Briefed by Microsoft to deliver a customised version of one of their internal business analysis courses for Gen-i, Carpe Diem was invited back and delivered the course to a larger audience with great success; the course is now part of Gen-i Auckland’s regular sales training program.
The brief
Gen-i is New Zealand’s leading ICT services company, providing integrated ICT solutions for clients across New Zealand and Australia. Gen-i is part of the Telecom group - New Zealand’s largest company by value on the New Zealand stock exchange.
Carpe Diem was initially sponsored by Microsoft to develop a customised version of Microsoft’s two-day Realising Platform Value (RVP) training course, tailored to Gen-i’s specific solution set, after delivering the course within Microsoft and the Microsoft Partner network.
Following the outstanding success of the course, Gen-i invited Carpe Diem back to develop it further and facilitate the training to a much larger audience.
The solution
Customising the RPV course so it was linked to the training methodology and market approaches already in place in Gen-i, Carpe Diem developed the Planning for Strategic Investment (PSI) course. Carpe Diem delivered the course to key personnel in Gen-i so they would eventually become facilitators of the training themselves.
Invited back to deliver the course on a grander scale, Carpe Diem collaborated with four Gen-i sales managers to further develop the content for a large audience and ensure that the course was in Gen-i’s ‘language’.
In cooperation with Gen-i’s new facilitators who worked with individual teams on the floor, Carpe Diem delivered the training course to a diverse group of around 100 sales people, all with varying degrees of technical capability.
The outcome
According to Andrew Gardiner, Head of Auckland Corporate at Gen-i, they were very impressed with Carpe Diem’s ability to facilitate such a specialised training course for a large group.
"Carpe Diem pulled it together so well. Their effective style demonstrated they were conscious of the practical situations our staff face in the field, using real case studies and examples," said Mr Gardiner.
"Our team consists of sales staff that come from either an IT or a telecommunications background. This course exceeded our objective of demystifying the other side of the business for them while moving away from talking about product to applying methodologies to provide real business solutions."
The evaluation ratings from course participants were overall very positive, with 98 percent of participants giving a ‘high’ or ‘extremely high’ satisfaction rating. When asked to rate ‘will improve my job performance’, 81 percent of course participants gave a rating of 2 or higher (on a scale of 1 to 9, with 1 being the highest possible rating).
"There has been a definite improvement in the overall contract value in our sales results and we have consequently incorporated Carpe Diem’s PSI course into our Business Partner Program, making it a ‘business-as-usual’ step in our sales process," said Mr Gardiner.
Gen-i Auckland Corporate has recommended that Carpe Diem’s PSI course be rolled out to Gen-i sales teams in all other regions of New Zealand.
