Responding to COVID-19
Nexacu is a national software training company and Microsoft Gold Partner, running instructor-led short courses across Australia. Nexacu has grown rapidly, doubling in size year on year since it was founded in 2014. At the end of 2019, they placed 24th in the prestigious list of Australia’s fastest growing tech companies, the Deloitte Technology Fast50 and in Asia Pacific’s top 500.
What courses do you offer?
Our most popular courses are Power BI, Office365, SharePoint, MS Project and Excel. We reinvest heavily in our team and in developing courses in emerging skilled end user technology such as, Power BI, Power Apps, Power Platform and R programming.
Who are Nexacu’s courses aimed at?
Our courses are focused on the end-user market segments. We see a growing uptake in skilled end-user applications. Microsoft are championing “citizen development” which empowers users to build solutions without relying on developers. Self-service business intelligence tools like Power BI, mean business users can now extract actionable insights from their data and create rich interactive dashboards. They can create no code applications through Power Apps and code-free business automation with Power Automate (Flow). Regular users have never had this level capability to affect their roles’ productivity and value. Training of staff will be key if businesses and departments want to capitalise on these opportunities. This is an exciting space and we are leading training development across Australia.
How did COVID19 affect your business?
From mid-March our existing business suffered substantially in cancellations, refunds and postponements in our face to face delivery format. There was a general environment of fear and our customers were either not comfortable in attending a training course or their workplace mandated that they could not attend an external training course.
What action did you take?
Our face to face format has been changed to remote instructor led delivery. We run all our sessions through Microsoft Teams either through the Teams app or through Teams on a web browser. Our trainers and students attend from home or their workplace. The trainer’s screen is shared, and our students are hands on doing their exercises being led by the trainers. Students ask questions and engage in discussion through audio or chat which helps cement their understanding of the content. We have received lots of positive feedback from students.
How prepared were you to deal the challenge?
As an organisation we were heavy users of Microsoft Teams. Our team is technically savvy, so we were able to quickly pivot to that delivery method and systemise processes around it. Having the business founders working operationally in the business also meant that we could make the big necessary decisions early.
What permanent changes do you see happening?
There will be more acceptance of staff working remotely and therefore remote training that can present opportunities. Face to face training will return slowly and will still be valued, I believe for the simple fact that it is more productive and a superior form of learning. For those who are seeking the best outcomes in the shortest amount of time, nothing beats classroom training.
Follow the link to read regular updates on our COVID-19 Management Plan
View Courses
