At Accela, we believe training is key to the impact our customers have on their communities —the more our customers understand about the Accela Civic Platform and its uses, the better able they are to elevate the user experience for their residents. To that end, we’ve made a few major changes recently to our educational offerings available at Accela University, our complete training ecosystem for the development needs of our customers.
Enhancing the virtual experience
In response to the pandemic, we have ramped up our virtual offerings, making training more readily available to agencies while simultaneously driving down the cost. While this was a necessary response to the COVID crisis, it has proven so popular that we have continued to build upon that momentum and expand our offerings.
In addition, we have created an online marketplace for those looking to deepen their Accela expertise. Rather than having to call an account executive to explore options, customers can now peruse the robust online catalog and register for training with a credit card or through prepaid invoicing. The self-service option makes training more readily accessible and enables our customers to get the training they need when they need it. In 2021, nearly 3,000 of our customers accessed training in this fashion.
The training landscape – select a format that works for you
At Accela, training isn’t something that just happens in a special session or at a conference. It’s a year-round endeavor, made available in both synchronous and asynchronous formats.
We offer synchronous experiences, live virtual training for those who want it. In this mode, expert instructors deliver a hands-on educational experience in real time. In addition, users can opt to access asynchronous, self-paced content. They can work through pre-recorded lessons at their own pace, as fits their own schedules.
The content itself includes diverse topics of immediate interest to the Accela user community. The majority of trainees come to learn about how to best use the Civic Platform, with an emphasis on Civic Platform, Accela Mobile and Citizen Access configuration.
For many, configuring Accela Applications is the primary task: That’s how they are moving their organizations from manual or paper-based processes into cloud-based workflows. In support of this, we offer configuration training, as well as customized script training, reports training, and education around API connectivity.
There are topic-specific trainings as well, around GIS use cases for example, in addition to more specific technical trainings.
For those looking to take their training to a higher level, with an eye toward career advancement, Accela recently launched a series of professional-level technical certifications. In the certification program, users can take a deeper dive, expanding upon and further refining their skills around configuration management on the Civic and Citizen Access Platforms.
Goals and outcomes
In all enhancements and developments, we are building out our training and development program with the end user in mind. Accela users, by and large, are looking to elevate the resident experience — to improve customer satisfaction within their agencies — and all our training aligns with this goal.
With a well-configured system, agencies can deliver services more effectively. Where manual processes might have been effective in the past, effective configuration and automation on the Accela platform can scale services at a dramatic rate.
This in turn makes individuals more effective in their jobs: The same person who could handle a dozen citizen encounters in the past now can tackle many dozens of interactions. That’s a recipe for both enhanced citizen service and improved job satisfaction, and training makes it possible, empowering administrators to configure the platform for maximum impact.
Our end goal with training is always to improve an agency’s efficiency, to improve its intake ability and empower its work-from-anywhere capabilities. All of this has a direct impact on the agency’s ultimate customer: the resident. After all, this is the person opening a restaurant or applying for licensing. With enhanced training, those experiences all become quicker and easier.
To learn more about Accela’s training and development opportunities, those attending Accelarate 2022 from Oct 3 – 5 in Salt Lake City can drop by the Accela U booth in the Accela Experience Center. There, you can learn just how easy it is to get involved, receive help creating a training program for your team, explore how best to optimize your workforce, or talk through any questions you may have about the synchronous and asynchronous offerings. Hope to see you there!
The Accela Experience Center will be open to all conference attendees Monday, Oct. 3 from 6-8 PM MT; Tuesday, Oct. 4 from 11:45 AM-5 PM MT; Wednesday Oct. 5 from 10:45 AM-5 PM MT.
