Originally launching in March 2009, Core Equity Services represents the consolidation and history of some of Australia’s pioneers in straight-through equities trading and broking services.

Since that time, Core Equity is a leading provider of wholesale broking solutions to some of Australia’s largest financial institutions, offering a range of products and services.

The new look and feel is aimed to showcase the entire product range that sits under the Core Equity umbrella in a simple and easy to navigate website.

Mark Upton, specialist coach for the Adelaide crows, approached webqem for advice on how to solve their issues around reviewing game footage. Previously players and coaches had to watch the game together to gather feed back, which didn’t make efficient use of their time. The solution was eLearning, using Adobe Flash Media Server, LiveCycle Collaboration Service, Connect and Adobe Captivate Mark has created a remote access training environment and conduct regular training with interactive opportunities.

As a result, the Adelaide Football Club have streamlined access to training, greater flexibility for the team players and coaches to meet and discuss strategies in real time and improve retention of training information.

Read the full success story to find out more about how webqem helped the Adelaide Football Club

Inline with Massey Universities 2020 strategy for teaching and learning, Mark Brown Director of Distance Education has announced the expansion of their electronic tool set to include:

• Acrobat Pro
• Adobe Presenter
• Adobe Connect

Acrobat Pro will enable them to enhance their accessibility, usability and quality of some of their online material. Presenter amplifies the teachers voice and provides a more engaging interaction with subject content online, and Connect will connect (pardon the pun) teachers with their students, including regular online tutorials, consultations with small groups, and offshore distance delivery.

Read the Massey article or view Adobe announcement presentation.

webqem looks forward to hearing the creative uses of these tools throughout the University.

The power of Adobe Connect Pro has found its way into a unique not-for-profit organisation by the name of Mensheds Australia. Mensheds Australia specialise in the health and well-being of men through local organisations that act like a social groups aka a ‘Men’s shed’.

One of the biggest challenges faced by Mensheds Australia was reaching men throughout the country, in particular in remote areas. Furthermore, even where men’s sheds have been established, successfully managing and maintaining them was particularly hard to achieve from head office in Sydney as each men’s shed requires resources, training, and detailed information 24/7.

So, thanks to the team at webqem, Mensheds Australia has implemented a very successful solution – Adobe Connect Pro. From an administrative perspective, Connect Pro has drastically reduced the cost of delivery, travel, training, and Occupational Health & Safety compliance. Explains managing director Peter Sergeant, “When you consider the thousands of documents and information packages used by Mensheds Australia to communicate and collaborate with individual men’s sheds and our partners everywhere, Acrobat Connect Pro is worth approximately $5 million to our organisation.”

Now Mensheds can conduct online meetings to remote areas via Connect Meetings. They can provide access to an plethora of information via the Connect Pro Training module, and can easily create engaging mulitmedia presentations via Adobe Presenter.

The feedback from supporters and stakeholders on the organisation’s portal, www.mensheds.com.au has been outstanding and exceeded all expectations. “Simply put, without Acrobat Connect Professional, we would not have been able to continue with our work at Mensheds,” concludes Sergeant. “We couldn’t deliver the volume of information needed anywhere near as efficiently and compellingly without the Adobe software.”

For more information about this success story, you can view a full article online.

Leading kitchen retailer – Australian Kitchen Industries (AKI), is prospering from the power of Adobe Connect Pro. In recent years, AKI has significantly grown and prospered into a large franchise. With this growth, communicating with, and training it’s geographically dispersed network of franchisees had become particularly difficult and more costly. To streamline training and communications company-wide, AKI found a cost-effective, powerful solution: Adobe Presenter and Adobe Connect Pro software.

Since implementing Connect Pro, AKI have noticeably benefited from the high-impact web conferencing and ease of access that eLearning provides. Over 400 people across the company are now using Connect Pro to conduct online meetings and training. The solution has been so successful that it, amazingly, paid for itself within the first seven months. The team from webqem were instrumental in implementing this solution, which involved: software procurement, installation, hosting & training. A full report is available online.

The number of people in the world using Adobe Connect Pro is set for a massive increase in users as Adobe has secured a huge US$9.5 million with the U.S. Marines Corps. The Marine Corps cited several factors for choosing the awesome Connect Pro: stringent standards for security, availability & quality, and the solution is “Joint Interoperability & Test Command Certified” – so troops can connect quickly across any Department of Defense network (who already have Connect Pro). Connect, being based on the Flash platform, which is on 98% of internet-enable  desktops, was, as always, a major selling point..

