ReadyTech reinvents Silver Peak’s self-paced classes with new student voucher system
Self-service voucher system saves time and money
About Silver Peak Systems
Founded in 2004, Silver Peak is a global leader in broadband and hybrid WAN solutions. The Santa Clara based company shipped its first product, the NX-series hardware appliance, in September 2005. With Silver Peak’s high-performance WAN solutions, customers can augment or replace MPLS networks with secure internet connectivity, while dramatically reducing WAN costs and complexity. This results in greater business agility, network performance, visibility, security and lower costs. More than 2,000 globally distributed enterprises have deployed Silver Peak broadband and hybrid WAN solutions across 80 countries.
Low voucher usage prompts revamp of self-service process
In 2010, Silver Peak and ReadyTech partnered together to deliver virtual instructor-led training (VILT) classes. Two years later—after a successful partnership—Silver Peak decided to add self-paced training to their offerings using ReadyTech’s Self-Paced Training Solution. To access the ReadyTech virtual training labs, students needed to request a voucher from Silver Peak by emailing their training department. Silver Peak then purchased a voucher from ReadyTech, and the voucher was emailed to the student. While this voucher system was working, Silver Peak found that 35% of students were not completing the virtual training labs because it took the training department too much time to respond to voucher requests. “Students were requesting vouchers, but it could take us up to 3 days to respond,” explains Steve Russell, Training Manager at Silver Peak Systems. “When a student requests a voucher, they are generally ready to start the lab immediately. Our audience is global—and if someone requested a voucher on a weeknight in the US, we might not respond until sometime the following day. If it was a Friday night, we wouldn’t see the request until Monday—or longer if it was a holiday weekend here. As a result of this time lag, many students became focused on other work tasks and never redeemed their vouchers to complete the training course. We were missing our window of opportunity to deliver training in a timely manner that was convenient for the student.” He adds, “We knew we needed to change this system. The student interest was there, but the response time just wasn’t working. We needed a self-service process, so we turned to ReadyTech for help.”
Requesting virtual training lab vouchers autonomously
ReadyTech got to work developing a process for students to request virtual training lab vouchers autonomously. To make it a truly self-service system, ReadyTech built an e-commerce portal that not only allows customers to offer self-paced training, but makes it possible for students to buy vouchers and begin courses whenever they are ready. In addition to keeping track of all redeemed vouchers, ReadyTech manages every financial transaction within the portal and provides flexible billing capabilities.
Flawless voucher system drives dramatic increase in student attendance
“The new voucher process is very smooth,” says Russell. “Not only is the self-service option easier for students, but it saves us time and money. Once we rolled it out, I waited to see what problems would arise, but it worked flawlessly. We are extremely happy with the results.” In fact, after implementing ReadyTech’s new voucher system, Silver Peak experienced an 80 to 90% increase in the number of students redeeming vouchers. “This is a very impressive increase,” explains Russell. “Most of the vouchers are now being used immediately, and students are completing their training because they no longer have to wait for us to respond to get virtual training lab access.”
Discuss this Project
Website
Industry
Computer Software Wide Area Networks (WAN)
Company Size
Gross income of $50-$100 million 200+ employees
Headquarters
Santa Clara, California, USA
Challenges
- Manual process led to delays in response time
- Delays resulted in 35% of students not completing labs
- Lower levels of student training
- Product adoption compromised
Solution
ReadyTech, in collaboration with Silver Peak, developed an e-commerce portal that allowed customers to offer self-paced courses and students to request online lab vouchers autonomously. The e-commerce portal enables students to begin self-paced courses whenever they are ready, keeps track of redeemed vouchers, and manages all financial transactions for Silver Peak’s training department.
Benefits
- 80-90% increase in the number of students redeeming vouchers
- New e-commerce portal with voucher tracking and financial processing
- More students completing training
- Improved product adoption
About ReadyTech
ReadyTech is the easiest and most cost-effective way to deliver worldwide IT training. Our proprietary technology eliminates the most cumbersome, technical and administrative functions of running an IT training program. Students can connect through a browser from anywhere in the world to a high performance lab-environment suited for their needs. Our online training software gives instructors complete oversight and control of the lab environment and virtual classroom.
