Digital Transformation Specialist, Cypher IQ, have revolutionised operations for Newcastle based business, Forsythes Training by delivering an end-to-end digital automated enrolment process.

Forsythes Training is a provider of workforce capability and skills development services. As a fully compliant registered training organisation, Forsythes can deliver high quality corporate and tertiary training solutions to individuals and businesses throughout Australia.

Forsythes Training Managing Director, Chad White explains that Registered Training can require a lot of paperwork and it’s important to look to more sustainable options.

“Registered training can be a very labour intensive with heavy paper process. We have government information to manage with data to be entered into Government portals, we have students, student information, student communication, venue management, and general business administration,” Chad said.

“Our business processes were piecemeal digital. All implemented and developed over the past 20 years with no systems talking to each other.”

Forsythes reported that they had information on students in separate excel spreadsheets, network folders, hard copy filing, and duplication of data in our student management system, finance system, and spreadsheet management systems.

The also had a separate venue management process that did not integrate any student or course data.

“These legacy systems also caused us to have a large IT overhead cost to maintain our business. Registered training has huge compliance requirements to be met. The amount of information we must collect, some sensitive, creates a considerable process to onboard students in a course,” Chad said.

“We wanted to make this experience as easy as possible for our students as well as provide our internal team with greater visibility of process and information.

“We had to not only eliminate the paper, but also make it easier for our staff to manage our information as well as make the student onboarding a better experience for our end users.”

With Cypher IQ, Forsythes Training worked through the implementation in stages.

“We needed to carry on with our day-to-day business tasks and update and implement these digital transformation projects, so we decided to attack the project in smaller parts.”

Cypher IQ provided the workflow mapping and design, facilitated project management, and provided the software development expertise to build what was needed.

“It’s easy to get caught up in technology products available to the market. Cypher IQ simply put that aside and focused on what was needed to deliver a complete end to end digital automated solution,” he said.

As a result, Forsythes Training now has a complete end to end online enrolment process.

This  process that ensures data integration of invoices and payments to the financial system, SMS and email notification of forms and training messages, student information now integrates with the student management system, and venue and training management can all be accessed and managed online.

Forsythes Training is now able to access data to report on enrolment processes and perform bulk upload of information into the Government portals.

“The process with Cypher IQ from concept phase to implementation has been a partnership we needed,” Chad said.

“From a process perspective, everything is immediate. We can access student information, enrolment stages, and course and venue detail quickly. As a Managing Director, I have complete visibility over the number of enrolments and enrolment stages, which makes it easy for me to manage the business. I can access all this information from my phone. It is just easy.

“We spend less time managing each enrolment.  Our billing is up to date and automatic. Our venue management is more manageable, and we even have the facility for our trainers to send SMS updates to students on the course and training needs”.

The integration of enrolment data into Forsythes Training Student Management System has stopped the duplication of data entry. This has made a big difference in workflows and enrolment management across the organisation, and the integration of data to the website has enabled quicker and easier updates of course offerings online.

Rolling out the additions and changes in smaller projects helped Forsythes Training stay on top of day-to-day work while ensuring the software created delivered everything that was needed.

Forsythes Training aims to evolve and increase its service offering continually.  The Cypher IQ technology will enable the organisation to continue to grow without expanding the admin team or adding additional admin and IT costs.

IMAGE | Forsythes Training Managing Director, Chad White.