Press Releases & News

In an attempt to provide practical advice and guidance to organisations in the current economic climate, the organisation development consultancy, Echelon, is offering its customers free access to a paper on ‘retaining customers in an economic downturn’.

The paper – authored by sales performance specialists Huthwaite International - is one of the ‘action lists’ on the ‘Learningmatters’ website. This website is Echelon’s ‘virtual warehouse’ of over 2,000 downloadable bite-size performance solutions including 300 action lists for everyday business problems; 650 self-development solutions to help build a skill; 200 best practice essays/interviews with top business thinkers; 100 diagnostic and audit solutions to check out current performance; 250 digest articles on business giants and management books, and 600 training solutions to help build skills in others.

Among the paper’s eight key points are:

· Dissatisfaction is the first step to losing business, so the best way of keeping your existing business is to ensure that any existing client dissatisfaction, no matter how small, is detected and addressed at the earliest possible opportunity. So check user satisfaction regularly and respond quickly.

· Develop perceptions of value, so document all the good news. If clients have no understanding of the value your business is bringing to their business it’s not surprising that they see little problem in changing suppliers.

· Maintain and extend your network of contacts, rather than maintain links with an ageing and shrinking pool of business contacts. In a downturn companies shed people - and losing your key contact can leave you vulnerable to change.

· Develop accounts, don’t just maintain them. Explore what changes the customer plans to make to cope with the slow-down and consider the extent to which such change can provide opportunities for your business as well as threats.

· Expect price pressure but take time to check the full cost of any concessions you are being asked to make. Make sure customers fully understand the value of what they are getting and plan how you will negotiate if price becomes an issue.

If you have to give ground on price, try to trade it for other things of value such as better payment terms, or more business. Don’t be fooled by promises of ‘jam tomorrow’ in return for concessions today: make concessions conditional on getting that extra business now.

· Watch your own cost of the sale and don’t chase business where your chances of success are low. We can fool ourselves that we are making progress when, in fact, we are wasting time and money on a client where nothing is going to happen.

· Review your marketing strategy. Building brand is fine but good leads now could be more important.

· Offer clients low risk solutions.

“The paper stresses the importance of looking for ways to enable your organisation to become an active part of your customers’ activities,” commented Echelon’s chairman, David Hill.

“Following this advice should enable businesses to improve their relationships with their customers – making it more difficult for them to sever business links. In the current economic climate, that could mean the difference between retaining business and losing it to a competitor.

“This paper is one of many on the Learningmatters website,” he added. “Each of these offer sound advice and, increasingly, this website – with its ease of access, allowing users to study as and when they wish rather than being restricted to ‘set learning times’ by a formal course of study - is being used by executives as a source of job support and for their continuous professional development (CPD).”

For the free sample action list – Retaining customers in an economic downturn – visit http://learningmatters.com/dwn/25270/index.html

For further information please contact

Media contact: Bob Little Tel + 44 (0)1727 860405; Email: bob.little@boblittlepr.com

Sales contact: David Hill Tel + 44 (0)20 8568 1500; Email: david@echelonlearning.co.uk

About Echelon Learning Ltd

Echelon is an organisation development consultancy with a 20-year track record of delivering targeted communication, training and performance support solutions that really make a difference to corporate, government and not-for-profit organisations and professional bodies.

The company helps its clients create and sustain improved operational performance by developing high levels of employee engagement and competence that leverage their ability to achieve outstanding results, particularly in times of change.

Echelon publishes a wide range of business and management solutions that offer job support and lifelong career development: www.learningmatters.com

Clients include:

Channel Tunnel Rail Link

London Overground Rail (LOROL)

Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply

Department of Work and Pensions

Festival Housing Association

NHS

Royal Town Planning Institute

T-Mobile

Translink

Chicago, Illinois January 3, 2009 — A new free booklet helps business owners navigate the often complex activity of choosing internet marketing services.  The “Consumer Awareness Guide to Buying Internet Sales and Marketing Services” written by internet marketing expert Raynay Valles is available at
www.fasttrackinternetmarketing.com/freeguide/

“The average business owner who has a website is needlessly wasting thousands of dollars on internet marketing ripoffs.  As a result, these companies make millions of dollars and mislead business owners to believe, ‘The Internet doesn’t work.’”

