Every morning in British Columbia and Alberta, nearly 500,000 men and women get up and go to work on a construction site. They are employed by some of the best and brightest entrepreneurs in Canada; independent contractors who are taking a risk on their business, their talents, and their teams. Together, these men and women are building every part of BC and Alberta – from the largest LNG plants to the tallest condo buildings to the busiest hospitals to the rural farmhouse. They are building communities, one job at a time.
Since 1975, the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association (ICBA) has been the voice of these men and women. They represent more than 4,500 of these professionals, contractors, and companies – who together employ 150,000 Canadians.
ICBA is dedicated to serving and growing these businesses through group benefits, apprenticeships, advocacy initiatives, human resources support and training that is focused on supporting the construction sector.
Training is critical to ICBA’s offering to its members.Training courses cover everything from Excel Spreadsheets to Excavating Trenches, Leadership Skills, Safety Training, Project Management Skills and more.
In 2023 alone, ICBA offered more than 850+ courses and directly trained over 6,000 people across multiple provinces.
A huge undertaking that Training Manager Ally Bodnar says has been made easier thanks to Arlo.
“Doing this huge volume of training has been made much easier thanks to Arlo.” – Ally Bodnar.
Searching for a solution to help them grow
A familiar story for many training businesses, ICBA previously used spreadsheets to capture registrations. They needed something that would reduce manual processes so they could focus their time on delivering quality training, and began looking for an online system. That search led them to a solution that supported online course registration and payments, and offered some reporting capabilities.
But, then came an even bigger catalyst for change. In 2020 when the pandemic shut down the world, ICBA had to quickly switch all training courses from in-person delivery to virtual delivery. And with virtual delivery not restricting participants by their geographical location, they were then able to assist some of the smaller associations by delivering training all across Canada.
As they embarked on their next stage of significant growth, they knew they needed another solution that would further reduce all of the manual administration associated with running their training business. Confirmation emails, as well as changes and cancellations were still being sent manually to attendees. There was no way to track attendance, no automatic certification at the end of a course, and no in-built CRM. Their website required more advanced filtering to support their increased course offerings, including live online, and a wider range of locations.
The team at ICBA were clear on the problems they needed to solve and clear on their requirements for a solution: it was just a matter of finding the right one. With manual administration being a common challenge in the construction training industry, it was during a conversation with their peers that they found the Arlo training management system.
“We found out about Arlo through another construction association and they had really good things to say about it. As soon as that call ended I got stuck into Arlo’s website looking at all of the system’s features, watching the videos, and then booking a demo. Ultimately, Arlo solved many of our pain points, so we made the switch in 2022 and haven’t looked back.” – Ally Bodnar
ICBA’s top three Arlo features
Customer portal
One of those pain points was fielding requests from customers asking her to manually search their training records for courses they previously attended, and re-sending certificates. Now, their customers have access to all of that information themselves in Arlo’s self-service customer portal.
Customers can login and access information about their upcoming and past training – including course instructions, professional development (CPD/CLE) points, and certificates.
“I love the customer portal”, says Ally. She says the customer interface is good, it’s high-quality and modern, and it’s great that they could customize the portal to match their existing brand.
With Arlo’s customer portal, customers can also change, transfer or cancel their own bookings. Check when their certification or licence is due to expire, and book a renewal. And make payments for upcoming courses, including partial payments.
CRM
On the flip side of the coin, Arlo’s in-built CRM now gives Ally and her team a whole 360-view of their customers, and provides one single source of truth for information. No more manually sorting through old spreadsheets, emails and disparate systems to find course records and certificates.
“To have the whole customer history recorded in one place is invaluable” says Ally.
When a person registers for a course on your website, Arlo matches the contact with an existing record in the CRM and updates the details. If the contact doesn’t already exist, a new record will be added. You can view a log of all communication with every individual customer, view documents that are stored against the contact including certificates, and link them to an organization. You can record notes and tasks, give them a sales rating, add flags and newsletter subscriptions.
And you can set automatic communications to remind them when their certification or license is due to expire.
Which brings us to Ally’s third top Arlo feature…
Automated emails
Arlo’s automated communication is a key time-saving feature for ICBA. When a person registers for a course on the ICBA website, they automatically receive a confirmation email, with all of the relevant information that they need. If the course includes a live online session, then Arlo’s integration with Zoom creates a webinar link and automatically includes it in the email communication.
Automated communications can also include updates to customers about any course changes, invoices and payments reminders, surveys, and certificates once a course is completed.
You can also build prospect lists based on contact information and previous event attendance and run targeted campaigns to promote an upcoming course or another service.
ICBA is the top construction training and professional development team in British Columbia and Arlo is proud to be the platform that helps them deliver that training. Freeing up Ally and her team’s time to focus on what really matters; protecting, supporting and developing construction workers and their families.
“We come to work every day because we believe in the people in construction. Arlo has freed up our time so we can focus on doing more for them,” says Ally.
