Life Long Learning is the banner under which we group the training and development initiatives which we offer for the benefit of both of our own staff and customers. Clearly the concept of life long learning is not something invented by AVA.
The value of individual personal development of skills and knowledge has long been recognised by successful businesses all over the world but has been accentuated in recent years by the ever increasing pace of technological development. In the decorative printing industries, ever improving technology has lead to huge advances in both product quality and employee productivity. But any technology is only as good as the people using it.
“I love working on designs in AVA! The knowledge that I gained in 3 days of training now allows me to do my work faster and to a better standard. I found the training really interesting, largely thanks to the trainer’s professionalism. Thank you to all the AVA team!”
Constantly advancing technology means that businesses relying solely on initial training (for a new employee or a newly purchased technology), however thorough that initial training may be, are almost inevitably failing to maximise the potential of both their purchased technology and of employees who could be excited, motivated and made more productive by learning new skills. There is an abundance of research across a wide variety of industries to support the (perhaps fairly obvious) statement that employees who are constantly acquiring new skills are both more productive and more loyal to the business they work for.
Adopting the view that ‘they will find a way of getting the job done eventually’, often using a combination of self help and generic software, has obvious attractions in the short term (it costs less) but experience, and, again, a large number of academic studies, suggest that this is rarely the strategy adopted by the leading, and most successful, businesses in any industry – and this is particularly true of our own.
“A thoroughly enjoyable and professional session was had during my recent training day at AVA. I would greatly recommend further training to users to keep up to date with the new options available. I found it helped to explain prior to our visit the areas we would prefer to concentrate on, which the trainer fully understood and executed perfectly.”
Sometimes a single software feature, or change in settings or working method, can revolutionise an entire business using only technology which the business has already purchased but has failed to see the potential of. Every decorative printing business is different with its own unique mix of products, target market and supply chain dynamics. AVA’s specialist trainers and consultants have a combined total of over 500 man years of industry experience gained from applying our own, and third party technologies to hundreds of successful decorative printing businesses spread across numerous specialised sectors (fashion textiles, home furnishings, wall coverings, laminates, ceramics) operating in all areas of the globe.
“Excellent training and it was very thorough, the trainer was patient and professional, with extensive industry knowledge. I very much enjoyed the two days and look forward to using Materialize.”
Investing in AVA software and training provides initial access to this pool of collective knowledge and experience but both of our key straplines, ‘mission statements’, or whatever you want to call them;
‘Life Long Learning’ and ‘Partners for all time’, and indeed the whole structure of our business, reflect our conviction that the successful adoption and optimisation of ever changing technology is seen by successful businesses as a permanent on-going process, rather than as a one-off purchase. Constant re-investment in technology training and skills development makes simple economic sense - particularly given the range of training and development methods now available to AVA customers.
“The trainer was excellent. I always enjoy meeting people from AVA, it helps when I talk on the phone with them! Your program is excellent, thank you, it makes a big difference in my day and my work load.”
Readily available technology has enabled us to broaden these from good old fashioned ‘one to one’ face to face training, on site with customers or at AVA’s head office in Mac®clesfield, (still probably the ‘gold standard’ of training methods) to include other, cheaper and more flexible, ways of increasing the skills and knowledge of individual designers, colourists and print technicians. Today these include:
Refresher training
Occasionally AVA run group sessions for users from multiple companies - for example, refresher courses on all of the new features added to the software during the past year or so. Many busy users simply do not find the time to investigate fully all of the new features and developments presented by AVA each year and yet all of them, without exception, would benefit from the wealth of features which are added each year as a result of requests from similar users working with similar challenges in other companies around the world.
One to one training
This personal face to face training is tailored to suit the precise needs of an individual in relation to the particular range of tasks which he/she wishes to carry out within a particular business. This can range from learning a new set of tools or products, to helping progress a live job. We recommend you come to us, as this will remove the inevitable distractions that working within your own office will bring. But we are also flexible, and can come to you if you prefer.
Group training
Group training is for between 2 and 4 trainees. Again this is customised to meet the particular needs of your group/business.
e-Training
e-Training allows AVA users to improve their existing knowledge of the software through online tutorials delivered in the comfort of their own working environment. Each session lasts for a maximum of 2 hours, and is used to deliver short and snappy tutorials which can be customised to suit your needs, focused on a single product (Colour, Colour Separations, Materialize etc) for example, or covering all of the new features introduced in the latest two or three releases.
e-Assessments
In conjunction with the above training options, we offer modular assessments of operator ability with the AVA software. Such assessments, which typically take only an hour or two to carry out remotely (based on a reliable internet connection), can be extremely useful to employers in identifying more precisely the training needs of their work forces and how and where training can most productively be targeted. There is little point investing in the best software in the industry if your operators only know how to use half of the features. A small annual investment in employee refresher training may pay dividends in both productivity gains and employee motivation.