Go green, cut costs, boost quality with e-learning

Llanon, Aberystwyth - 28th August 2007. Jeffrey Pugh, managing director of Aberystwyth-based software reseller PughComputers, sheds light on how businesses can improve their green credentials and cut costs without compromising on staff training and professional development.

In our current economic and environmental climate, it can be difficult for businesses to ensure they're ticking all the boxes when it comes to minimising their carbon footprint without compromising on their staff activities, particularly training, and all the associated costs such as travel, accommodation, subsistence and other allowances.

For years, the technology sector has suggested e-learning solutions as one of the methods by which businesses could address this problem. But for many companies, the technology wasn't completely up to scratch in terms of delivering the promised benefits in a user-friendly and sufficiently cost-effective manner.

The good news is that we now have the benefit of an e-learning solution that has caught up with market needs, delivering astonishingly effective and measurable results while still being easy and inexpensive to use. Thanks to a technological shift in the marketplace, enterprise-class applications such as Adobe Acrobat Connect can be delivered securely across a standard web browser, dramatically lowering the barrier to entry for e-learning solutions. This is levelling the playing field for companies at the SME end of the spectrum, and those with limited IT budgets, such as those in the charity and voluntary sector.

In the past, one of the primary gripes that end users of e-learning had related to how difficult it was to create new learning materials. In some cases, hidden costs emerged where it turned out a third party company was required to design an e-learning course. But with software tools such as Adobe Acrobat Connect, even non-technical users find they can create e-learning material in minutes rather than weeks, in much the same way they would put together a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation.

Their e-learning course can be viewed anywhere, using a web browser on Windows or Macintosh machines, and businesses have the choice of being able to outsource hosting of their e-learning material to further reduce their costs. Larger companies have the option of hosting their e-learning materials in-house on a dedicated server.

More importantly, companies can add quizzes to test how well their staff understands new training. This is a particular relief for HR managers and directors, as it provides an auditable measure to confirm that staff are fully conversant in new company policy or industry standards. The live online conferencing aspect of this solution also means that companies with several sites or campuses can easily host virtual classes, meetings and training with VoIP, video, chat, screen-sharing, recording capabilities and more.

If you would like to learn more about e-learning and web conferencing using Adobe Acrobat Connect, join me at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff on 18 September 2007. The free morning seminar, delivered in conjunction with Adobe, will start at 9.30 am and will finish by 11.30 am.

For more information and to register please follow the link to http://www.pugh.co.uk/events/agenda.htm

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