These controversial words come from one of the nation’s leading internet marketing experts and business advocates, Raynay Valles and address a growing problem as more businesses try to increase sales using internet
marketing.

Focusing on step-by-step solutions to the concerns of business owners, this guide covers:

-Why 99% of the internet marketing services used by most companies are a waste of time and money
-How to avoid traffic-building scams and rip-offs
-How most business owners are asking the wrong question about their website
-5 costly misconceptions about getting business from the web
-The 3 most effective ways to find your customers online
-7 questions you need to ask before buying any internet sales and marketing services

About Raynay Valles:

Internet marketing specialist and author Raynay Valles is president of Jawdrop, Inc. a Chicago online marketing consulting firm.  Her articles have appeared in numerous online magazines, newsletters and blogs.  She speaks
to local business groups on the subject of succeeding with  internet marketing.  Available for interviews, Raynay welcomes questions
from writers and business owners alike.

Contact:

Raynay Valles, President
Jawdrop, Inc.
773-539-9309
http://www.FastTrackInternetMarketing.com

At this year’s Learning Technologies conference and exhibition, being held at London’s Olympia on 28^th and 29^th January 2009, Giunti Labs, a leading learning and mobile content management solution provider, will be showcasing new developments in its learn eXact learning content management system (LCMS) technology.

“Giunti Labs is taking the concept of the LCMS platform a step forward, designing a ‘corporate-wide’ technology solution aimed at absorbing all of an organisation’s knowledge base and delivering it in the most appropriate business/learning scope/learner type fashion,” said Fabrizio Cardinali, Giunti Labs’ CEO. “This is an innovative solution to empower learning and content management projects in highly dynamic organisations.”

“Organisations are currently experiencing massive increases in information-based, enterprise-wide projects and tasks - including information dissemination, corporate-wide learning and competence management - to support their evolution and business performance,” commented Andrea Gentili, Giunti Labs’ Chief Sales and Marketing Officer. “In its new version of the learn eXact LCMS – called learn eXact Enterprise - Giunti Labs is providing a solution to these problems.”

learn eXact Enterprise has been created to support all aspects of management of the process and the contents for distant learning in an organisiaton. In particular, it has been designed to integrate with other organisational management systems, such as ERP, HR and document management systems.

It aims to optimise all workgroup and corporate-wide projects with a high degree of content usage and sharing. It is best suited to:

· Enterprise-wide content based projects

· Content consolidation

· Knowledge dissemination over highly dispersed environments

· Blended learning programmes

· On-the-job, continuous learning

· Overall organisation performance enhancement

“The platform, which is SOA-based, is founded on a three level architecture - data, business and presentation layer,” said Cardinali. “It is a performance-orientated, extended learning engine which can easily accommodate any business model evolution in which information aggregation, distribution and activation are key in achieving superior operational performance, a strong competence-orientated and future-proof organisation.”

About learn eXact Enterprise LCMS

learn eXact Enterprise comprises a series of interoperable modules for domains, users and profiles and contents creation management, workflow processes, projects management, contents delivery and performances reporting. Among other things, it:

· Enables more flexible workflow

· Provides workflow status summaries and action lists

· Is a project management tool

· Includes more roles and metadata configurability

· Allows easy editing of user roles and permission

· Allows easy editing of content metadata

· Allows easy team structure management and revision

· Allows easy task editing and association, including within active projects

· Contains full versioning and roll-back functions

· Contains a fully customisable ‘skin’ to ensure a corporate family ‘feeling’

· Has localisation capability

· Enables data export in XML format via web services

· Includes simple search or metadata search at digital repository level

· Contains a search preview function

About Giunti Labs

Giunti Labs is a leading Online and Mobile Learning Content Management Solutions provider with global headquarters in Italy and offices in London (UK), Frankfurt (Germany), Lund (Sweden), Boston (US), as well as Sydney and Perth (Australia).