This deal was great news for our Connect Pro team at webqem, as it demonstrates the quality and high-value placed on one of our top solutions that we specialize in. We can only hope more of the armed forces choose Connect Pro as their preferred solution and expand the Connect user base. A full report on this is available online.

Building studies and virtual classrooms? You would not think they go together. However, a keen teacher from Armidale TAFE in NSW, has managed to successfully put the two together with the use of Adobe’s Connect Pro. Graeme Wilton regularly uses Connect Pro to teach his teach his Certificate IV in Building Studies course to a range of distance education students in North-West NSW. His students “absolutely love it”.  He says that “It’s added an enthusiasm that I haven’t seen for a while, but I must say that part of that would come from me because I’m a little ‘g-ed’ up about the whole thing too,” he laughs.

This is another Connect Pro success story that the webqem team was instrumental in – Good work team! You can read the full report here.

CCTV needed a solution that supported a large-scale, highly flexible, robust balancing network of high concurrent streaming media. Partnering with Adobe allowed them to deliver a compelling consistent Web 2.0 user experience, such as a 3D TV wall and seamless integration of viewing with live chat functions. The architecture involved a multi-city node origin/edge distribution mechanism.

During the games there were over 832 million visits, with over 46.6 million on-demand video playbacks delivered via Flash Media Server technology, with the maximum concurrent users of live chat room reaching 90,000 and over 10,000 video clips, including whole matches, highlights, extra new and interviews.

Read more about CCTV and FMS

Philips has integrated Connect into their in-house SCORM-compliant Learning Management System, using it as part of their healthcare education programs globally.

Additional information is available online from this press release.

To read more about accessbility and usability on the web follow the links below.

• Sydney Morning Herald article: Behind closed doors
• W3C Web accessibility guidelines
• International Day of People with Disabilities

Hyundai Motor Company Australia had a requirement to assess 1400 technicians across Australia within a month. Their specific requirements were:

• Assessment for three different technician levels.
• Each assessment would be timed for 60 minutes and consist of 40 multiple choice questions that would be pulled randomly from its own unique pool of up to 120 questions.
• Each assessment would consist of varying quantities of questions, based on three levels of difficulty: easy, even and hard.
• Marking of the assessment would only occur once the participant had indicated that they’d completed or if the exam had timed out.
• Participants would be allowed to review the exam results once completed.
• The assessment participants would be tracked on their number of attempts.
• For Hyundai’s analysis, the solution also needed to collect data on the questions, such as how often a question was successfully answered and which answers were selected for each question.

The Solution

Adobe Connect (formerly Macromedia Breeze) was chosen as the Learning Management System (LMS) to deliver the assessment. Connect Training has tools to create, deliver and manage courses and curricula; and manage, track and report on participants. Connect Training also conforms to the AICC standards widely used by many LMS’.

Another two Adobe products, Captivate and Presenter, which are used to build content and quizzes, were integrated with Connect Training. Neither Captivate nor Presenter however, offer random questions or timed exams which was part of Hyundai’s requirements. In light of this, webqem built a custom solution for Hyundai with Adobe Flash that conformed to the AICC standards. Each assessment is configured by an individual XML manifest file that allows Hyundai to set variables such as the maximum amount of time for the exam and the number of questions to ask from the pool.

Standard quizzes produced by Captivate and Presenter are marked on a question by question basis as they’re answered, which means that there is no review process before an assessment is completed. The solution built by webqem is non-linear, meaning participants can navigate through to any question that has already been attempted, review their answer and change if required. Marking does not occur until the participant has finished reviewing their answers.

Another issue addressed by the webqem solution is the full reporting of questions and answers to Adobe Connect. Standard Captivate, Presenter and Flash quizzes only report the question text and the id of the chosen answer. Due to Hyundai’s requirements, webqem’s solution reports all details of the 40 questions selected randomly from the 120 question pool. The question copy and the full copy of all answers are reported to the Connect Training server for each participant.

Hyundai can create new course content in an Excel spreadsheet and convert this into XML, used by Adobe Flash and Connect. The XML, Flash and JavaScript components are then uploaded as content for a course, in Adobe Connect. Finally, participants are uploaded in a CSV file into Adobe Connect, and the course is ready for training.

