Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Northeast Workforce Skills podcast.
Speaker: This time we are talking about our IT training with our technical trainers.
Speaker: So I will let them do an introduction.
Speaker: Ian, would you like to go?
Speaker: I may as well.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm Ian Rose, technical trainer at MTC Sunderland.
Speaker: Primarily teach the SQL Server database technologies.
Speaker: Also teach the Windows Server technologies, but not as frequently.
Speaker: But frequently I've also been teaching an awful lot of the Power BI.
Speaker: technologies, which in many cases isn't regarded as technical by some trainers, but it is just as technical.
Speaker: Power BI has seen an enormous increase in popularity, so I've been teaching that an awful lot recently.
Speaker: Thank you very much, Ian.
Speaker: And yourself, Dionne, would you like to do an introduction?
Speaker: Yeah, sure.
Speaker: So I'm Dion Kotze.
Speaker: I'm with the University of Sunderland and MPC training as well.
Speaker: I'm a desktop applications specialist.
Speaker: So it means I'll train most of the Microsoft Office software applications.
Speaker: And I think there are about 17 different courses, Microsoft Office courses that I've been on in the middle.
Speaker: And in addition to that, I'm a master's English tutor as well.
Speaker: Jack of all trains, it's very smart.
Speaker: And Michelle, would you like to do an introduction to yourself?
Speaker: I'm Michelle Francis, I'm the Lead Business Relationship Advisor at MTC.
Speaker: I am not technical in any way.
Speaker: I would say I'm more like a GP.
Speaker: I know a little bit about all of the courses, but specialist in nothing.
Speaker: But you're great at your job.
Speaker: I say so.
Speaker: Whether other people agree with that's a different matter.
Speaker: Well, I think you're good at your job.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: I'll just start by asking some questions.
Speaker: What courses training have you delivered under the programme and what's been the most popular one?
Speaker: And I'll start with you.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I taught quite a few different courses with the programme.
Speaker: As I said, predominantly Power BI, the main SQL courses I've taught, the TSQL scripting course, which has changed from a five-day course to a two-day course.
Speaker: The other SQL courses that I used to teach and also a lot have really been moved away by, they're not authorized courses anymore by Microsoft, but consequently I've been teaching a lot of Power BI, which kind of like replaced a lot of the courses that I've taught before.
Speaker: Why is Power BI so popular now?
Speaker: I hear a lot about it, but I don't really know what it is.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it might be something to do with the fact that there's a lot of... And Dion will probably be able to, you know,
Speaker: ship for listening on the details here, but a lot of Excel experts, what they want to do is they want to communicate their data to other people in the organization and share their data in a more meaningful manner.
Speaker: And while you can do that with visualizations in Excel and you can transform your data in Excel, it takes quite a bit of a... It's quite complicated to do at times.
Speaker: You know, you've got to add on like power query and stuff like that.
Speaker: So a lot of the technologies in Excel that enable you to visualize data and make it available to others have actually been moved into one package called Power BI.
Speaker: So quite a lot of people from Excel backgrounds are consequently moving on to Power BI.
Speaker: And there's a huge number of people who've got skills in Excel.
Speaker: Just saying, Sean, I think one of the reasons it's been quite popular as well lately is a lot of people get it as part of the Office 365 subscription.
Speaker: Right, so it's actually an add-on to that service as well.
Speaker: So with a lot of companies moving over to Office 365, using the tools that are available as part of the new applications that are there.
Speaker: Yeah, I think people are using Microsoft a lot more than they used to now, aren't they, because of COVID.
Speaker: And then next, Dion, is there anything else you'd like to add to that about courses that you've delivered under the program and what the popular ones have been?
Speaker: Which couple of courses?
Speaker: Excellency, the Marscopa one, because that's the one that Marscopa released.
Speaker: And it's probably the mind state, the brain of butter of most SMEs and large companies as well.
Speaker: And there's...
Speaker: A lot of the other Microsoft Office applications, they tend to be a little bit more niche.
Speaker: Word, everybody uses Word, but I think most people expect they can actually do it, you know, if that's a phrase.
Speaker: You know, they can work with Word.
Speaker: Access, it's a little bit more niche because there's not that many people usually in the organization to deal with databases.
Speaker: But Excel, everybody uses Excel.