Giunti Labs provides a wide range of solutions, in response to any content, learning and knowledge management need, covering:

· 24/7 multi language learning content production

· LCMS and Digital Repository Platforms

· Delivery solutions for mobile & wireless

· Consulting and professional services

Giunti Labs is part of Giunti Group, a leading educational and cultural heritage publisher with roots back to 1841. Over the years Giunti has built a catalogue of huge dimensions (over 7.000 titles) and acquired new brands in Italy and worldwide.

In 2008, Giunti Labs acquired the HarvestRoad Hive digital repository system, which manages any form of content used in online learning, corporate training and knowledge management initiatives. HarvestRoad Hive can interface with practically any ERP, Learning or Course Management System and is already integrated with several commonly used course management systems, authoring and content assembly tools.

Further information from:

Alessandro Lorenzelli, Giunti Labs, +39 0185 42123, a.lorenzelli@giuntilabs.com

Bob Little, Bob Little Press & PR, +44 (0)1727 860405, bob.little@boblittlepr.com

The Learning and Skills Network (LSN) - an independent not-for-profit organisation committed to making a difference to education and training - has concluded a deal to distribute Echelon Learning’s series of nine, online, interactive, video-rich teacher training programmes throughout the UK. The programmes, initially developed for Westminster Kingsway College (WKC), highlight best practice in teaching and are particularly intended for those teaching in colleges of further education.

Designed to help all users develop planning and pedagogical skills, the Teaching Best Practice programmes are suitable for both new lecturers needing to acquire and develop new skills and for existing teachers as part of their continuous professional development (CPD) activities.

“The programmes, which use video to highlight examples of best practice in teaching and learning, focus on teaching skills and classroom management skills,” explained Echelon’s Hugh Garai, “As such, they are applicable to teachers of all academic disciplines.”

WKC commissioned the programmes following some feedback following an Ofsted inspection of the college. Peter Armah, WKC’s head of human resources and development, explained: “We decided to develop some programmes which outlined best practice around key topics such as ‘effective differentiation’, ‘managing classroom behaviour’, ‘managing punctuality and attendance’, ‘integrating key skills into the curriculum’, and ‘making effective use of information and learning technology (ILT)’.

“Making these learning materials available online meant that our staff were able to tap into them as and when they wished. Later, we augmented these online learning materials with workbooks.

“A key strategy was to train the College Advanced Practitioners on how to use the programme, enabling them to become a resource to deliver both individual and team training.”

Based at centres in Camden and Westminster, WKC has some 14,000 students and a teaching staff of 600. The college offers a wide range of further, adult and higher education programmes, available for people of all ages from 14 years upwards.

“Using actual classes with WKC teachers and students enabled us to communicate programme content clearly in a context familiar to users and helped us to spill the beans on the magic ingredients that really make a teaching session that has the ‘wow’ factor,” Armah continued. “The overall aim was to develop programmes that could address both generic and subject specific issues, which are easy to use, accessible from anywhere, and flexible.”

The programmes are suitable for team discussion, reflective practice, independent and active learning. They can be used for curriculum team meetings, college planning and development days, subject sector days, centre days and cross-college days and for one-to-one support.

“Ever since we introduced these programmes, we have received highly positive feedback from those who have been using them,” Armah continued.

“We realised that other colleges face similar issues to WKC and so could benefit from these types of programmes. From there, it was a short step to deciding to make these learning materials available to the whole further education sector,” he added.

According to Garai, Echelon completed the last of the nine programmes - each of which contains some ten modules - towards the end of 2008. Although the programmes were originally designed for WKC, other colleges – including a large college in the east of Scotland – have also been using them with great success.