The Challenge

How do you provide high quality products and services and support them, 24 X 7 direct to the men’s sheds across Australia? The challenge was in providing something unique in the world of men’s health, to a group with low business acumen, poor understanding of health issues, little money at their disposal and communities with mendicant dispositions.Men’s sheds are geographically scattered with programs needing to be deployed throughout many locations. This type of large scale program implementation would be expensive and time consuming due to the amount of resources required, if the only delivery option was traditional face to face support and training.Mensheds Australia needed to provide quick and easy access to products, services and information whilst retaining the support of the health industry and communities and at the same time manage vast amounts of information along with appropriate tools, processes and templates.A unique methodology had to be developed to enhance collaboration, customer service, and to make the individual men’s shed financially viable. They had to be able to do this without continual handouts from governments and others. It had to provide for sustainability over time.Mensheds Australia (a not-for-profit company) needed a rapid implementation for the thousands of communities that could benefit from a men’s shed and to use the numbers to keep pricing at an affordable level.Another challenge was to propagate the Mensheds Australia concept without it being misunderstood and watered down. Mensheds Australia must be able to integrate with the health and other community services provided by the governments and the private sector and overcome any anti-business and anti-entrepreneurial sentiment, usually attached to such undertakings.

The Project

The project was to support a multifaceted business model, using multimedia to deliver support even to the most remote communities. The most important feature of the system was flexibility to provide access to the actual men’s sheds by allowing them to utilise their own humble PC from wherever they are.Mensheds Australia must build a culture of analysis and action rather than opinion and talkfests and at the same time generate new paradigms to accommodate the problems faced in men’s health that will be further impacted by the “baby boomers”.The materials had to be in simple everyday language, yet comprehensive enough to meet the requirements of both the inexperienced and experienced operators. The project required Mensheds Australia to manage the mass of information, knowledge, tools, processes and templates and make it easily accessible to the user without them being overwhelmed. Any systems used must also allow leverage of existing materials and skills developed over many years.To facilitate the development and management of a network infrastructure for 116 men’s sheds Hubs and 1,000 Spokes, across Australia within five years.

The Results

Mensheds Australia now delivers real time access, with a very positive experience for men sheds members:

• Focussed on a creative culture that focusses on opportunity generation and innovation.
• Providing a 24 x 7 Help Desk service that delivers physiological support, information and knowledge.
• People can quickly scan for relevant knowledge to meet their immediate needs.
• Thanks to Breeze – utilisation of an existing extensive library of Power Point workshops and presentations with voiceover were quickly added. This one activity has certainly added to the user friendliness of workshops.
• New training modules can now be developed and delivered in a few over the Internet in just a few days.
• Mensheds Australia is now able to deliver the most men’s shed-friendly services available anywhere, providing modern training products that can be delivered with voice over anywhere anytime.
• The Breeze web video conferencing was an added bonus to supplement seminars and other men’s sheds functions. In all, Breeze is making us into a very effective resource centre for our customers, providing us the cost effective mechanisms to deliver the most comprehensive resource available to our market.
• Ability to reduce the cost of training by offering a fully integrated learning environment, which will give the men’s sheds the freedom of delivering training at their pace, using the most appropriate delivery mechanism (Visual, Audio) for the information being communicated.
• The feedback received regarding the Breeze product on www.mensheds.com.au has been outstanding and exceeded all expectations.

The support we have received from the Webqem team in bringing our products to the market place has been exemplary.”

