Phil Jefferies is the Director of Sales and Marketing at 20/20 Project Management Training. Since moving to accessplanit three and a half years ago from another training management software provider, Phil says that 20/20 have increased their sales activity "exponentially, without putting a strain on the existing workforce".
We spoke to Phil to find out more about his journey from choosing accessplanit to how it has helped transform 20/20.
About 20/20 Project Management Training
20/20 Project Management Training are a specialist technical provider of project management, project controls and project leadership training. They have been operating for 21 years, with their reach predominantly in the UK, although a number of their clients have overseas offices.
20/20 have delivered their courses across the world, both in the classroom for face-to-face delivery and online through virtual classroom delivery and increasingly a hybrid approach combining the two. They also have some eLearning offerings, so they are a varied business where the effective organisation of resources is key.
This is especially pertinent as they deliver approximately 250 courses to 1700 delegates a year. This equates to about 700 training days each year across their training team.
They use a mix of both in-house and external trainers, a recent business change which has come about thanks to the capability of accessplanit which makes it easier to manage resources – but more on that later.
Phil, as Director of Sales and Marketing, has the Business Development team underneath him. A big part of his role is securing new business, but also ensuring that current customers have access to the right information at the right time and can easily book onto courses to ensure repeat business.
The solution they had in place before accessplanit wasn’t enabling this, so a change had to be made.
The challenge
"We needed to improve our level of service to continue winning work and scale up our operations."
Phil Jefferies | Director of Sales and Marketing, 20/20 Project Management Training
20/20 had already implemented training management software but it was creating more problems than it was solving. Phil explained that they were still using disparate systems in different areas of the business, causing ineffective operations.
“We often had human errors - email addresses being copied across incorrectly, or the information just wasn’t there. We had a separate CRM and finance system. Everything was done manually – sending out course instructions, inputting exam information,” Phil explained.
“Everything was siloed and very resource-heavy in terms of inputting, maintaining and reporting.”
It was clear that their current TMS was preventing 20/20 from delivering an optimum experience for their customers. “We realised as a business that in order to deliver the level of service that we wanted – but also to be able to grow – our current setup was restrictive.”
Everyone in the business was struggling, so they were on the same page. “There wasn’t a requirement to sell it internally because everybody was on board with the fact that we couldn’t continue operating the way we were. We needed to improve our level of service to continue winning work and scale up our operations.”
The accessplanit solution
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Photo: Phil talking as part of our customer panel at accessplanit Connect
The search
The search was on for training management software that would better suit the needs of 20/20. “The training management system we were working with before wasn’t flexible enough,” Phil said. “It was designed around a certain type of provider, so we found ourselves having to use modules that kind of worked, but kind of didn’t, but we couldn’t do anything about it.”
“Whereas, in the early demos of accessplanit, we could quickly see that it was going to do all of what we wanted,” he said.
That’s because accessplanit is configured to work the way you do, and we work hard to understand you and your business. accessplanit customers have access to two customer relationship managers who are dedicated to ensuring your success according to your goals, and Phil highlighted this as one of the reasons why 20/20 chose accessplanit over our competitors.
“There was the customer relationship team to really understand what the business did and to optimise accessplanit to suit you as a provider rather than the provider having to suit the system.”
“The fact that it had ongoing support, on an individual perspective – we really felt that it could be tailored to exactly what we were looking to achieve.”
It was also our story – of starting out as a training company and creating software to solve the problems we were experiencing – that convinced Phil.
“I think the other thing that really stood out to us was the background of where accessplanit came from,” he explained. “The software wasn’t out there, so you developed it from a training provider’s perspective rather than it just being from a software developer that didn’t necessarily understand the challenges we face and what we’re trying to achieve.”
Implementation
"I think what was good is the way it was completely laid out from start to finish."
Phil Jefferies | Director of Sales and Marketing, 20/20 Project Management Training
Having revisited the training management software market, it was clear to 20/20 that accessplanit could improve their operations, so implementation began.
Phil said that he appreciated the clarity of the process, with regular meetings, thorough documentation and easy exporting. “I think what was good is the way it was completely laid out from start to finish,”
“We had regular implementation meetings with various teams, which I think was important to get internal team buy-in of their specific bit of the system and what it was going to do,” he continued. “If something wasn’t right, it was taken on board, actioned and then presented back.”
He also enjoyed accessing our sandbox module which allowed the team to start testing the system and gain familiarity without affecting anything.
Key features
What key features does accessplanit offer that have transformed the way 20/20 operates? Phil named these:
“We can literally book somebody on or build a course and book somebody on within minutes, which has really transformed what we do.”
