Many training organisations work with co-providers who deliver training and provider customers for that training. This effectively means that they buy the services of the RTO that involve managing the training, gathering and reporting the AVETMISS data as well as managing the auditing and responsibility of being an RTO. Where possible enabling these co-providers to do as much of the work as possible while retaining management oversight and clear audit control is the objective of the RTO. The following outlines what you can do within CourseSales.com to enable a self-serve environment for co-providers while reducing the effort of the RTO to manage these relationships.

• Work out how your relationship with your co-provider, ask the following questions:
• Will you treat all co-providers the same?
• Will you charge co-providers for some value-add services
• Do you want control over some aspects of the management of courses or students? If so which?
• Will you have varying tiers of co-providers (reflecting your trust arrangements)? eg: Gold, Silver, Bronze?

Suggested allocation of responsibility

RTO responsibility:

• add new course dates
• send certificates
• ensure USIs are verified

Co-provider responsibly:

• request booking of course dates
• book students on courses (via portal)
• update outcomes on units (via portal)
• update enrolments (via portal)

Services you can offer your co-providers:

• certificates with their logo/contact details
• customised email footers
• offer public courses via their website using wordpress plugin
• emails to their customers from their email
• access via portal to:
  • student exam results
  • registration list
  • update outcomes
  • update documents
  • correct USI details
  • view assessment results

Adding courses to the schedule

This involves setting up a role with permissions that has view access to the following areas of coursesale.com:

• Content - View
• Course Dates - View, Add and Edit
• Course Masters - View, Add and Edit
• Course topics - View, Add and Edit

Sending certificates or statements of attainment

Using the portal a coprovider can send the certificate or statement of attainment, via email to the student. Providing the units on the student’s records are marked as successful these will be included in the PDF of the certificate/statement of attainment sent attached to the email. Alternatively if the training provider wishes to maintain control over sending the certificates to the students, eg to check USI validation, payment and that the students have an outcome selected on the units then a ‘course completed’ trigger on a per course basis can inform the administration staff to carry out this activity, updating the documents as necessary.

Notification of course completion

An email can be sent to the co-provider that includes a link to an external form that, upon submission, emails the course administrator to notify them to process the documents and send the certificates as necessary to the students.

List courses on the website

You can creation locations that are specific to a co-provider and list those courses in Wordpress for that location, eg group locations by co-provider.

Alternatively you can use the ‘reseller’ license that allows you to group courses by provider, and list them on different websites using the Wordpress plugin.

Running a workshop

We recommend that a group workshow run by us or by a key staff member trained by us will be the best way to get co-providers up to speed. Depending on their level of IT expertise and availability a two hour session as a minimum is recommended. The usual time taken to prepare, deliver and followup on a workshop like this involves a minimum of 4 hours, not including any travel time. In any case require careful preparation is required to ensure all the key points are covered:

• trainer portal
• password recovery
• update outcomes
• confirm course completion
• register students
• receiving invitation to register
• USI validation & correction
• Registration list
• Canceling students
• students who don’t pass
• students who don’t complete
• how to request the creation of new courses
• student enrolment process
• browser support and technologies

Things that will make the workshop run efficiently include the participants having done pre-training online and having logged in to the system (ie with allocated username and passwords) depending on their access requirements they may only need access to the trainer portal. Otherwise the necessary roles need to be set up for them to access the appropriate parts of the administration system.

Make the software change a success

• Think of all your co-provider’s possible questions with answers prepared in advance.
• Communicate with them in advance, being clear about what is to be covered and not to be covered
• often this might be the one time when these people get together, scheduling time after the software introduction event for a more ‘business questions’ session might help them focus on the topics at hand.
• Have you spoken with your co-providers recently? This is a good opportunity to start a conversation.
• Perhaps poll them for questions, so any list is complete

Logistics

• Will the venue have a TV with HDMI input or a data projector to demonstrate the software?
• Are there enough powerpoints for all the co-providers computers
• I’d suggest everyone arrives 15 mins early (perhaps offer them breakfast!) to set up their computers and log in to the system (don’t assume they have done that already)
• Ensure staff are available to answer questions or clarify how the system will be used in their environment as well as to help show the co-providers how to use the system.

Consider this a change program

Change is scary for some people. They might require reassurances that they will be helped along the journey and that this is to their advantage and not being forced upon them. To enable the change to be effective you need to consider the following:

• Identify the top 5 things that will benefit them and the savings they will get and the customer service improvements.
• If this will see any outstanding problems solved then that too needs to be mentioned as a reason to make the move.
• You also need responses to the top 5 objections..
• Do a stakeholder analysis - who are the people a) most likely to reject the change b) most likely to influence others in the room about the change - target those people ahead of the event to ensure you have their buy-in.