Peter Sergeant Managing Director

Benefit Summary

• Collaborative problem solving: The system brings geographically dispersed trainers and subject matter experts together in real time, to resolve issues and answer questions. Breaks down the boundaries of distance, time and duplication of effort.
• Attractive learning environment: Because of the attractive environment that can be created for a men’s shed the men’s shed will be able to more easily attract members and other men in the community, to learn about health and other issues.
• Attractive learning environment: through use of collaboration, real-time surveys and questions, the consistency of the message and quality of training can be tracked and monitored. This is particularly important when there are many trainers communicating compliance courses.
• Fully integrated blended learning environment: The system and tools, provides a fully blended learning environment, where material can be easily and readily customised to suit the differing requirements of a men’s shed.
• Easy continuous improvement: The tools are so easy to use that continuous improvement is not an issue. A modified version of the training or content can be made available in no time.
• Accelerated training: Mensheds Australia trainers can now use more of their time and skills creating engaging, effective training modules, rather than on travel, and planning and managing course logistics.
• Reduced cost: Training can be self-paced and taken anywhere and any time at the participant’s convenience; a significant cost and logistical issue in such a broad-based organisation as men’s sheds.
• Reduced risk: Allows tracking of training participation, which improves compliance and risk management with such things as OH&S Issues.
• Improved communications: Video conferencing allows us to deliver face-to face contact right into a men’s shed and to attract specialist presenters that would not be available to an individual men’s shed
• Rapid Time to Value: Systems are easy for users to learn without intensive instruction, and intuitive to use via friendly interfaces.
• Scalability: The scalability of the technology used, will no longer be an issue because of the mainstream corporate quality software, being used.

One in four people will suffer from some form of mental illness in their lifetime. At the same time, it is fair to say that no other medical condition is surrounded by so much stigma, misunderstanding and ignorance.

One organisation that is tackling the issues head-on is the Black Dog Institute, a body that is dedicated to advancing the understanding of mood disorders in order to improve the lives of those affected, and, in turn, the lives of their families and friends.

At the end of March 2004, the Institute launched its first website with the help of the team at webqem.

The goal was to develop a practical user friendly as well as a “living and breathing” website on depression and mood disorders for consumers and health professionals.

The Institute was able to hit the ground running. Twenty years of research and clinical experience – firstly as the Mood Disorders Unit – enabled the Black Dog Institute to quickly be recognised as a trusted website.

The Institute quickly demonstrated it has expert information and was able to provide this in a helpful and not in an overly academic language.

In the first month following the launch of the website (April 2004), there were just over 31,000 hits. The popularity of the site has soared. In October 2005, the website recorded in excess of 91,000 hits, giving it the status of one of the busiest sites in its field.

The website was firstly developed with an eye on the needs of the general public – with lots of easily understood and readily accessible information on depression and Bipolar Disorder. The second stage will shift focus to provide a valuable resource for clinicians, researchers and other health professionals.

Some of the more popular site pages include the self-test for Bipolar Disorder, a Temperament and Personality Test to give people feedback on their personality style and whether it might predisdispose them to developing non-melancholic depression.

The Institute has an expert base of clinicians, doctors and university academics that contribute to the content of the website. This certainly justifies being able to call it a living and breathing website. All of this information obtained from clinical practice and the research findings are made available to help the education of the community at large.

The Media also use the website as a valuable resource. The announcements on major research and other initiatives to improve understanding, diagnosis and treatment of depression and disorder are all shown on the News Release and Media Clips pages of the Website.

The Institute plans further expansion of its web activities over the coming months, including new information focusing on perinatal mental health and on-line educational resources for the general community.

The Challenge

Ripple Solutions clients are geographically dispersed meaning that many of the programs they implement on clients behalf have to be deployed throughout many locations. This type of large scale program implementation can be expensive and time consuming due to the amount of resources required if the only delivery option was traditional face to face training. This also makes the management, monitoring and reporting to management difficult as information and statistics need to be collected from these locations in a timely manner.

The Solution

By implementing Macromedia Breeze Meeting, Training and Presenter Ripple can now offer truly blended learning solutions to their clients. They also have the ability to manage, monitor and report “real-time” as information is collected as the training is being delivered – whether it be a face to face class, virtual class or a self service course.

The Results

“Breeze gives me the ability to immediately respond to issues that appear during training”, said Sue-Anne Higgins, Director, Ripple Solutions. For example: Ripple had a situation come up during a pilot training session run in the North West. The results of the session indicated the clients trainer needed further coaching on training delivery. Ripple instantly responded by popping the trainer based in the North West in a Breeze meeting room with a coach located in Perth. The coach was able to impart the skill and see it demonstrated back through Breeze Meeting.

Ripple are using the Managers Reports, meeting, content and course reports to provide status reports to the Project Team. Even in a face to face training session, Breeze Meeting is running in the background with all trainers and Subject Matter Experts (SME) in the one room. Questions can then be instantly posed to SMEs for immediate response, reducing the need for a “parking lot” of issues. This also collaborates the information so that Trainers know what issues are being raised in other concurrent training sessions.