Phil Jefferies | Director of Sales and Marketing, 20/20 Project Management Training
Automation
Part of ensuring an amazing customer experience is getting the right communications to the right people at the right time. When this is done manually, things inevitably fall through the cracks, which is what Phil was struggling with most.
With accessplanit, 20/20 has set up powerful workflows which automate this process – eliminating admin work and improving customer satisfaction.
“We are aiming for a complete end-to-end customer journey where everything’s automated and we know exactly what’s going to happen at one point in a well-managed way.”
They have achieved this with automated communications such as...
- Joining instructions
As soon as someone signs up for one of 20/20’s training courses, they join a workflow which ensures they are sent joining instructions. “From the point of booking, we know that within 10 minutes they’re going to have their course joining instructions.”
- Course reminders
In addition, delegates are sent course reminders at specific intervals, reducing no-shows and making the customer journey simple. “Once they’re on the course, we’ve got a series of workflows in place with reminders set,” Phil explained. “This means we don’t have people who can’t find their joining instructions - they are sent them again.”
- Evaluation forms
Finally, 20/20 can keep up with delegate feedback with a workflow that sends automated course evaluation forms on the last day of a training course.
Business insights
Phil also makes full use of the improved data and business insight which they did not have before.
“Everything from pre-sales and sales, to course numbers, attendance, exam pass rates – we've got access to that data – both in terms of the reports we can pull off and in terms of our dashboards, where we can quickly review that information.”
Dashboards
Dashboards are configurable views of important data and tasks that you need at a glance. These can be set up per user and ensure you have everything you need to do your job effectively in one convenient place. As Phil mentioned, this handy feature has enabled him to view key stats that he needs in an instant.
“I can quickly see the overall team, data in terms of pipelines and overall sales year to date. I've got open opportunities, closed opportunities for everybody. It means I’m not constantly asking the team to feed into me."
Reporting
However, as he also mentioned, you can create in-depth reports, too. They are configured to provide information that is important to your business to improve business insight, and can be automated to send to key contacts at relevant intervals. “We’ve got access to real-time data we know is accurate,” Phil explained.
He used this during our chat, to instantly give me key figures such as number of delegates trained per year. “That data used to take somebody three days to extract, because we didn’t know how to access it.”
Filters
Similarly, Phil says he uses DataGrids to quickly view the information that he needs at any given moment. Using filters, this is easy to do and saves time compared to scouring data.
“It gives me all the data I want, and I can quickly create the filters to really drill down into the data to give me the specific information.”
CRM
Thanks to accessplanit’s multitude of capabilities, there is a reduced need for multiple pieces of software. One of the external systems that accessplanit has replaced is a CRM, which Phil uses often in his role.
The business development team builds users in the CRM and Phil uses this to track his leads and opportunities effectively.
eLearning
Another example of accessplanit replacing an external system is an LMS. accessplanit has an optional eLearning module which has a built-in LMS, meaning there’s no need to pay for an external platform to deliver your eLearning packages.
Course management
With accessplanit, managing the rafts of courses that 20/20 put on every week is easy. Course templates can be created which include all of the key information about a course and can then be easily replicated for scheduling courses well in advance for a reduced admin workload.
Phil explained that it’s easier for their operations team to manage bookings straight from the point of sale because everyone in the team is working in the same system.
“We can literally book somebody on or build a course and book somebody on within minutes, which has really transformed what we do.”
Online booking
A major part of this has been the improved ability to take online bookings. 20/20’s course booking system links directly to accessplanit for an improved customer experience, as well as better visibility over this.
“One of the things we have driven towards is more web-based sales and we can now evidence that we are seeing an increase in these which is great because it’s all about making it easy for people to buy from us.”
Resource management
accessplanit makes it easier for training providers to plan and manage their training resources, like trainers and venues, and 20/20 have benefitted from this.
In the past, they only had in-house trainers, but accessplanit made it easy for them to also manage external trainers. This meant they could scale their training offerings with a wider pool of trainers, without compromising on quality of delivery.
“We changed our delivery model, so now we’ve got some in-house and some external trainers. They all get the same information that our in-house trainers do so we know that when they’re delivering, it’s exactly the same from a client’s perspective,” Phil said.
Support
20/20 also benefit from the comprehensive support provided by our team of experts, available online or over the phone. “We know that if we put a ticket in, it’s going to get looked at, resolved or assigned. We’ve got great examples of small ticket items to big ticket items.”
For example, moving from their old eLearning platform to accessplanit’s LMS was a task made easier by our accessible and friendly support team. “We had a few challenges publishing the SCORM files so that they’d look right on accessplanit, and the support team were absolutely brilliant in helping us to do that.”
