iConnect on-line booking makes IT training courses easier to manage
Global Knowledge, Europe's leading independent training company, has launched an on-line booking and training administration system that makes it simple for customers to book delegates onto IT training courses and administrate their IT skills development plans.
The web-based iConnect system makes it easy for customers to register personnel for IT training courses, administer IT training activity, report on the progress of individuals and the overall IT training programme, and keep track of spending. Delegates can book themselves onto courses and send a request for approval and sign-off by the authorising manager. The system also sends joining instructions to individual delegates automatically.
Janet Way, UK Learning Services Manager, says that in many organisations a good deal of management and administrative time is taken up with the process of booking delegates onto training courses and approving their attendance, before the training course is taken, and then running reports and processing invoices after the training is completed: "In between there is a need to monitor and manage activity and progress to ensure staff do complete courses and that objectives are being met. In the past all this has been fairly complicated to manage, with iConnect it is made easy."
Global Knowledge has developed iConnect in collaboration with a number of its regular customers and the whole development process has been driven by their feedback. "We have designed iConnect to meet customer needs and make it easier and more cost effective to manage development programmes. Booking on line will not only enable them to take control of their training programmes, it will also significantly reduce the cost of administration and allow them to redeploy resources into more value added areas", said Way.
One of Global Knowledge's first customers to implement iConnect was Chris Pickard, Head of Training Services at Advanced Resource Managers. Chris said "As a preferred partner of the Professional Contracts Group (PCG), Advanced Resource Managers works only with the best suppliers - the PCG approached us to find a supplier that could provide the required portal technology."
"The PCG has a dispersed membership, with diverse requirements. They needed a single, simple transactional process that would allow their many members to search and buy training courses, as well as view their account. iConnect does all that. It's web-based and won't get fire-walled, and it can do everything users will require it to do. Advanced Resource Managers looked at a lot of training portal tools before deciding that iConnect was the best of its breed and the kind of solution that the PCG needs."
To find out more about iConnect and view the simple provisional booking capability, go to www.globalknowledge.net/iconnect.