Speaker: It doesn't mean to say that everybody can use Excel.
Speaker: It doesn't mean to say that everybody
Speaker: which is a which is a you know a concerning thing itself really because you know i don't really want to dramatize it but if you imagine how much excel is news we're kind of business and how many of our business decisions are made in excel and the milk of enters in excel is just enormous there's there's a stuff that i like um this that goes something
Speaker: There's about 8 million active users of Excel and about 5% of those use it to its full potential.
Speaker: Or if you shift that in its head, about 95% of active users of Excel do not use it to its full potential.
Speaker: If you think about a lot of business decisions, you know, these are business decisions that
Speaker: Like I said, I want to dramatize, but our families, our livelihoods depend on it because ultimately the businesses have to do well for us to be able to free our families.
Speaker: And if these decisions are not right, it can have a serious impact.
Speaker: It's quite scary, I think, how many people don't know how to use Excel.
Speaker: You can go into a business and they don't expect you to be able to know Excel.
Speaker: It doesn't work like that.
Speaker: You don't just get into a car and people are just expecting to be able to drive the car.
Speaker: They ask to be taught how to drive the car.
Speaker: But Excel doesn't work like that.
Speaker: Or for some reason, we don't treat Excel like that.
Speaker: So Excel, to answer your question simply, Excel is the most popular course.
Speaker: That takes me nicely onto the next question.
Speaker: And I think you've probably answered it, Dionne.
Speaker: Who should attend the courses that you deliver?
Speaker: Who would benefit the most from attending the courses that you deliver?
Speaker: So, the people who attend my courses tend to be, we tend to deal with private organizations and for NASFARC, so well-known ad names, ad names, serving real authors.
Speaker: And it's a range of people.
Speaker: I knew all of them engineers, I knew all of them in finance, HR, administrators, there are people from all sorts of industries at all levels as well, pediatrics and companies.
Speaker: Yeah, so it's quite a range of people like we actually work with.
Speaker: So what was the second part of the question there?
Speaker: What skills are people looking to develop or what are the hope to take away?
Speaker: So I think generally employees come into the courses because they want to be able to get better at the stuff.
Speaker: They actually realise after they've been using it, they've sold and let's just talk about it, sell after they've been using it some time that you have to daily train.
Speaker: People want to become more efficient, we live in a time and an age where
Speaker: Everything's becoming harder.
Speaker: Employers are expecting more and more of the employees.
Speaker: You know, we need to gain efficiency everywhere we can.
Speaker: And Excel is one of those areas where actually you can save a lot.
Speaker: You can't gain a lot of efficiency and make a lot of efficiency savings.
Speaker: So I think that's really the main thing.
Speaker: People just, employers want their employees to become better at this stuff because it's the bread of butter.
Speaker: It's the stuff that they do day in, day out.
Speaker: It's the stuff they need to be good at.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: What about yourself, Ian?
Speaker: What courses, who do you think should attend your courses?
Speaker: Well, the people who tend to attend things like Power BI courses tend to be business analysts and data analysts.
Speaker: And these people are familiar with their data, but they want other people to be familiar with them as well, you see.
Speaker: But it's not only data analysts.
Speaker: I've also found that you do get some, you know, SQL developers as well wanting to do this.
Speaker: And I think maybe that's because of a couple of factors.
Speaker: You know, firstly, they're obviously wanting to, you know, move their skills on to Power BI as well, you know, spread their skills, skill set.
Speaker: But also in an organizational environment, in the past, people used to be pretty much separated into their particular roles.
Speaker: So, for instance, you know, SQL administrators would go in SQL admin courses and so on.
Speaker: And then your developers would go in the SQL developer courses and so on.
Speaker: But you're finding that a lot of people are needing skills across the wide range.
Speaker: So for instance, SQL admins, when I'm teaching a SQL administrator course, you're teaching them about backing up databases, security and stuff like that.
Speaker: But they're also quite often coming on the TSQL courses as well because they're expected to know about SQL development now, whereas in the past it used to be like separate.
Speaker: You know, you get a lot of, like for instance, you know, council departments and so on, you know, cutbacks and so on.
Speaker: People are having to actually take on these other skills, you know.
Speaker: Find quite a wide range, but certainly things like Power BI tend to be pretty specific business analysts and data analysts.