We now have the ability to reduce the cost of training by offering a fully integrated blended learning environment. This is giving our clients the freedom of delivering training using the most appropriate delivery mechanism for the information being communicated. Many clients relied on Subject Matter Experts (SME) delivering the training face to face. Face to face delivery is all they knew. With business and technology moving so fast and resources so scarce, clients realised they had to do things differently. Now they can prioritise the SME’s time and direct the SME’s efforts into areas that add more value to their business.

Benefits Summary

• Collaborative problem solving: Breeze Meeting brings geographically dispersed trainers and subject matter experts together, real time, to resolve issues and answer questions. Breaks down the boundaries of distance, time and duplication of effort.
• Consistent training and consistent message: through use of collaboration, real-time surveys and questions during the course and at the end of sessions, the consistency of the message and quality of training can be tracked and monitored. This is particularly important when there are many trainers communicating compliance or legislative courses.
• Fully integrated blended learning environment: The Breeze tools, including Macromedia Captivate, provides a fully blended learning environment. Courses can be easily and readily customised to suit the demographics of the audience.
• Easy Continuous Improvement: The tools are so easy to use that continuous improvement is not an issue. A modified version of the course or content can be turned around in no time. Breeze manages the versions really well, reporting statistics on each version instance.

The Challenge

OneSteel�s large number and wide distribution of operational sites also means that company-wide communications on Human Resources matters can be expensive, inconsistent, and time-consuming. Each year the company delivers extensive training on products, safety, employee induction, and work skills across its various sites. However, traditional approaches to training and internal communications were proving to be expensive, inflexible, slow, and logistically challenging. Different ways also had to be found to make content more engaging, and participation in training easier to track and measure.

The Solution

OneSteel considered several different solutions and vendors over a 3-month assessment period before selecting Macromedia Breeze. It then took just 2 weeks to implement the solution throughout the organisation.

By implementing Macromedia Breeze, OneSteel was able to use existing applications and skills to easily and cost-effectively produce web-delivered presentations, training and communications materials. Breeze allows users to author audio-enhanced presentations and eLearning content within their familiar Microsoft PowerPoint environment, and the audience is able to view these presentations and content using standard browsers.

The Results

�Macromedia products were clearly able to fulfill a lot of our needs � not just training,� said Lynden Garrett, IT Administrator, OneSteel. �They also allow our users to leverage existing applications and skills. For example, OneSteel training staff previously developed presentations and training modules in Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint. These were then distributed as-is, or converted to PDF format and then distributed. Using Macromedia Breeze, they can still use the same skill set to create content in PowerPoint but now they can publish directly from that environment to the Web.�

Training participants will be able to increasingly undertake self-paced study any time, and anywhere they can access the Internet, so there will be less requirement for face-to-face training or reviews in the long-term. As Breeze is progressively made available across the organisation, OneSteel trainers will be freed to use more of their time and skills creating effective training modules and less time traveling, planning and managing course logistics. The training modules and presentations they develop are also now more engaging, thanks to the ability of Breeze to deliver interactive content incorporating audio and video.

The company�s Human Resources department also uses Breeze to communicate with managers and employees across its scattered operating sites.

�We had developed a new database system to manage our annual salary reviews and we needed to explain the new processes to managers who would be involved,� explained Phil Gageler, HR Adviser for OneSteel. �A very simple introductory e-mail containing a link to a Breeze presentation was sent to each manager. They were able to click through to the application and then be led through a description of the new processes by a series of PowerPoint slides with audio. We undertook this project just two weeks after installing Breeze. The whole thing went flawlessly.�

Macromedia Breeze also has the advantage of making sparing use of OneSteel�s IT infrastructure and resources. It requires only basic technical support and the performance of the company�s diverse network infrastructure has improved because there is now little need to distribute the traditional PowerPoint presentations and PDF files.

