Relativity Certified Sales Professional V2.0
At the beginning of the 2019 summer, Relativity launched the new Relativity Certified Sales Professional (RCSP) exam. This has been brought in to replace the old demo based RCSP.
I made the decision to take this exam, even though I didn’t need to; I had enough points to re-certify for another year. However, I wanted my firm’s sales team to engage more with the department and take the exam, by showing it isn’t difficult. As a Relativity vendor, we need to have more than one person certified across all the Relativity specialisations, and so this was gentle encouragement to get the team on board to take theirs.
I wasn’t expecting the exam to be difficult, since it is aimed at those selling the product vs. those who administer the software and I thought I would be able to breeze through it as all the questions are provided in the study guide, just not the answers!
The exam is split into five topic areas with different weighting levels (High to Medium):
- Relativity Value Proposition – High
- Objection Handling – High
- Product Functionality – High
- Use Cases – Medium
- Relativity Differentiators – Medium
What immediately struck me is that the exam is no longer just about the Relativity review tool, but about the whole stack of Relativity applications, from processing to Case Dynamics and Legal Hold to Relativity Trace.
The study guide is split into the five topics areas, which has a page full of key points and reference materials links per area of study and the exam questions. The exam questions have been grouped into the five sections. Under each of the questions is either a link to the Study Resource (online documentation) or Study Source: Study Guide page. The exam is taken online and is 50 questions out of the potential 72 listed in the guide. The version of the exam I took was Relativity 10.0.
It felt like it took longer setting the online proctoring session up than it did taking the exam. I was very confident and though I do not recommend this method, I just answered the questions as I remembered them from the practice sessions I had done. I did not go back to any questions and when I finished the exam I hit the ‘finish exam’ button without reviewing. Practice has paid off though, as I passed.
The previous RCSP required the taker to demo a version of Relativity to your account manager and then take a 25 multiple choice question test. The original exam was free and when you passed your organisation would be presented with three demo users:
- Demo User
- Demo Super User
- Demo Admin
The new exam and subsequent changes only allow you to have one demo user and there is a fee of $30 including VAT. I don’t know when the change to the number of demo accounts happened and why it has been downgraded to one, equally this wasn’t communicated to me as the Relativity point person for my organisation, so I quickly disabled all demo accounts associated with my previous RCSP so that the firm would not be charged or have these licenses come out of the seat packs.
Overall I like the new RCSP. I think the change needed to happen as I was finding the need to demo Relativity was few and far between. Opening up the RCSP to the full catalogue of Relativity applications makes sense and since it would be unfair to expect every RCSP candidate to be able to demo every tool available, having an exam to quiz them to understand the basics is the right way to go. I would recommend anyone who has not yet taken the RCSP and is responsible for selling Relativity to do so but those of you who hold the previous incumbent there is not much point in retaking this exam, just read the study guide!
jmerritt
This blog is by James Merritt. For the last ten years I have worked in the Forensic Technology and eDisclosure sector. The views expressed on this website are those of my own and have no bearing on those of my employer. I have been debating whether or not to start this blog, whilst I have many years of experience, I don’t want to sound contrived and call myself an industry leader. However if what I decide to write about on this blog is considered interesting (and hopefully helpful) by those that read it, I have achieved what I set out to do, which is provide insight and advice. In my career I have been lucky enough to work on some incredible cases that have taken me all over the world. If you work in the industry then you know that big cases can be a life stealer, and I have worked on plenty of those. However, there is a certain degree of satisfaction on working with complex data and helping others understand it. I have worked with various litigation support tools over the last ten years but of late I specialise in Nuix and Relativity. This blog will be written with the industry in mind but only what I find interesting and on varying topics, from conferences to current developments, from products to training courses.