Adobe Success Story

Bringing online executive development into the corporation
Cranfield University's School of Management offers high-tech, customised executive development through its Centre for Customised Executive Development (CCED). The centre is ranked by the Financial Times as the top United Kingdom business school for customised executive development. To better serve its blue-chip corporate clients, CCED needed to find a fresh, simpler way to deliver rich, remote learning possibilities.

To offer customers a flexible, easily adaptable solution for eLearning, CCED adopted Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional software, a rich web communications solution. Now, CCED is seeing the benefits of having the choice not to send academics and experts out into the field on costly visits. Clients are seeing real business benefits from having development courses delivered in flexible ways at times that suit them. They are also saving money by having executives where they need them, when they need them.

Benefits

• Streamlined delivery of more flexible executive development products
• Reduced university costs to deliver classes
• Decreased client costs to participate in classes
• Increased competitiveness

Project Details

Finding a native solution to technologies used by clients
Toby Thompson, networked learning executive at CCED, knew that he needed to find a networked learning solution that suited both CCED and his clients. The CCED's business clients want to use a technique that is familiar, he explains. "They're not into education. They're into business and commerce," he says. "We talk in practical terms—we don't just talk abstract academic theory."

Previously, clients had to download client-side software to engage in learning programmes. "That was an unacceptable overhead and it was proving a barrier to entry," says Thompson. Corporate clients need something that can sit easily and transparently in their environments, and Thompson knew he needed to find a solution that meant he could concentrate on developing leading development programmes, not convincing corporate clients to alter their firewalls and deal with IT.

The focus on understanding the needs of corporate clients is central to CCED's offerings. "The executive education offerings that we deliver are relevant to the client's issues and their markets. Being relevant rather than just abstract is an important differentiator for us," he says.

Without Acrobat Connect Professional software, Thompson says CCED would not be able to so easily deliver on its promises. "We would struggle to deliver on our promise to provide a relevant offering if our corporate customer had to struggle with non-native technologies. We want to use whatever their business already uses."

Implementing 'the professor on the desktop'
Thompson and two colleagues looked at several possible solutions, but found that Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional software was the only one to satisfy their demanding criteria.

After demonstrating the Adobe solution at a lunchtime research seminar for 40-50 academics and staff, they realised that CCED could deliver on what they wanted to promise—getting out into the practitioner world. "This allowed us to do that," says Thompson. CCED called it 'the professor on the desktop at lunchtime seminar'.

CCED examined a number of products on the market; some could not deliver audio and others were not flexible enough. Because Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional is browser-based, "it seems more immediate," says Thompson. "It has a native feel that we like. It talks the language of business."

Acrobat Connect Professional was, "an augmentation of what we already do inside of the classroom," says Thompson. He and his colleagues liked the small file sizes and compression in Acrobat Connect Professional. Also, a crucial point for CCED's corporate clients was that the Adobe solution does not have the firewall issues associated with other products. The centre uses functionality within Acrobat Connect Professional to package and disseminate recorded or voiceover Microsoft PowerPoint slides as part of its webinars.

CCED can now distribute video, voice, and PowerPoint presentations via a single URL. "We like that brevity," he says. "You click and then the client can see it. That's a tremendous benefit to us. We can just send emails out or use an instant messaging client with a link so people can access the details. That's a fantastic, portable way of disseminating our products."

Reducing costs, keeping quality high
Cranfield's CCED now uses Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional as an integral part of delivering its executive development offerings. Allowing clients to learn from where they are has proved a key benefit of the solution. This is "the biggest bang for their bucks," says Thompson. "One of their greatest expenses is bringing guys out to stay at Cranfield in the classroom." Cranfield is also reaping the benefits. "It saves us money. We still fly people to locations when needed, but we now have an option not to," he says.

Cranfield's CCED is working with a global client, largely based out of South America, Southeast Asia, Australasia, and the Asia Pacific regions. To support services to the company, the centre created an on-demand eLearning package using Acrobat Connect Professional software. This mode of executive development has allowed the client to cut out two days of face-to-face tutoring, with all the associated costs, from each executive's programme.

Being flexible and attentive to clients' needs is what keeps Cranfield on top, and Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional is a part of that flexibility.

"Many of our programmes have a global element, and we can now be more competitive," says Thompson. "CCED is currently 11th in the world in the Financial Times rankings, and that is down to our flexibility. Products like Acrobat Connect Professional allow us to be flexible," he says.

"We can be true to our word when we tell our clients that they will have a particular professor talking to them at a specified time," says Thompson. "It's customised and relevant to a particular instance and particular context. That makes us competitive."

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