�Macromedia Breeze gives OneSteel innovative e-learning and rich presentation capabilities using existing desktop tools, and without imposing additional burden on our infrastructure,� said Lynden Garrett. �And it�s not only big projects that benefit. We quite often used to call a meeting to demonstrate a new feature on a web site but since we are such a broad-based company that is difficult and expensive to do. Now we can use Breeze to whip up a presentation and enroll our audience. Simple!�

Benefits Summary

• More effective training: Macromedia Breeze enables more effective training by enabling the creation of presentations and eLearning courses that combine text, graphics, animations, audio voice-overs, and automated testing. Flash animations, Flash video, and Captivate simulations can also be added for demonstrations and application training.
• Accelerated training: OneSteel trainers can now use more of their time and skills creating engaging, effective training modules, rather than on travel, and planning and managing course logistics.
• Reduced cost: Training can be self-paced and taken anywhere and any time at the participant�s convenience; a significant cost and logistical issue in such a broad-based company.
• Reduced risk: Allows tracking of training participation, which improves corporate compliance and risk management.
• Rapid Time to Value: Macromedia Breeze is easy for users to learn without intensive instruction, and intuitive to use via friendly interfaces.
• Low overhead: Macromedia solutions make efficient use of OneSteel�s IT resources � they require only basic technical support and have actually improved network performance by reducing the need to need to distribute the traditional PowerPoint presentations and PDF files.

�Macromedia Breeze offers OneSteel easy e-learning and rich presentation capabilities that enable significant cost savings on travel and accommodation for our 200 operational sites and 6,900 employees.�

Lynden Garrett, IT Administrator
OneSteel

Macromedia Breeze is decentralised and easy for everyone to use. It has allowed us to cut training course development time from 6 weeks to a few days, and reduced the costs of travel and logistics related to training.

Greg West, IT Manager
Australian Rugby Union

Challenges

Australian Rugby Union needed to improve the quality and effectiveness of the training it provides for its more than 7,000 staff and volunteer administrators, referees and coaches throughout Australia while reducing costs. The Union had an immediate requirement to train 1,000 club administrators in how to use the centralised MyRugbyAdmin software it had developed in-house.

Solution

Through the implementation of Macromedia Breeze the Australian Rugby Union created a powerful, Web based training tool that cut the development time and resources required to deliver new training modules, and reduced the expense and logistical issues involved in delivering face-to-face training to thousands of volunteers around Australia.

Breeze allows Web-based delivery of training, allowing participants to log on and complete lessons whenever and wherever they want.

As an unexpected benefit, ARU found that it is also able to use Breeze as an outbound communications tool for the organisation. By using Breeze to create multimedia Talking Press Releases, the ARU was able to increase its visibility among media representatives, reach those who were unable to attend announcements in person, and enable media organisations such as radio stations to replay actual audio clips from live events.

Benefits

• Reduces the time required to develop new training modules from 6 weeks to a few days.
• Cuts the expense and avoids the logistical issues of instructors travelling to deliver face-to-face training within tight deadlines.
• Enables flexible, cost-effective delivery of training via the Web, regardless of when participants can join training, how many there are, or where they are located.
• Participants can use their own computers to learn in the real world instead of the artificial environment of a rented computer lab.
• Allows tracking of training participation, which in turn improves compliance and risk management.
• Is fast to deploy, and requires minimal support, so does not overload in-house IT resources.
• Easy for users to learn without intensive instruction, and intuitive to use via a friendly interface.

The Story

The sport of Rugby was born in 1823 at the Rugby school in the U.K. Just a few years later, the game arrived in Australia through matches being played informally between the crews of ships visiting the colonies. The first formal Rugby club in Australia was formed at the University of Sydney in 1864. The Australian Rugby Union (ARU) was established in 1949 and this organisation still administers the sport today.

One of the prime objectives of the ARU is to develop and promote the sport at all levels. It has embarked on an $18 million, two-year project to:

• Boost player numbers in existing clubs
• Create new clubs
• Help clubs manage this growth
• Provide new and additional resources to train and assist club administrators, coaches, referees and other volunteers
• Target talented school age players with special development programs
• Make ARU technical and database resources available to clubs

Training Challenge

The ARU’s commitment to training and development of its staff and volunteers around Australia imposed a heavy workload, administrative overheads and logistical challenges. Training was conducted in person by 8 trainers who had to fly to various locations where participants could be gathered in groups of 40 to 50.

They had to find a local venue usually a school or university where they could rent a computer lab to give hands-on training workshops. The trainers would have to be there in advance of the students to set up the lab and pre-load the training software. Therefore, in addition to the time and expense involved in this approach, it meant that the computers used by participants for training would not be the same as those used to administer their local rugby on an ongoing basis.

Training course development was a laborious process, taking up to 6 weeks to create each training module, involving large groups of software developers, staff, officials and volunteers. It all had to be done against a strict deadline � the start of the rugby season � and even after all of this effort, if someone were sick or unable to attend training in their area, there would be no other opportunity for them to develop their skills.

