A secure website with online registration and payments, automated email communications and intelligent reporting has helped Communispond eliminate manual processes and streamline their training business.
Communispond is a global communication skills training provider based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. They offer private corporate programs for team training, public courses for individuals, and one-on-one coaching either in person or virtually, for professional development or critical public speaking events. Since 1969, Communispond has helped over 1,000,000 client associates – including CEOs, board chairs, sales leaders, and a wide range of business executives – build confidence and achieve business goals by communicating with clarity and power.
President Scott D’Amico has spent his entire career working in education and training. From teaching, to working in the corporate education space, and now in soft skills training at Communispond. His passion is “helping people” and believes communication skills help people in every aspect of their lives – at home, with colleagues, with family and in business leadership.
At Communispond, there is a small, but mighty team running a global training company. Like many training providers, staff members wear many hats. As well as serving as President, Scott also leads the direct sales team, and is always looking for ways to grow the business and streamline existing processes.
That’s what ultimately led him to Arlo…
Their previous system was a bespoke, custom-built solution. It was not user friendly, involved a lot of very manual processes, and in Scott’s words, “our old system was antiquated to say the least. Every time someone signed up for a course, it involved a lot of manual steps, and there were so many people touching that process.”
Scott took on the role as organization lead for identifying and bringing on a new solution. During that discovery period, Scott met with four companies that offered a training management system but says that Arlo stood out for a number of reasons. One was that they could book a free demo with a real consultant at Arlo to discuss their business requirements. The free trial helped them to better understand the software and inform their decision. The extensive number of resources in the Help Centre made it “really easy to figure out how to do things in Arlo”. And the price point.
“The price point for Arlo, for what the software is and everything you get with it, is great”, says Scott.
And, of course, what mattered in the end was that Arlo ticked all of their boxes in terms of requirements. At a core level, they wanted to reduce manual processes and Arlo has done that by a whopping 80%.
“Arlo has enabled us to reduce the manual tasks for running our open enrollment programs by 80%”.
– Scott D’Amico
They also wanted a more secure payment process, a professional, polished looking website, better reporting, and streamlined processes for communication.
Website
Arlo’s pre-built course page templates make it easy to create and publish new courses to the website straight from the Arlo platform, without shifting information between multiple systems..
Communispond’s courses can be easily filtered by location and in-person or live online on the course catalog page, and sessions can be viewed by timezone. The individual course pages include information such as location, which Scott says helped with their SEO. All of the colours and fonts match their existing brand, and the website looks modern.
Online registration is easy and secure and the Stripe integration has made accepting payments and processing refunds easier.
Automated communications
In the past, all course confirmation emails were manually sent by staff at Communispond. And those emails could be delayed by a day or more due to time zone differences.
With Arlo’s automated email communications it’s easy – use a templated confirmation message, select a venue, and attach any pre-work documents to the emails. Once the learner has registered and paid for their course online they receive immediate email confirmation of their enrolment.
Communispond also utlizies Arlo’s waitlist feature, as they have minimum course number requirements, and they’ve been able to tailor their communications to let recipients know when the course has been confirmed.
“Arlo gave our customers a much better experience. They are now getting immediate notification when they enrol on a course, and notification when the course has been confirmed” says Scott.
That’s two sets of emails that the team used to send manually – course enrolment, and course confirmation – that they now simply set and forget.
“Arlo has alleviated a lot of headaches from an operational perspective”.
– Scott D’Amico
Reporting
Arlo’s business intelligence and reporting features have provided performance visibility and insights to everyone across the company.
Arlo allows you to schedule reports to be automatically sent on a regular basis to any email addresses, saving you time and ensuring the right people have the information they need. You can also choose whether you would like to send your scheduled reports securely.
For Scott, he has a report scheduled to land in his inbox every morning. For everyone else, a weekly report is sent that shows a breakdown of course performance including how many people registered for each class, popular regions, what discount codes were used and when, and more.
Scott says Arlo’s live reporting dashboard has also been beneficial for sales people in each region to jump into the Arlo platform and get a real-time look at their upcoming classes and the number of enrolments. And with an unlimited number of “read only” licences available for all Arlo customers, Scott says they didn’t have to make any hard decisions about who could have access to the platform.
When asked how he would describe Arlo, Scott says “in a nutshell Arlo helps us sell and deliver our public courses, without having to worry about it 24/7”.
