Web Redesign Goal: Showcase a Customer-friendly Training Registration System

Arlo offered the solution Springhouse needed to strengthen its customer registration experience

Summary: Springhouse contracted Arlo Training Management System as its training registration platform

By Lisa Huffman, Marketing

When we set out to redesign Springhouse.com in 2019, we started with a large wish list of requirements that we wanted to achieve. At the top of the list was the requirement to have a comprehensive training registration platform that would allow clients to easily purchase our open-enrollment technology and business efficiency courses online. Previously, students would submit a form to reserve their seat and then our Operations team would connect with them offline to manage the payment and finalize the registration. 

Our enrollment process had multiple steps – some automated, some manual – and we needed to become more efficient. For an online training registration system, we had specific needs.

Our training registration system requirements

We needed…

• a way for clients to enroll in a single class that has multi-day schedules.
• the ability to enroll multiple people in one class or one student in multiple classes in a single transaction.
• an option for students to purchase a class without the requirement of creating an account.
• a system that could automate the delivery of updates and reminders to our student roster, instructors, and operations team.
• a pathway to accept online payment that connected directly and securely into our accounting system.
• a platform that could allow us to offer in-person and live-online training sessions and the ability to prioritize them via search.
• a system that could help us manage instructor schedules and room resources.
• a way to feed course information to the website and retrieve registrant information out of the website.
• a design that could plug in to and aesthetically compliment the new website.

Our research ultimately led us to the Arlo Training Management System. 

The right solution for the challenge

Arlo stood out for a variety of reasons, but mainly because it specialized in selling instructor-led training and its nuances. The alternatives were either designed for ticketed one-time events (i.e. concerts), instructor-created video classes (i.e. learn how to play guitar), or full-scale learning management systems (i.e. colleges). These services are terrific, but not necessarily what Springhouse needed. They would have required our team to make major coding adjustments to make it work, thus fighting against the current.

Arlo met the requirements on our needs list. It supported a positive customer experience and streamlined our Operations workflow. 

For example, Allison Dhuy, VP of Operations, said, “We used to have to manually maintain our instructors’ schedules in a customized instance of Dynamics CRM and a separate Microsoft Project plan. CRM fed our website and Project offered us an acceptable view of resource availability. Now in Arlo, the administrator’s calendar view eliminates our need to maintain and reference two schedules. Now, whenever a customer wants to schedule date for private corporate training, Arlo shows us a real-time view of schedules that I can trust. From an Operations standpoint, this resource streamlined so many manual processes for us.” 

Ahead of the curve

In March 2020, when the business world had to adjust to a new way of working from home, Springhouse quickly switched from in-class training to 100% live, online instruction. There were no class cancellations or downtime for students or instructors. The change was already familiar. For more than a decade, we have offered students the option to attend our classes remotely.

Through Arlo’s software, we had already been featuring our e-learning options on the website. So, when we needed to quickly make a change, we used Arlo’s roster tools to communicate with all students that we were transitioning to online delivery and that instructions would follow. As a result, Springhouse was able to offer the same quality courses from a safe distance without disrupting anyone’s learning goals.

All the way from New Zealand, Arlo took notice of our agility and shared our story as an example for their other clients. 

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After we launched the new site in September 2019, we began seeing enrollments from students at companies that we hadn’t done business with in the past. And, when the world shifted to a virtual office situation in the spring of 2020, we were thankful that our students could learn from home, while our instructors taught from their homes. With an efficient training registration system as well as all the other technology that Springhouse employs, we will continue to think beyond the walls of our training center to reach new clients.