Further details of these programmes are available from the LSN (tel: 0845 602 5668

email: askus@lsneducation.org.uk; web: http://www.lsneducation.org.uk) or from Hugh Garai at Echelon Learning on 020 8568 1500 or email hugh@echelonlearning.co.uk

For further information please contact

Media contact: Bob Little Tel + 44 (0)1727 860405; Email: bob.little@boblittlepr.com

Sales contact: Hugh Garai Tel + 44 (0)20 8568 1500; Email:

hugh@echelonlearning.co.uk

About the Learning and Skills Network

The Learning and Skills Network (LSN) is an independent, not-for-profit organisation committed to making a difference to learning and skills. LSN aims to do this by delivering quality improvement and staff development programmes that support specific government initiatives, through research, training and consultancy; and by supplying services directly to schools, colleges and training organisations. It provides services for:

• policy-makers
• organisations that fund, manage and provide education
• individual providers and practitioners

These services fall into three broad categories:

· Programmes – to support learning providers (leaders, managers, teachers and trainers), to meet the challenges they face as the sector develops. Funded by QIA, the DCSF and the Learning and Skills Council among others, each programme is designed to support a particular priority.

· Research – focusing on sector priorities, including planning and funding, widening participation, technology and learning, and major programme evaluation. Its research supports policy-makers at a national or regional level by providing evidence about what works, and aids practitioners by highlighting and disseminating good practice.

· Training and consultancy.

The Learning and Skills Network, Fifth Floor, Holborn Centre, 120 Holborn, London, EC1N 2AD (tel 0845 602 5668; email askus@lsneducation.org.uk;

web http://www.lsneducation.org.uk)

About Echelon Learning Ltd

Echelon is an organisation development consultancy with a 20-year track record of delivering targeted communication, training and performance support solutions that really make a difference to corporate, government and not-for-profit organisations and professional bodies.

The company helps its clients create and sustain improved operational performance by developing high levels of employee engagement and competence that leverage their ability to achieve outstanding results, particularly in times of change.

Echelon publishes a wide range of self-development solutions that support lifelong career development: www.learningmatters.com

Clients include:

Channel Tunnel Rail Link

London Overground Rail (LOROL)

Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply

Department of Work and Pensions

Festival Housing Association

NHS

Royal Town Planning Institute

T-Mobile

Vodafone

Live Software Solutions (LSS), a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner which develops and delivers software, has helped OI Software to perfect its exciting new product, nGage. nGage is a rich, social application that integrates specifically with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007, using and extending SharePoint’s core functionality to transform the user’s intranet into a platform for universal employee engagement.

nGage with SharePoint enables, measures and celebrates:

• Leaders and managers being inclusive in inviting everyone in their team to be part of the solution to a challenge.
• People who enjoy making a difference.
• People who like to share their knowledge and their ideas.
• People who will always go that ‘extra mile’ when a colleague, partner or customer needs help.

Moreover, said OI Software’s CEO, Paul Henry: “It spreads this behaviour virally, around user organisations - even to the most cynical of individuals. nGage also gives leaders and managers powerful new tools to monitor and drive organisational, departmental, team and individual performance.”

James Boother, LSS’s Managing Director, explained: “OI Software had initially outsourced the development of this software to India but, for various reasons, it decided to bring the project back to the UK and contacted LSS.”

“Although our charges were – perhaps reassuringly – higher than those of the Indian software house, we allowed OI Software to bring nGage to market on schedule,” said LSS’s technical director, Mike Goatly.

OI Software’s CTO, Pete Denness, commented: “We initially engaged Indian software developers who did a good job getting the project started but, when we needed high quality, sophisticated user interface work added to the project, we turned to software development specialists LSS.”

nGage transforms SharePoint 2007–based intranets into measurably dynamic behavioural, communication, knowledge and talent management hubs. It does this by extending SharePoint’s out-of-the-box functionality with highly viral social networking features and rich support for generating and capturing ideas and innovation.

It then tracks every relevant use of SharePoint -  such as checking in a document, publishing a blog and contributing to a discussion - as well as in nGage’s proprietary functionality, such as giving feedback; questions and answers; submitting an idea; rating someone else’s idea, and so on. This data is then available to be aggregated, analysed and published to the individual’s ‘My Profile’ - defining that person’s reputation as an ‘engaged employee’ within her/his organisation.

