We are Thrilled to Now Offer Accounting Webinars!
We are Thrilled to Now Offer Accounting Webinars!

We are Thrilled to Now Offer Accounting Webinars!

Remember our past post where we thanked our clients for giving us the idea of providing webinars as a service offering?

Well, we listened, took action, and are now approved by the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy to provide CPE for Group Internet Based training offerings. Shortly after our application was approved, we held a webinar on ASUs Effective in 2018 for the general public.

How’d it go?

Well, we were beyond excited about how well-received it was by participants!

As you may know, our mission is to share our passion for accounting by creating tailored and engaging learning experiences for our clients. When we set out to offer webinars, we envisioned being different from typical accounting webinars. We wanted to bring energy, foster engagement, as well as utilize videos, cases, and examples to enhance the learning experience. 

After every webinar we solicit feedback from participants, and based on the feedback we received, we feel that our participants enjoyed, found value, learned, and stayed engaged with our content and style of presentation.

Here are some of the comments regarding what the participants liked about the webinar:

“The change in modes of learning. From live speakers, to videos, to interactive polling questions, to slides, it was constantly changing and therefore very engaging.”

“I really enjoyed the content and discussion. It wasn't dry like other CPE webinars I have attended.”

“The presenters were dynamic and used relevant examples. I liked that there was different types of content.”

Our webinar journey did not stop there. This webinar led to additional webinars to date:

  • We conducted two webinars for BB&T’s internal audit group related to accounting for income taxes in accordance with ASC Topic 740.
  • We conducted a series of four “Lunch-N-Learn” webinars for accounting professionals at KeyCorp related to:
    • Non-GAAP Financial Measures
    • MD&A Rules and Best Practices
    • Impairment of Investments
    • General U.S. GAAP Update for Banks
  • We conducted a four-part webinar series on IFRS 9 Financial Instruments for IECnet, an alliance of regional accounting firms around the world. The webinar topics were:
    • Accounting for Classification and Measurement
    • Accounting for Impairment
    • Hedge Accounting
    • Accounting for Derecognition of Financial Instruments
  • We conducted webinars for audit professionals of KPMG in the Cayman Islands related to their Investment Management and Insurance Entities Update. Each update course was one day in the classroom. We “chunked it up” into a series of three webinars for each course.

Some of the feedback we received from these webinars included:

“The presenters were very energetic and fun to watch.”

“Lots of pertinent examples.”

“The facilitator was very engaging and made grasping the content a lot easier.”

“Detailed knowledge and description on complicated scenarios was very helpful.”

“The format was great. I thought it was very engaging to split screen with the facilitators’ conversation and the slides. Very clear and clean presentation.”

“Kept everyone interested by doing the polls. Good practical examples to work through instead of just theory.”

 “Kept this interesting and educating for 2 hr. Not a single boring second !”

While we are thrilled with the results of our webinars to date, we did have our fair share of challenges and, as with all of our training services, we continuously learn from experience and strive to improve our offerings. Here are the top 5 things we’ve learned from our journey into adding webinars to our service offerings.

  1. We have to be “on time.” Timing is critical and going long on a webinar may not fit into the schedules of our clients as they have other commitments and responsibilities. When we develop our webinar trainings, we need to be extra mindful to honor and respect the fact that our participants’ time is valuable.
  2. A contingency plan is a must. While technology is amazing, there is also a downside. We are at the mercy of technology and the internet to conduct these webinars. And sometimes, technology goes out at the most inopportune times. Yes, in the middle of one of our webinars, our internet service provider went down, and all of our participants were disconnected. Lessoned learned…we must have a backup plan (such as a hotspot) and provide communication up front to our participants regarding what steps to take if they get disconnected or experience other technology issues.
  3. People enjoy video. The use of video has been well received and based on our experience, is an effective learning tool that increases participant satisfaction with the learning experience.
  4. Chats, questions, and polling work well. Although a webinar is conducted over the internet, we still want to engage with our learners. Webinar technology makes this possible via chats, questions, and polling which we feel are an important part of interacting with our participants.
  5. Delivery matters. As we do in the live classroom environment, it is important to bring energy and life to accounting training. We’ve found that having a two instructor model facilitates learning, retention, and engagement. It adds to the overall learning experience with a more conversational style to keep potentially dry accounting topics interesting and lively.

So, that provides a glimpse into our journey to offering accounting webinars. We are excited to have this additional service offering and are grateful to our clients for giving us the idea. We truly believe it is a win-win for our clients, as well as for us!

We love it when our clients collaborate with us to help us better understand their needs! It aids in our efforts to provide quality training and service offerings while also ensuring that the topics are relevant to clients and available at their time of need.

If you need training or want to learn more about our webinar service offerings, please reach out to us. We would love to work with you to determine how we can best serve your training needs.

Lastly, we welcome feedback from all of you. If you have suggestions or comments on how we can better serve you, we would greatly appreciate to hear from you!

About GAAP Dynamics  

We’re a DIFFERENT type of accounting training firm. We don’t think of training as a “tick the box” exercise, but rather an opportunity to empower your people to help them make the right decisions at the right time. Whether it’s U.S. GAAP training, IFRS training, or audit training, we’ve helped thousands of professionals since 2001. Our clients include some of the largest accounting firms and companies in the world. As lifelong learners, we believe training is important. As CPAs, we believe great training is vital to doing your job well and maintaining the public trust. We want to help you understand complex accounting matters and we believe you deserve the best training in the world, regardless of whether you work for a large, multinational company or a small, regional accounting firm. We passionately create high-quality training that we would want to take. This means it is accurate, relevant, engaging, visually appealing, and fun. That’s our brand promise. Want to learn more about how GAAP Dynamics can help you? Let’s talk!

Disclaimer  

This post is published to spread the love of GAAP and provided for informational purposes only. Although we are CPAs and have made every effort to ensure the factual accuracy of the post as of the date it was published, we are not responsible for your ultimate compliance with accounting or auditing standards and you agree not to hold us responsible for such. In addition, we take no responsibility for updating old posts, but may do so from time to time.

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