How Berghs School of Communication Automated Its Diplomas After Ten Years of PDFs

TL;DR: For ten years Berghs School of Communication sent its diplomas and course certificates as PDF files attached to email. Issuing now runs automatically through TRUE, connected to Salesforce, the CRM the school already works in, so nobody has to remember to send anything. Berghs names two results. Every certificate carries a higher level of quality and safety, which is what its students expect. And a graduate can publish the certificate to several channels, which markets the graduate and Berghs at the same time.

Berghs School of Communication trains communicators in Stockholm. Its graduates go into an industry that judges an organisation by how it presents itself, which makes the last document the school hands over an odd thing to leave as an email attachment.

What did Berghs use before TRUE?

PDF files on email, for ten years. Every diploma and every course certificate went out as a file attached to a message. That is a process that works. It is also the process a school ends up with when a PDF is the only thing on offer, rather than one anybody chose after weighing it against something better.

Mats Lundqvist, CTO at Berghs School of Communication, puts the length of it first.

“After ten years of sending out diplomas and course certificates as PDFs via email, we were ready for a better system. Now everything is automated via TRUE, who is connected to our CRM, Salesforce.

With TRUE’s system, Berghs finally delivers all of our course certificates with a much higher level of quality and safety, meeting our students expectations. It’s also easier for graduates to publish certificates to several channels, which helps them market themselves, and also promote Berghs.”

Mats Lundqvist, CTO, Berghs School of Communication

Why change a process that had run for ten years?

Because ten years of running something is ten years of learning where it falls short. This is not a school that never thought about its certificates. It handled them the same way for a decade, so by the time it changed it knew precisely what the old way cost and what it wanted instead. Lundqvist frames the switch as readiness rather than rescue: after ten years, Berghs was ready for a better system.

A PDF attached to an email has problems that only become obvious over that kind of span. Nobody outside the school can confirm the file is genuine, because a PDF is as forgeable as any other file. The document lives in one mailbox and disappears with it. And every certificate is one more thing a person has to remember to produce and send.

How are the certificates issued now?

Automatically, out of the system the school already runs on. In Lundqvist’s words, everything is automated via TRUE, which is connected to the school’s CRM, Salesforce. The student record Berghs already keeps is what produces the certificate.

Why does the Salesforce connection matter?

Because it takes the person out of the middle. In the PDF version a certificate existed once somebody made it and sent it. Now it exists because the course closed in Salesforce. The gain is not that one certificate arrives faster. It is that a certificate can no longer be forgotten, delayed, or sent to the address a colleague mistyped at the end of term.

It also means the school did not have to change how it works to get there. Berghs kept Salesforce and put issuing inside it.

What changed for the students?

Quality and safety on every certificate, and Berghs ties both to what its students already expect. Lundqvist says the school now delivers all of its course certificates with a much higher level of quality and safety, and that this meets those expectations.

The expectation is the part worth noticing. Students at a communication school are not comparing their diploma against the diploma they would have been handed five years ago. They compare it against everything else that reaches them digitally, and an email attachment loses that comparison.

Can a course certificate be a marketing channel?

Yes, and it is the argument most schools have never made. Lundqvist makes it plainly: it is easier for graduates to publish their certificates to several channels, which helps them market themselves and also promotes Berghs.

Read the direction of that sentence. The school is not describing a favour it does for alumni. It is describing something it gets back. Every graduate who publishes a Berghs certificate is a communicator, in public, naming where they trained. The school gets that out of a document it had to produce anyway.

A PDF cannot do this, and not because it looks bad. It arrives at the one moment a graduate most wants to tell people what they have done, and then it sits in an inbox where nobody else will ever see it. A verified certificate with an address of its own can be posted, linked and checked by anyone who cares to. Same achievement, a different number of people who learn about it. That is what makes it a verifiable credential, proof a third party can confirm without contacting the school.

What does this case have in common with other TRUE customers?

The same pattern. An organisation runs a manual process until the cost of it is undeniable, then automates the issuing instead of putting more people on it. Di Close had one person working on member certificates close to full time before it switched. Berghs sent PDFs on email for ten years. Neither was neglecting the job. Both had done it long enough to know it would not hold.

Where to read more

Berghs School of Communication publishes its programmes and courses on its own site: Berghs School of Communication. We have named Berghs among the schools issuing diplomas and course certificates with TRUE in our own writing on digital documents in education: TRUE enables sustainability, education and trusted partnerships. Another TRUE customer that automated its certificates once the manual version stopped adding up: Di Close.

Frequently asked questions

What did Berghs School of Communication use before TRUE?

PDF files on email. For ten years every diploma and every course certificate went out as a file attached to a message, which is what the school’s CTO, Mats Lundqvist, names first when he explains the change.

How long did Berghs email its certificates as PDFs?

Ten years. Lundqvist puts the decade at the front of his own account: after ten years of sending out diplomas and course certificates as PDFs via email, Berghs was ready for a better system.

Is the TRUE integration connected to the systems Berghs already runs?

Yes. Issuing is automated through TRUE, connected to Salesforce, the CRM Berghs already works in. The certificate follows from the student record the school already keeps, so nobody has to remember to produce and send it.

What does Berghs say changed for its students?

Quality and safety. Its CTO says Berghs now delivers all of its course certificates with a much higher level of quality and safety, and that this meets what its students expect.

How does a course certificate help the school that issued it?

Because the graduate publishes it. Berghs’ CTO says it is easier for graduates to publish certificates to several channels, which helps them market themselves and also promotes Berghs. A PDF sitting in one inbox reaches nobody but the person who earned it.