Henry added: “Driving employee engagement is at the heart of how organisational intelligence – the ‘OI’ in ‘OI Software’ – can be captured and mined. Having been continually developing nGage for some time – latterly with help from LSS - we now believe that nGage is unique in driving and measuring employee engagement.”

About OI Software

OI Software, an independent UK company, based in Thame, Oxfordshire, is the developer of nGage, the software service that integrates with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server to transform intranets into platforms for universal employee engagement.

About Live Software Solutions

Live Software Solutions (LSS) makes software that creates a difference.

Focusing on helping businesses that use Microsoft technologies, LSS – founded in 2004 – uses its business and software expertise to provide end-to-end solutions, from concept to implementation. In addition to software development services and consultancy, LSS also provides off-the-shelf packages. LLS’s approach is based on four core values:

· Service Excellence - achieving client confidence by truly understanding the business drivers and the project requirements, delivering the agreed solution to plan, managing issues and communicating clearly and regularly - while being easy to do business with and enjoyable to work with.

· Integrity - applying professional and technical expertise to ensure the right solution for the right reasons, as well as being open, honest and fair in all of our dealings.

· Teamwork - deploying the right blend of talent and experience to get the job done, and integrating effectively with client and third party personnel and activities.

· Development - continually seeking to enhance our own capabilities and processes, enabling us to remain innovative and challenging - and sharing this with our clients.

Further information from:

Tom Boother, LSS, 01707 267933/ 07967 633102; tboother@lss.co.uk

Bob Little, Bob Little Press & PR, 01727 860405; bob.little@boblittlepr.com

Festival Housing Group (FHG), the West Midlands-based housing association, has won a UK Housing Award – in the ‘Developing Skills and Capacity’ category – for helping selected Year 10 and 11 pupils at Droitwich Spa High School to develop skills, and gain nationally recognised qualifications in, property maintenance. Known as the ‘Skills for Life project’, it began as a management training opportunity for FHG staff but has gone on to create an imaginative link with Droitwich Spa High School which provides employment and training opportunities in property maintenance for Year 10 and 11 pupils at the school.

These students learn a range of property maintenance skills as part of their curriculum and their two year course includes one day a week working with FHG. Moreover, FHG has agreed to take on at least one of the current pupils as a full apprentice when he leaves school.

Guided by coach Nicole Wehden from the organisation development consultancy Echelon, FHG - which prides itself on ‘building successful communities’ across Herefordshire and Worcestershire – initially got the pupils to spend one day a week with FHG’s maintenance company. This not only provided them with the practical skills and experience in such things as plumbing and electrics but also enabled them to have those skills recognised via City & Guilds qualifications.

Clare Huyton, FHG’s executive director, said: “We are delighted to have this project recognised on a national stage.

“To win this award is not only a tribute to my colleagues at FHG but also to the pupils and staff at Droitwich Spa High School who have worked so hard to help make this project work. We look forward to continuing this success for many years to come.”

Subsequently, through links which Droitwich Spa High School has with a Kenyan school, workers from FHG’s maintenance company visited this school and not only built a classroom there but also trained pupils and teachers in maintenance of their school buildings. And now that the project is into its second year, FHG is building on its success by adding a partnership with another secondary school on the theme of community safety and work with several local primary schools.

“The aim of the project was to give four local youngsters, who had very little in terms of future prospects and motivation, a real start in life,” explained Kay Dovey, HR Director for Festival Housing. “After working on the project for a year, the project team worked with the local Droitwich Spa High School as well as Festival Housing management and staff to create a new experiential programme of work which could ultimately result in a Modern Apprenticeship for the students involved.”

The aim was also to provide a group of FHG employees with a unique learning and development experience to develop their management, leadership and communication skills. Consequently, the project team:

• Developed a clear business/project vision that meets customer and student needs as well as organisational objectives.
• Created a detailed strategy to realise the vision.
• Developed and worked effectively with Gantt charts that include clearly defined objectives and actions, milestones, roles and responsibilities, timescales, risk management, ongoing review and correction.
• Significantly enhanced time management skills.
• Developed confidence and capability in public speaking.
• Became adept at problem solving.
• Developed the capability to create a winning team that achieved peak performance.
• Developed highly effective delegation skills.
• Learned to deliver excellence in customer service.
• Although beginning with little confidence and limited capability, evolved into a team that delivered significantly beyond customer and organisational expectations and developed and belief and confidence that it could do anything.

