Chronus

There were two things we were looking for in an online mentorship program…1) integration with our single sign-on (such that our members can use their member login and password) and 2) automated matching for mentors and mentee. The Chronus system fulfills these requirements very well. It is critical that our mentorship program is a significant benefit of membership and that logging in should be simple and easy. We also have a complex membership consisting of trainees interested in many different areas, as well as members that are generalists and subspecialists, from a variety of practice settings and a variety of interests and experiences. The platform itself is very intuitive and the Chronus staff continues to be responsive to needs for assistance or training. They also present an amazing arsenal of online tools and resources that train our staff and educate our members on the varying capabilities of the system. The reporting functionality is robust and very easy to use. The pre-established reports are incredibly useful. The forums within the platform have helped us develop an online community of our mentorship program participants. This aspect of the program continues to reinforce mentorship activity, idea sharing, and ultimately adds to the member value. We have been utilizing Chronus for our online mentorship program since October of 2014. We continue to be impressed by their receptive updates to the product and how they truly listen to their customers.

The only con we have with the platform is the inability to track those mentors/mentees that take the relationship outside of the program (e.g. don’t utilize the timeline tasks and/or messaging features). We can get some of this data by surveying our mentors/mentees; however, I’m not sure there is anything that can be done about this from the Chronus perspective. Another limitation we have found is that currently users are not able to switch between mentee and mentor roles on their own; it has to be done by the administrator.

1. Chronus is nimble enough to grow with our program. Unlike other software vendors we considered, Chronus was able to provide the technology we needed today as young program and will want down the road as our programs grows. We can trust that as we evolve to meet the needs of our participants, our technology will easily evolve with us.

2. Chronus has been unbelievably invested in innovating ways to adapt the technology platform to accommodate the unique work flow of our mentoring program. It has been fantastic to move to a technology platform without having to give up the personal, unique touches our program prides itself on providing our users. Our program doesn't 'fit the mold of most corporate mentoring programs and Chronus has been able to adapt their technology, problem solve, and develop creative ways for our work flow to be successful in a software based paradigm.

3. From day one, Chronus has felt like a partner to our program not just a vendor. We have a dedicated team of people who have taken the time to actually understand our program; its goals, its operations, etc and our Chronus team is as invested in our program's success as we are. They ask the right questions, provide valuable suggestions and insights, and genuinely seem to take an interest in making our program better.

There aren't many downsides to the software. If I had to give it one criticism, I wish it would retain the metrics on users who we ultimately remove to open up seats for new users. As it is now, when a user is removed from the system, the metrics collected on that user are removed as well.

The flexibility, customer service and customization of this software is what makes it unique to any other mentoring software on the market.

I would like to see phone/text integration with the platform so notifications can me sent to mobile devices outside of the app.