Simplified Procurement of Advanced Technology Training [Case Study]

Large multinational financial corporation

The Situation

One of the largest U.S.-based multinational financial services corporations needed to simplify their procurement of advanced technology training for a large number of teams across their consumer technology division. They needed a training partner to act as an advisor on technology trends and best-of breed instructor-led training (ILT).

The organization envisioned a three-pronged approach for keeping their new and existing staff up to date on the latest IT trends and technologies:

  • 1. Leverage self-paced content for introductory concepts through an e-learning platform
  • 2. Find a single vendor to provision all ILT needs for more advanced topics, both in North America and overseas
  • 3. Subscribe to an online book repository for reference material

Evaluating the first and third initiatives was pretty straightforward, but the second initiative — the ILT component — proved to be more difficult because of the breadth of technologies used throughout the organization.

Quick Facts

Industry information

  • Financial services

Firmographic information

  • Large multinational financial services corporation

Wanted

  • Simplified procurement of advanced technology training for a large number of teams

Services provided

  • Consumer digital file storage Firmographic information
  • Flex Account to simplify budget tracking and administrative tasks
  • Custom training plan
  • Private onsite courses for various teams
  • Virtual courses for more specific training needs
  • Custom assessment to determine high-demand topics, resulting in custom course to cover such topics

Outcomes achieved

  • Entire workforce upskilled in less than a year
  • Increased capabilities to build next generation of cloud-native applications

The Solution

For their second initiative, the organization ultimately chose ExitCertified to be their single vendor of ILT classes because of ExitCertified’s large number of vendor and open-source relationships in the cloud, DevOps and emerging technologies. Another major factor that solidified the organization’s decision to partner with ExitCertified was its personalized customer service in building customized programs. Specifically, ExitCertified worked with the organization’s chosen e-learning vendor (from its first initiative) to integrate their offerings in order to provide a seamless transition from introductory concepts to advanced topics. The ExitCertified team — including cloud and DevOps subject matter experts (SMEs) — regularly met with and interviewed key team leads to determine the existing and future direction of IT technology throughout the organization. They leveraged these interviews and their knowledge of trends in the industry to build a plan that included both out-of-the-box training from a number of large vendors (including IBM, Red Hat, AWS and Pivotal), as well as custom training on open-source technologies. Courses were delivered either in person at customer sites or through ExitCertified’s best-of-breed virtual training platform, iMVP® (Individual Multimedia Video Presence). 

To further tailor the organization’s learning program, ExitCertified brought in a cloud-native SME to develop a highly customized week-long Microservices Architecture course that incorporated the particular set of tools the organization used. This course became the cornerstone of a new-hire program that continues to run on a regular basis and is frequently updated to reflect the ever-evolving needs of the organization.

The organization ultimately chose ExitCertified to be their single vendor of ILT classes because of ExitCertified’s large number of vendor and opensource relationships in the cloud, DevOps and emerging technologies.

The Outcome

The organization launched a global role-based program that prepares their team for the platforms of tomorrow. Their relationship with ExitCertified continues to grow every year as some technologies reach their end of life and other innovations emerge to replace them. The program provides visibility into how the organization’s training budget is being allocated and optimized, helping to ensure every training dollar is put to good use.