The project was the brainchild of Echelon’s Jenny Hill and Nicole Wehden. Jenny Hill explained: “FHG was an early adopter of our Community Project Challenge (CPC) management training initiative.

“The initiative supports FHG’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) goals and helps its managers achieve a ‘Cert.M’ qualification. Participants use action learning methods to manage a ‘real time’ project.

“Support is provided via a programme coach and a bespoke project website, which includes a variety of online project management and knowledge tools. A personal learning log provides evidence for qualifications and continuous professional development (CPD).”

Nicole Wehden commented that the team has achieved some impressive results. She said: “When we first started working with the project team they were a group of enthusiastic individuals with limited management experience and hungry to learn.

“With guidance, they developed a vision, strategy and clear, comprehensive plans to achieve their goals. They implemented plans with real commitment and inspiration and learnt a host of management skills along the way, applying them all with panache.

“What they achieved as a result far exceeded anyone’s expectations and I am extremely proud of them - and they achieved all that while continuing to carry out their day jobs successfully!“

Linda Gittings, Training Officer at FHG, explained that one of the key benefits of this project for FHG is that: “We are developing an understanding and methodology for coaching at work and embedding learning into the organisation in practical and sustainable ways.

“It is helping improve individual and team effectiveness and aligning our outputs more closely to customer needs which, in turn, is improving customer satisfaction. Longer-term, CPC provides support succession planning by identifying relevant programme participants,” she said.

FHG’s Kay Dovey added: “The project has attracted a great deal of media interest resulting in a substantial amount of free PR for FHG, both locally and nationally.

“This has served to enhance the reputation of the organisation within the local community and across the housing association community. In addition, it raised the profile of FHG as a preferred local employer.

“One of our strategic objectives is to develop key strategic alliances across the community - in particular with schools in order to attract school leavers to the organisation. As a result of the project, Droitwich Spa High School has become a strong local partner of ours to pioneer highly innovative career initiatives for young people.

“The relationship has become so strong that FHG management have been invited to speak at major school events. In addition, management and project team members have been introduced, by the school, to local ‘movers and shakers’.

“In short, FHG’s overall local profile has been greatly enhanced as a result of the project – and, now, numerous local schools are anxious to get involved.”

“One unforeseen benefit of the project has been the impact on the staff involved in developing the youngsters, outside of the project team,” said Linda Gittings. “Workmen are learning and developing coaching, teaching and mentoring skills that have resulted in the youngsters becoming so motivated and enthusiastic that they have asked to work during school holidays, when they weren’t scheduled to do so.

“Moreover, the project has proved to be a highly effective form of recruitment, since it introduces FHG to four potential new workers each year.

“And the growth in confidence and capabilities of the eight project team members has become obvious for all to see,” she continued. “As a result of the project and the experience they have gained from it, the organisation now has eight individuals who have developed in many aspects – in terms of skills, experience and character - and are now considered to have serious management potential.”

-ENDS-

For further information please contact

Media contact: Bob Little Tel + 44 (0)1727 860405; Email: bob.little@boblittlepr.com

Sales contact: Jenny Hill Tel + 44 (0)20 8568 1500; Email: jenny@echelonlearning.co.uk

About Festival Hosing Group (FHG)

Festival Housing Group (FHG) is the leading provider of affordable housing and related services in Herefordshire and Worcestershire. It is focused on delivering high-quality, value for money homes and services that meet customer expectations. It was established on 31st March 2002, following the merger of the two well established, Worcestershire-based organisations: Partnership Housing Group and Spa Housing Group.

FHG, which has offices in Droitwich, Ledbury and Malvern, owns and manages 8,000 properties and provides a wide range of other housing, property and care services. It provides efficient and cost-effective services to a range of member organisations. The following organisations are part of Festival Housing Group:

·