In 2004, the ARU faced the formidable task of training 7,000 local club administrators, referees and coaches located all over Australia � including 1,000 club administrators who urgently needed instruction on how to use the centralised MyRugbyAdmin software that had been developed in-house.

After considering several technology-based solutions the ARU decided to invest in five author licences of Macromedia Breeze.

If Macromedia Breeze had been a solution that sat in IT, we wouldn’t have wanted it, however, Breeze is decentralised and easy for everyone to use. It has allowed us to cut training course development time from 6 weeks to a few days, and reduced the costs of travel and logistics related to training. It gives us the best of both worlds. We can manage and control the quality of eLearning centrally within IT, but we benefit from the time and cost savings of decentralised usage.� – Greg West

Breeze has enabled the ARU training team to cut the 6 weeks previously required to develop a new training module to just a few days. Since it enables the delivery of training via the Web, participants can log on and take their training whenever and wherever they happen to be. Training sessions can now occur simultaneously if required, and the expense and logistical problems of reaching large numbers of people with face-to-face training has been reduced.

Training participants also benefit from being able to use their own computers so they are learning in the �real world� rather than in a lab. They are also able to refer back to the lessons after the training is complete, which reduces the number of calls to the ARU when they have questions.

Breeze also allows the ARU to track participation in various training programs which improves risk management and liability. For example, it will be able to prove that SmartRugby safety training has been completed, exactly when, and by whom.

Breeze as a Corporate Communications Tool

Macromedia Breeze will be a huge success in referee training and also internal IT instruction. But it didn’t take long for us to recognise the flexibility and value of Breeze as a tool for communication, as well as training. We now have a strategy in place based on the use of Breeze to increase and improve communication across the ARU, to both internal and external stakeholders,� – Greg West

One of the Australian Rugby Union�s strategies for promoting the sport is to gain more media coverage. One way of achieving this is to use Breeze to broaden the distribution of their media announcements. Rather than simply sending out a media release when making an announcement, the ARU now sends out PowerPoint presentations that contain the audio from their media conferences. This gives journalists from around Australia and the world access to media conferences � not just the journalists in the city where the media conference is held.

�The audio capability has proved to be a big hit with radio stations,� said Tim Archer, Media Operations Manager for the ARU. �We recently held a media conference in Sydney to announce the location of the new Super 14 team. This was one of the biggest announcements we have made in recent years, with a lot of media interest, especially in the two cities that were bidding for the team � Perth and Melbourne.

�We held a large media conference in Sydney, and plugged our laptop into the media splitter to ensure we got a high quality recording of the announcement. Minutes after the end of the media conference, we were able to send the Breeze presentation and the audio recording to our database of 2,000 rugby and sporting media around the world.

�This allowed radio stations to access broadcast quality sound grabs that they could put to air immediately. It also allowed journalists in Melbourne and Perth to �attend� the media conference without actually being there,� he said.

Based on its success so far, the ARU plans to continue using Breeze for all future media announcements � including Wallaby team announcements and player interviews.

Summary of benefits

For Users

• Flexible, cost-effective delivery of training via the Web. Participants can join training from any location and at their convenience. This is a key consideration for the ARU because it works with large numbers of volunteer referees, administrators and officials who have limited time to devote to training.
• Participants can use their own computers to learn in the �real world� instead of the artificial environment of a rented computer lab.
• Easy for users to learn without instruction, and intuitive to use via a friendly interface.

For Trainers

• Reduced time, expense and resources required to develop new training modules.
• Cuts the expense and avoids the logistical issues of instructors travelling to deliver face-to-face training within tight deadlines.
• Delivery of training is no longer constrained by time, numbers of participants, or geographic location.
• Participants can train at their own pace, and return to the course as many times as required to check information. This reduces the number of follow-up calls to the ARU to ask questions.

For ARU�s Organisation

• Directly supports ARU�s mission to develop and promote the game of rugby in Australia through training, promotion and publicity.
• Allows more effective use of budgets, human resources and time � particularly when working against the deadline of an approaching rugby season.
• Is a more flexible and effective method of training volunteers who are scattered throughout Australia, and often cannot devote large amounts of time to learning new modules.
• Allows tracking of training participation. The ARU can prove that courses were delivered and completed, and who undertook training and when � thus reducing liability and improving compliance and risk management.
• Enables the ARU to improve its media visibility through the Talking Press Release program.

