Innovatia Training Blog

At first glance, your reaction to the title of this blog entry may be “So what?”.  On the surface, this doesn’t sound like much of an accomplishment. But when you pull back the curtain, there’s much more than meets the eye.

Preparing a quarterly schedule takes several weeks and involves input from every member of our Account Management and Operations team. Some considerations include:

• What requests do we have pending from our customers?
• Where is the best location to hold the training?
• Which weeks are already reserved for non-public classes?
• Are there weeks instructors are not available due to cross training, vacation, et cetera?
• Do holidays present travel challenges and/or render some weeks unfit for a 5 day class?
• How about logistics – can we reasonably transport equipment to the training site in time to support delivery?
• Does the schedule leave room for short interval requests from our customers?

Inevitably, it seems we field multiple requests to hold the same class on the same dates. When this happens, we are vying for identical instructors and equipment resources. This results in a lot of back-and-forth negotiating, strategizing, teeth-gnashing and hair-pulling. (Note to readers whom I have not met in person: Hair-pulling is something I can ill afford to do – I have to vigorously defend the little bit I have left!). But at the end of the day, we ALWAYS find a way to meet our customers’ needs.

No discussion of schedules is complete without mention of Jill Erb – our Master Scheduler Extraordinaire. Jill takes all of the requests, lines-up the resources to support them and somehow miraculously makes it all work. Here’s a tip-of-the-hat to an amazing friend and colleague!

Do you have any questions about course scheduling? We’d love to hear from you so please comment below! Also, stay tuned to our online course catalogue for the latest training courses into 2012.

David Kurtz
Senior Account Manager – Training

Innovatia was fortunate enough to attend the Contact Center New Brunswick event from November 2-3. My colleague, Nira MacRae-Kindred, and I worked the Innovatia booth in the exhibit area where we had the opportunity to meet a number of individuals we have had the pleasure of speaking with over the last few months; it was nice to put a face to a name!

While we made it to the daytime event, we missed the much talked about evening dinner. The entertainment was a hypnotist which we heard was fun and hilarious – right Mike Bacon?

Nira will be making follow up calls to all the friendly folks we had a chance to meet. There was lots of interest in Innovatia’s training portfolio, specifically the self-paced content, which is ideal for a Contact Center environment.

Keep in touch with what’s going on in the Contact Center industry in New Brunswick, www.contactnb.ca.

Tina Melvin
Product Manager – Training

Next week a handful of us from Innovatia will be heading off to Fredericton, NB to attend the ContactNB conference – Contact Atlantic 2011. This event is always so well attended every year, and only continues to get better and better. The agenda is jam packed with some very good speakers, as well as some great information sessions. I’m especially looking forward to hearing our keynote speaker Bernard Lord, as well as Jeff Roach from Sociallogical.

In addition to attending, Innovatia will also have a booth this year promoting our Contact Center training portfolio – drop by and say hello!

Tina Melvin
Product Manager – Training

It is the first day of the Partner Community Council (PCC) Conference, and what a great start! The Avaya Services Vice President, Mary Ann Littler, gave a fantastic overview this morning of the Avaya Client Services Portfolio. Attendees had a view into the roadmap and strategy for end-to-end collaboration services that is provided by Avaya Authorized Partners.

There are some interesting new offerings within the Professional Service, Support Service, and Managed Service Portfolios. One item that stands out for me is the built in diagnostic capabilities that is being installed up front in design and implementation of new networks. This will enable a more proactive approach to product support. Considering all the complexities in today’s networks, this is a great approach to being a leader in client satisfaction, which is number one priority for Avaya.

We are heading out for dinner with a few clients this evening. I hope to get a glimpse of the Parliament Building lit up at night!

Tina Melvin
Product Manager – Training

My name is Brent Belding and I am a 4^th year Business student at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John. I am currently working towards a major in Marketing and Human Resources, and am working as a Product Coordinator at Innovatia as part of the co-op program.

When asked to do a blog for the Training department, I thought it would be good to write about how learners my age prefer to receive their education.  Students like me are the future face of business and will help shape how Innovatia, as a learning provider, will cater to our needs.

There are different ways in which students my age today like to learn:

Online Learning: This type of learning has become more and more popular over the years. There are a number of reasons why this method of learning is preferred:

1. They can attend a course anytime, anywhere. This is great for students that work or travel as they can take the course whenever and wherever they can.
2. The courses are student- centered focused. All students learn differently whether it be visually or through hands-on. The student- centered learning offers a chance for all students to learn in their own way.
3. The course material is accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This means that students can read and re-read lectures, discussions, explanations and comments at their leisure. Frequently, verbal material in the classroom passes students by due to a number of distractions, missed classes, weariness or boredom. These distractions are eliminated when students are able to take the course in the setting which they prefer, and on their own time.

These are just a few reasons why students prefer online learning. I expect this area will grow significantly in the years to come as the adoption of technology as a learning resource continues to accelerate.

Along with online training, there are many different learning technologies available that help teach students what they need to know. The growth of Social has become a great way for an individual to learn. Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook allow people to share information and to discuss topics at an almost instant rate of communication.  Blogs are also a great source of information. Blogs allow people communicate, communicate opinions, learn and network on a global scale. Blogs will continue to evolve into the future as a key source of information, discussion and learning. Many of my classes at UNB use social networking as a way to engage students in classroom learning.

This brings me to another popular form of learning for my generation: Blended Learning. This is when online resources are blended with face-to-face interaction between students and teachers to create an offline/online hybrid learning environment. In our experience, a student’s ability to retain and achieve better results is tied directly to an environment where a combination of learning software, classroom interaction and hands-on applications are used.

At Innovatia, we have evolved our eLearning product offers to meet the needs of the next generation of employees by providing instructor-led classroom training, virtual classroom training, and self-paced online training programs for a number of subject areas. We also provide blended learning which combines the best of all three styles to give employers and employees a choice when it comes to how they prefer their learning.

Brent Belding
Product Coordinator- Training

Very soon, the IAUG Global Conference will kick off in Vegas. The Innovatia training team is excited to be preparing for the trip and time out of the office. After all, who wouldn’t like a good trip to Vegas?

We’re busy getting ready, making a list and packing our bags! We have a long inventory of regular conference gear and material that is relevant to our customers, but we also have interesting goodies to give away for those who visit our booth. (It’s booth #1111 by the way).

We look forward to catching up with familiar faces and making new friends. This year, our team is made up of myself – Kerry Olinskie, Corey Hector, and Alex Ferguson. Listening to our customers’ feedback is important to us, so please make sure to stop by and speak with one of our knowledgeable staff! We’ll also have some exciting prizes to give away, including a cruise, and more great prizes to be announced soon. Drop off your business card for a chance to enter!

As technical training moves more and more towards the virtual space, these opportunities to connect face-to-face are more important than ever. So come on out and meet Corey, Alex and myself at the IAUG, booth #1111! Find out more about Innovatia’s presence at the event.

Kerry Olinskie
Program Manager – Training Solutions

Well, day 3 at the MTA. The conference is complete, and what a few days it has been!  We had the opportunity to meet many new customers and re-connected with old friends.

Many people have come by to view our new Business Booster demo of self-paced training, and we have received great feedback – not to mention positive input – for our GENBAND, Avaya and Cisco courses.  We were also lucky to have the chance to drop by Mariner Partner’s booth. They have some great IPTV offerings that are generating a lot of buzz.

Many thanks to those who dropped by our booth. We look forward to seeing you next year!

Jo-Anne Mowry
Team Lead - Training Solutions