Serving the construction community since 1904, the Winnipeg Construction Association is Manitoba’s largest construction association. The not-for-profit trade association currently has more than 750+ member firms and includes manufacturers and suppliers, financial institutions, lawyers, contractors, insurance and bonding companies and brokers.
“Together we build Manitoba” is WCA’s by-line and they deliver on that by advocating on behalf of the industry with all levels of government, hosting valuable networking events, providing trusted construction information and bidding opportunities for their members, and offering best-in-class educational opportunities for industry members.
Learning and development manager Peggy Zurkan has been at the forefront of those best-in-class educational programs, helping to deliver over 80 courses a year tailored specifically for the Industrial, Commercial and Institutional Construction Industry. Every WCA course earns Gold Seal Certification (GSC) credits, a nationally recognized certification and the industry standard. Courses include Project Management Skills, Lean Construction, Profitable Contracting and more. With face-to-face, instructor-led live online, and self-paced eLearning options available.
With such a large number of members, and a wide program of training courses, efficiency is important to the staff at WCA. Which is ultimately what led them to search for a training management system like Arlo.
Prior to Arlo, members would register for a course online, and then Peggy would do everything manually from there – reminders, certificates, name tags and more. Enquiries for courses completed or booked was a manual search through Excel spreadsheets for Peggy.
“We went from ‘manual everything’ – reminders, invoices, scheduling a course, to automating all of that with Arlo. It has been a very positive move for WCA and has made our lives a lot easier.” – Peggy Zurkan.
Course templates
With 90 different courses running multiple times each year, scheduling was one of Peggy’s biggest pain points.
“I had to manually re-enter every single course, with every single detail, every time and it was so time consuming.” says Peggy.
Now, rather than having to create a new course from scratch every time, Peggy uses Arlo’s course templates. Every time you schedule a new course with Arlo, a course template is automatically created and stored in the Arlo platform. Making it quick and easy to create all future instances of the courses you offer. Information stored in the course template includes the name, website content (e.g. what displays on the course website page), and default course settings.
Simply click on the template, choose “schedule another”, enter the new date and hit publish.
Last year WCA ran 150+ courses. Peggy estimates that each course would take 10-15 minutes to create and publish. Now, it takes her “seconds”.
“I love Arlo’s course templates. It now takes me seconds to publish a new course.” says Peggy.
Automated communications
As well as simplifying the creation of courses, Arlo has simplified other key administrative tasks for WCA. With Arlo’s automated communications, reminders, follow-ups, assessments, course evaluations and certificates are automatically sent to registrants without manual intervention.
As well as saving time, Peggy says the automation has removed errors that were made because of the sheer volume of monotonous tasks associated with such a large number of courses.
They used to print certificates and physically send them out to learners. If they accidentally spelt someone’s name wrong – that would all have to be re-done. Now the certificates are automatically sent from Arlo via email. A process that is more professional, faster, and more accurate.
“The biggest wins are the amount of time we save on administration as well as the level of professionalism that Arlo enables for our business – from name tags to certificates and more”. Says Peggy. “If we didn’t have Arlo we’d have to hire another administrator.”
Further streamlining their processes, WCA has integrated Arlo with Wicket – their member data platform. Wicket was implemented when WCA’s Membership Director needed a better way to manage members, renewals, engagement, as well as have everything in a central place. Previously, they were using an ‘Access Database’, and the renewal process was the biggest pain point to solve. And with the addition of the integration, any update to data in Wicket, that information is automatically synchronized to Arlo. No duplicating data between systems, or manually matching customer records.
Doing more of the things that matter
Quality training and a quality member experience is what gets Peggy out of bed each day. From the experience a member has on the website registering for a course, to the time they turn up to the classroom, and everything that they get after. And Arlo has enabled them to deliver that.
“Arlo provides a better service for our members, with its ease of use and great experience” – Peggy Zurkan.
And with so much time back in her day thanks to Arlo, Peggy can now focus on delivering that quality experience, as well as delivering even more courses and helping to grow the business.
“We have been able to increase the number of different courses that we offer since implementing Arlo in 2021. I can now spend time researching what other courses are available, implementing more of our own, and helping to grow the training side of our business.” says Peggy.
With education being one of WCA’s four core pillars and integral to the success of the industry, being able to deliver more quality training to their members is Peggy’s proudest accomplishment with Arlo.