Find out more about elearning.
For a Free 15 day Macromedia Breeze trial
contact Larry Adler.

webqem recently designed and implemented a rapid online presentation system for JP Morgan, using Macromedia Breeze. A Macromedia case study of the highly successful solution is reproduced here with kind permission…

Just like any business, JP Morgan needed to gain the competitive edge to grow revenue while minimising costs.

The investment banking industry is fragmenting. The number of clients is growing and it is getting harder to service all of them. The acceleration of technologies, such as the Internet and news wires, means that speed is of the essence – we must be able to respond quickly to market changes and cut through the clutter to reach our customers.

A key challenge for research analysts at the bank is being able to attract the attention of busy overseas clients in order to sell in the benefits of investing in Australian equities.

Everybody is faced with information overload and time management is a huge issue. We all try to fit 24 hours work into a 12 hour day. Here at the bank our challenge is how to get our research analysts here in Sydney to be able to communicate with a potential client in another country and time zone. We needed a way to help that analyst put forward a persuasive argument in order for the client to register them.

Before using Breeze, we used voice blasts – sending a voice message out to a mass phone number list. However, as most of our competition use the same technology it was hard to gain cut through. Now we can quickly and easily create tailored multimedia presentations to email to our target customers. As we can include voice commentary we are able to maintain the human element and augment it with visual detail.

In fact, effective communication is a critical success factor for the bank – not just externally, but also internally. As JP Morgan has sales teams in multiple locations worldwide, the research analysts need to be able to give the sales teams the ideas and concepts to onsell – efficiently, effectively and consistently.

As Macromedia Breeze allows us to send the same presentation to a number of people to be viewed in their own time, we can be sure they are all receiving exactly the same information in a timely manner. To pass on information by word of mouth is not only time consuming, it risks turning into “Chinese Whispers’ where the message and information can easily be distorted.”

webqem designed and implemented the Macromedia Breeze Presentation solution. As JP Morgan opted for an applications service provider (ASP) solution, the application is hosted and managed on Macromedia’s servers in the US.

To test the feasibility and user acceptance of the Breeze solution, webqem and JP Morgan trialled the concept with 200 internal staff and customers. All feedback was positive and because Macromedia’s Flash Player is so ubiquitous, all were able to access the presentations. The application was then rolled out within a week.

Larry Adler, Operations Director, webqem, believes that the hosted model played an important factor in the roll out of the Breeze solution…

The ASP hosted option allowed JP Morgan to be first to the marketplace as it required very little of JP Morgan’s IT resources to deploy the solution. All their clients needed was access to the Internet and Macromedia Flash Player which is already used on 98 percent of PCs worldwide.”

webqem trained staff in two one and half hour group training sessions.

Clinton admits that as the Breeze approach requires a business process change, there will be some employees who are too used to the old way of doing business to fully embrace Breeze. He said,

After the initial excitement we now have a hard core of users who really tap into the power of Breeze. We must challenge the norm. As far as we know we are the first to use it in our business in Australia and it really does provide us with a first mover advantage,” Clinton enthused.

The engaging experience of Breeze as a form of communication creates a differentiating component that, when a client chooses to transact in the Australian market, may be enough to differentiate us from our competitors – for us, that’s the real return on investment.”

Following the success of the Australian roll out of Macromedia Breeze, JP Morgan is in the early stages of implementing the solution across the Asia, Europe and US regions.

For JP Morgan, the power of Macromedia Breeze is that it allows staff to personalise presentations with their own narration and easily deliver them through any standard web browser to reach the target audience.

Key Benefits

• Research analysts are empowered to create their own high impact presentations.
• The inclusion of voice creates a human element for the presentation and reinforce the message being communicated.
• The experience created by the resulting presentations breaks through the email clutter at the client end.

Find out more about elearning.
For a Free 15 day Macromedia Breeze trial
contact Larry Adler.

JP Morgan is a leader in investment banking, asset management, private equity, consumer banking, private banking, refinance, and custody and processing services. The company has more than 90,000 staff in over 50 countries. The Australian equity operation needed to find a way to differentiate itself from the competition by helping its research analysts to break though email clutter in order to attract the attention of international clients to invest in Australian equities.