submissions to status changes to progress updates—is recorded as an immutable event through EROM's event sourcing architecture. This creates a complete audit trail for compliance verification and dispute resolution without requiring additional logging infrastructure. For a certification platform, this means Clear Assured can demonstrate exactly who did what and when during audits or client reviews, all as a natural byproduct of how the system works.
EROM's Digital Process Automation engine handles the complex multi-step processes that define Clear Assured's certification workflows. The engine routes task submissions to consultants for validation, triggers progress calculations when tasks complete, manages approval workflows and escalations and sends automated notifications at each stage. This orchestration layer ensures nothing falls through the cracks while maintaining complete visibility into where every client stands in their certification journey.
The platform also provides a governed environment for AI agents, allowing Clear Assured to deploy AI safely without risking compliance or brand reputation. The RAG-based search includes reference links to prevent hallucinations, task-specific context ensures AI assistants provide relevant guidance, human oversight remains in place for critical decisions and complete logging of AI interactions maintains auditability. This framework meant Clear Assured could leverage AI to reduce support burden while maintaining the oversight their certification business demands.
Delivery: Rapid Implementation
The project moved quickly from planning to production. The core business logic and user journeys were delivered in a span of seven weeks, with the remaining time dedicated to design refinement, content migration and launch preparation.
This rapid development was possible because EROM's pre-built components meant the team could focus on implementing Clear Assured's unique certification logic rather than building standard functionality from scratch. The structured milestone approach kept stakeholders aligned and allowed the marketing team to prepare launch communications in parallel with development.
Key Lessons: What Made This Work
- Start with Business Logic, Not Infrastructure
By building on EROM's pre-existing components (user management, workflow automation, data hub), development focused on Clear Assured's unique certification logic rather than rebuilding standard functionality.
- Automate the Pain, Not Everything
The team prioritised automating the most painful manual processes rather than trying to automate every workflow at once.
- AI as Assistant, Not Replacement
AI agents augment consultant work rather than replacing human expertise. The AI handles routine questions; consultants handle complex advisory work and final decisions.
- Governance Enables Speed
EROM's built-in governance (audit trails, access control, versioning) meant the team didn't need to build compliance infrastructure from scratch, accelerating delivery without cutting corners.
Industry Applicability: Beyond DEI Compliance
Clear Assured's challenges — manual progress tracking, fragmented systems and compliance audit requirements aren't unique to DEI certifications. They're symptoms of a broader problem facing any organisation that manages complex, multi-stakeholder compliance workflows.
The certification framework pattern
Consider an ISO certification body tracking hundreds of companies through multi-year certification processes. Like Clear Assured, they need to calculate progress against weighted criteria, route submissions to qualified assessors, maintain complete audit trails and provide clients with transparent visibility into their status. The same architectural patterns that automated Clear Assured's quarterly progress calculations could eliminate manual tracking across any certification framework.
Or think about a professional licensing board managing thousands of practitioners through continuing education requirements, practice audits and renewal workflows. They face the same fragmentation Clear Assured experienced: applicant submissions in one system, review workflows in another, financial records elsewhere. The unified platform approach that consolidated Clear Assured's operations would equally apply to streamlining licensing administration.
The pattern extends to regulated industries beyond formal certification. A healthcare provider managing Joint Commission accreditation faces similar challenges: evidence collection across departments, multi-stakeholder review processes, audit preparation. A manufacturer tracking ISO 9001 compliance deals with the same need for progress visibility, consistent workflows and defensible audit trails.
Compliance as a byproduct of operations
What these scenarios share is the fundamental tension between rigorous governance requirements and operational efficiency. Traditional approaches force organisations to choose: either maintain strict control through manual oversight (slow, expensive, doesn't scale) or pursue efficiency through automation at the cost of auditability and consistency.
Clear Assured's experience demonstrates that this trade-off is unnecessary. With the right platform architecture, compliance becomes a byproduct of operations rather than a separate overhead. Progress tracking happens automatically because the system enforces workflow completion. Audit trails exist because every action is an immutable event. Consistency is guaranteed because business rules are encoded in the orchestration layer rather than tribal knowledge.
This architectural approach applies wherever organisations manage structured processes with compliance requirements: educational accreditation, supply chain quality management, financial services regulatory compliance, clinical trial management. The specific domain logic differs, but the underlying need for governed automation remains constant.
Conclusion: Governance Without Overhead
Clear Assured demonstrates that compliance platforms don't have to choose between governance and efficiency. With EROM's governed automation approach:
- Manual quarterly calculations became real-time automatic updates
- Fragmented systems unified into a single platform
- Support requests decreased through contextual AI assistance
- Billing administration automated with integrated financial workflows
- Technical debt eliminated with modern, maintainable architecture
The result is a scalable compliance platform that grows with the business without proportional increases in operational overhead.
For organisations managing complex compliance workflows, Clear Assured's experience shows that the right platform eliminates the trade-off between rigorous governance and operational efficiency.
About Clear Assured
Clear Assured provides DEI certification services, helping organisations measure and improve their diversity, equity and inclusion practices through a structured framework. Their platform guides clients through compliance tasks, tracks progress and certifies organisations that meet DEI standards.
About EROM
EROM is a Business Orchestration & Automation Technology (BOAT) platform that combines AI agents, deterministic automation and complete application delivery with governance built in. The platform enables mid-market organisations to automate complex workflows, integrate AI safely and maintain complete audit trails without replacing existing systems.
