Skills Hotline
Problem
How do you manage and track funded commercial training provision in the West Midlands?
Brief
The Learning and Skills Council (LSC) is responsible for funding and planning education and training for over 16-year-olds in England. In Birmingham and The Black Country this involves providing a link between commercial employers and tens of thousands of courses, supplied by both traditional education establishments and commercial training providers.
A regional initiative to help fund training involved many training providers. Between the training provider and the employer hoping to gain from new skills are a number of brokers, who assess the training needs of the employer and recommend courses.
The process of facilitating, tracking and monitoring the process, from an initial phone enquiry, through course search, referral to broker, booking of employees onto courses and reporting and monitoring was immense. A paper-based system was beginning to buckle under the weight of the task, and an internal database system designed to monitor overall performance was struggling to provide information quickly enough. The LSC realised that they needed an integrated system.
Solution
Made Media delivered a phased development, starting with an online database of courses. This enabled LSC staff to search over various criteria, and allowed providers to upload and amend the details of their courses.
LSC staff were then able to quickly identify courses suitable for any company that called with an enquiry about training. Following on from this, a referral system was created, enabling the details of the company to be forwarded onto brokers, and then to the training providers. Finally tracking, reporting and monitoring features were added to enable an overview of performance in the system, but also a detailed view of the history of any one referral.
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