Training Day

Organisations constantly invest in new technology, update their software and implement new applications, with an expectation of greater productivity and efficiency; to say nothing of security.

Much is made of the increased speed of new operating systems, the ability to extract valuable data from every department or features available with the new hosted telephony handsets – but what about the abilities of those using the technology on a daily basis?

At Quiss, we understand that implementing, managing and supporting IT systems and applications is only half the battle, the other half is explaining how everything can be used.

It falls to the Quiss Training team to help our clients’ people be more productive; to work smarter, not harder and optimise their use of technology by building knowledge of applications and confidence in use of all the features available.

Booked in advance

Typically, a client will request at least a day’s training, when our team will put together a series of sessions designed to cover many of the most popular applications, with the content made available about a month in advance, so users can pick the topics most relevant to them and their role.

Our training team, including those permanently posted on-site at our larger clients, also undertake cyber-security training for all users as well as induction training to explain the basics of individual systems and tailored apps used by some.

In general, the training sessions will cover not just the essentials, but also the more advanced features of the popular Microsoft Office 365 suite of apps. A typical day might include 7 or 8 sessions, of around 30-45 minutes, which look something like this:

Excel Charts & Graphs – a short course to help individuals quickly create and amend professional looking charts and graphs. Create and save custom chart templates to save time formatting and adjusting chart layouts in the future.

Outlook Tasks – a session designed to show individuals how to use Outlook tasks to organise and keep track of their work and their to-do lists. They will learn to assign work to others and easily keep up to date with progress of this work.

Word Formatting – a course for everyone, regardless of their role that covers tips and tricks to quickly produce professional looking documents. Learn how to use house styles to save time applying formatting and quickly create documents with consistent formatting.

Word Using Track Changes – learn how to track changes effectively and avoid potential costly and time consuming mistakes. Understand how to use the ‘Compare’ feature to quickly review, accept and reject changes made in two separate versions of a document.

PowerPoint Creating a Presentation – quickly create professional looking presentations, save time formatting and adding images by using the slide master. Time saving tips on how to work with and manipulate images, graphics and videos in future presentations.

Excel Pivot Tables & Charts – use one of Excel’s most powerful features to quickly extract, analyse and summarise information within large lists of data. Pivot charts can be quickly filtered and adjusted to suit an organisation’s needs.

Just bring your brains

Our training days require participants to only bring their brains, the training team will supply everything else. This is key to the way we deliver training, as it means minimal disruption for those coming to take a session.

The training team will arrive in plenty of time, bringing sufficient laptops and associated equipment for those booked on sessions, with only space and a little electricity having to be supplied by the client.

A training Wi-Fi network is set up, with the trainer’s laptop acting as a server, to which all the other laptops are connected wirelessly using one of our own routers, to isolate the network and ensure there are no security implications for the client and their system.

Then the first 8-10 participants can start their learning, usually as part of a group from across departments and teams, which can easily cope being one down for 45 minutes.

The small number of individuals allows questions to be asked that some may not be confident to raise in a large group. One-on-one training within the session also allows individuals to address the unique problems they struggle with, without the embarrassment of asking a manager or colleague.

We believe there is no substitute for practical, hands-on learning, repeated over time, to really help people understand how to get the most from the equipment and applications they use every day – not something you can do consistently from a book or on-line course.

Clients often supply data, databases and templates to work with, so the participants are using data they recognise, in real business situations to ensure they all see the practical benefits of the techniques they are learning.

Tailored to every organisation

The training team have a huge range of standard sessions available, tailored for individuals at every level of competence in Microsoft applications, but sessions can be created to address specific situations or problems within an organisation.

Recently the training team undertook a session for legal secretaries, who would rather not have to take a hand off the keyboard to use the mouse to highlight words, sections or paragraphs, when it can all be done with keyboard shortcuts.

Touch typists are a rare luxury for the training team, who are more used to working with individualsĀ using the ‘hunt and peck’ typing technique.

The sessions can also help individuals along their career path, with qualifications possible in all applications and Cyber Essentials.

Legal sector clients will often take their trainee secretaries through the full Microsoft Office certification for the benefit of the individuals and the organisation which can demonstrate with globally recognised certificates, how it is building a professional qualified team at every level.

Train the trainer is a thing too

For those organisations that rely on specialist third-party applications, possibly integrated with the usual Microsoft Office suspects, our training team will often sit in on the training provided when the third-party app is implemented.

This allows our training team to build similar sessions for our client, to be delivered to new starters to introduce the app and its features.

These sessions will be delivered periodically in conjunction with the usual training sessions, to ensure every employee has the skills and understanding to optimise the systems they use to increase productivity and improve efficiency – what’s not to like?

You don’t even have to be a client to get the most from our training team’s experience, so if you want a tailored training programme for your organisation, please get in touch; you know it makes sense.

James Smith, Training Manager, Quiss Technology plc

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