The process of asking each reference how often they’d be willing to be contacted was the biggest task. We made assumptions for current clients, and ask each new client once they become a customer. Along with which specific skill-set they’d be willing to be a reference
While I was one of the decision makers in this process, I didn't sit on the demos for the other providers (I was brought in further in the sales process). My understanding from my team was that BL was much more configurable and support more robust integrations that the competitors
Increase time to fill: All references are filled within 2.5 days or less. For a program that isn't managed by one person, full time, we look at this stat as a win for our organization. BL def. helped us in cutting down the time it takes to find a reference.
Increased employee efficiency: The customer marketing team still owns the day to day administration (approvals) of the system, but we've drastically cut down their effort. We no longer need to search for the reference (the sales reps now do this themselves) - and the triggers to the account managers have been a huge help in cutting down the time to approve.
Greater visibility: BL has allowed us to capture denial reasons - which means we know why a references is being denied - which means we can hide them from coming up in future search results.