The Problem

One of our favorite ways to help our clients is through an annual U.S. GAAP/IFRS Update. In years past, this has involved one of our trainers traveling to a client’s home base to conduct a 1-day course. It’s particularly fun when the same trainer gets to do the course year after year because they really get to know the client and their company. For most, this format is still true and works well! For one of our long-standing clients (who’s also a Big 4 member firm), this format began to present challenges for their team because:

1. The team is internationally based with remote workers, thus making it difficult to get everyone in the same place at the same time
2. Their staff is growing rapidly, so they needed a way to get new hires up-to-speed after the initial live training took place

Over the years, this firm had tried various methods for solving this issue, such as videotaping the live training (think 8-hour video…) and creating a PowerPoint presentation with recorded audio. Unfortunately, neither of those options provided the level of desired quality that they sought. To our delight, this client allowed us to partner with them last year on a brand new solution using the Panorama feature on our newly launched eLearning platform, The Revolution. If you don’t know what a Panorama is, you can learn more by watching the video below. In short, it’s a custom-branded, dedicated online learning environment for your employees. Let’s get to the good part!

The Solution

With the knowledge that the old method wasn’t going to be sustainable, our team started to brainstorm how we could utilize our new technology platform, The Revolution, to create a solution. In discussions with our client, we determined that it would be ideal to offer learners three options for learning: in-person, webinar, and self-study. This way, learners could choose the method that worked best for them. In addition, having a self-study option ensures that new hires joining the team after the in-person and webinar dates still had a way to get the same, consistent training as their peers. We now like to call this “A&A Your Way”.

The first step was to create a customized Panorama page so that learners could be easily guided through their learning options. In this particular use case, the client had two additional interesting requirements:

1. The update training was customized to the industries served. For example, there might be an “Insurance Update” that applied to one subset of employees, while the “Investment Management Update” applied to another subset of employees. This training was not a “one size fits all” approach.
2. This firm highly values effective training and therefore wanted to require a post-course assessment for all three of the training modalities in each of the tracks, even though NASBA only requires a post-course assessment for the self-study modality. For this client, being able to measure the success of the training and have easy access to this data was vital.

Fortunately, Panorama allowed us to accommodate both of these requirements. It allows administrators to designate the appropriate courses on an individual/group level so that learners only see the courses relevant to them. In addition, it allows you to assess learners for each of the modalities and tie CPE certificate issuance directly to successful completion of the assessment.

The Result…is in progress!

We won’t bore you with the details, but we were able to set up a Panorama experience that accommodated all of these requirements. We are in the midst of running this project right now and while it hasn’t been void of learning opportunities, we can see that we’re making great progress to meeting our learners where they are. Every day, we’re fine tuning the details to help learners get what they need faster and more easily! We look forward to fully analyzing our approach and reporting back on the results.

If you are experiencing a training dilemma, we’d love to hear from you. Our team would be delighted to talk through your specific needs so that we can craft the perfect solution.

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.