The effects
“We know that at the point of putting a delegate into the system against a course, they are then in that workflow so they’re going to get their course instructions, they’re going to get the reminder, they’re going to get an exam booking confirmation. It’s enabled us to really increase our levels of customer service.”
Phil Jefferies | Director of Sales and Marketing, 20/20 Project Management Training
What effects has this had on 20/20?
Eliminated silos
With accessplanit's seamless integrations and everyone in the business working in one system that houses all the functionality and data they need, their operations are no longer siloed, which Phil highlighted as a major problem of their old system.
“Everyone knows who’s doing what and it’s improved our levels of communication,” Phil said. “And if something’s not right, everything’s trackable, so we can go back through the audit log and see what happened.”
Improved customer journey
Thanks to the elimination of mindless admin with powerful automation tools, 20/20’s communication with customers has improved, boosting satisfaction and repeat business.
“We know that at the point of putting a delegate into the system against a course, they are then in that workflow so they’re going to get their course instructions, they’re going to get the reminder, they’re going to get an exam booking confirmation.”
“It’s enabled us to really increase our levels of customer service.”
Increased efficiency
Another benefit of this is the time it has saved. “The time is a key one because we’re a fairly small organisation and what you don’t want is people tied up re-inputting digital information.”
However, Phil highlighted that more important than the time saved is the increased accuracy of the data. “It goes beyond time, to be honest. We’ve got no human errors, which is absolutely key.”
This has boosted business efficiency, as less resources are wasted on rectifying errors.
Improved business insights
With all of their data centralised within one system, alongside powerful reporting tools, Phil has noted a much-improved outlook on business insights. This means that 20/20 can make better business decisions based on real-time data.
"accessplanit has enabled us to make key data-driven decisions going forward."
Phil Jefferies | Director of Sales and Marketing, 20/20 Project Management Training
Business scalability
Thanks to this, 20/20 has been able to grow with the trends of the industry rather than being stagnant due to an ineffective system. From scaling up their delivery efforts thanks to improved resource management, to making informed business decisions with in-depth reporting and staff being able to focus their time on what matters, the sky is the limit for 20/20.
“What the system has really done for us is given us a foundation, so now we can increase our volumes as much as we like and the system will cope with it.”
Would 20/20 recommend accessplanit?"I know for a fact that we are using accessplanit in different ways to other people and that is how a true software as a service package should work."
Phil Jefferies | Director of Sales and Marketing, 20/20 Project Management Training
We asked Phil if he would recommend accessplanit and this is what he said:
“Absolutely. If you compare now to where we were just a few years ago, it has simply transformed what we do and importantly how we do it. accessplanit allows us to manage everything in the customer journey from end to end.”
“I know for a fact, from going to the Connect event, that we are using accessplanit in different ways to other people, and that’s how a true software as a service package should work.”
“So, absolutely, we would recommend, and we have recommended in a couple of instances already.”
Phil also highlighted how similar 20/20 and accessplanit are in terms of values, which enables us to work together effectively, solidifying that the switch to accessplanit was the right move. As Phil explained, “What you’re trying to achieve aligns with what we’re trying to achieve.”
Next steps
"The fact that we’ve got a dedicated customer success manager that really does – and I know it sounds cliché – but genuinely does understand the business and what we’re trying to achieve, is great."
Phil Jefferies | Director of Sales and Marketing, 20/20 Project Management Training
What are 20/20 hoping to achieve with accessplanit next?
Phil explained that they appreciate how vast the system is, so they have regular meetings with their customer success manager to talk about additional features and functionality they could explore.
“The fact that we’ve got a dedicated customer success manager that really does – and I know it sounds cliché – but genuinely does understand the business and what we’re trying to achieve, is great. He goes out of his way to make sure that what we’re asking for is either doable, in which case we’re given all the information or shown how to do it, or if there’s a reason why it can’t be done, it’s explained in a clear way so we can understand it.”
For example, they are currently exploring manager access, which is a feature designed to enable people who book multiple delegates onto a course to have an improved oversight of their accounts. This would enable them to see how many people that they booked onto a course attended and passed it, for example. “Again, it’s about providing our customers with more access to information and making it even easier for them to buy.”
In terms of their outlook for the future, Phil says 20/20 is doing well. “We’ve got a good balance of face-to-face learning, virtual and eLearning, so delegates can access different things at different times.”
“We’ve consistently seen an increase in people going on courses, the number of courses booked, number of new customers knocking on the door. So in terms of where we are now, the future is looking very bright.”
Interested?
Are you a training provider looking to improve your customer journey from start to finish? Book a demo with accessplanit today to find out how we could help you.