Speaker: I think as well now though, we do the introduction to Power BI.
Speaker: So even for lay people like me, learning actually how to use it and how to at least do some visualization and what data you might want to actually see.
Speaker: So even salespeople, business development people, there's a lot more people accessing the introduction to at least see what their teams can do as well.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's also good just to get people going, you know, just to get people started because I think a lot of the problems with a lot of the applications is they're not very intuitive.
Speaker: You know, you open up an application and think, how am I supposed to use this?
Speaker: You just need like a little bit of time for someone to show you how to get started and then just get over that first barrier.
Speaker: You know, and quite often people can go over that barrier and then just get stuck in.
Speaker: I suppose we are all having to do more, aren't we?
Speaker: So, you know, people have to do more in their own job now than they ever used to before.
Speaker: So it does seem to be that, you know, the training is becoming more popular.
Speaker: What has been the biggest takeaway from the delegates and saved the most time that's given them like a, you know, sort of changed their life per se in their work, do you think from Power BI training or from Excel training?
Speaker: I would say, well, certainly from the Power BI course, I would say it's usually when someone asks a specific question, you know, because we'll cover things like DAX formulas, which are basically, you know, just, you know, showing you how to create these measures and formulas that can enhance your visualizations and so on.
Speaker: But someone will quite often sort of like ask a specific question or could we create a formula that does such and such, you know, and there's been a couple of occasions where, you know, certainly where people have asked a specific question and we've, you know, as a group, we've kind of like gone onto the internet and Googled it and so on.
Speaker: And then while they've been doing a lab, I've been working on it to show how they can use it with the data that they've got in the classroom.
Speaker: There was one person who came on, they needed a net performance score measure, right?
Speaker: It says, is that included in Power BI?
Speaker: And I found it for them on the internet and then we kind of like modified it to the course and it was exactly what they wanted, you know.
Speaker: But also the thing about that was when people go on the course, you have to explain to them that they're not going to remember everything, you know.
Speaker: quite often when they get a problem, most professionals will look on the internet, find some kind of solution and then just modify it, right?
Speaker: So, you know, when we've had these queries, certainly from delegates that are more specific to their own businesses and sorted them out, then that's been quite a good takeaway for them.
Speaker: And Dion, is there anything that you take away a moment from you?
Speaker: As far as I know, a hire moment or a takeaway from some time, there it is.
Speaker: Yeah, it's been a few things.
Speaker: I actually just worked with someone this morning.
Speaker: This person came on by Excel course, advanced Excel course, letter three.
Speaker: And then he subsequently went on to do an unit of credit, an unit of accreditation.
Speaker: And I've been working with him on a project over the last few weeks, basically just an hour-a-week wall, but I've been working with him on a project, and this particular project is going near to completion now, and it will save them right about four hours a week, plus an additional six hours a month.
Speaker: And this person has ideas for incorporating what is learned onto other aspects, into other parts of Excel, other workplaces to work with, which will save them an additional about an hour, half hour a day.
Speaker: So if you calculate that, it's about 20% of this person's time that you'll be able to save.
Speaker: Now, that's significant.
Speaker: I mean, this is a person who is merely at director level in the company, you know, significant salary, 20% of the time, if you equate that to a van der Duque is, you know, pretty good, I'd say.
Speaker: There's been, the best aham moments tend to be efficiency savings.
Speaker: So, for example, I was working with one lady.
Speaker: senior accountant at a multi-site car dealership and they had a slightly bespoke, unique request in as much as they wanted.
Speaker: This lady, the senior accountant knew that her accountant, her team of accountants could make efficient sales, but she didn't know where.
Speaker: So actually what she did was she provided me with all of their accounting stuff, all of their accounting data in Excel or Workbooks and said, well, look, can you basically devise a training course around what we do?
Speaker: Can you try and drag your head around what we do and then devise a training course?
Speaker: So it took me some time to try and just figure out how they work, what they do, et cetera.
Speaker: And I devised a half-day training course with the senior accountant and one of the accountants, Underhill, ended.
Speaker: And on the back of that, they also did the unit of credit, both of them.
Speaker: And the initial feedback was that they had saved about $15 a month across the multiple sites.
Speaker: I think there are three sites there for the economy of the ship.
Speaker: 15 hours a month they saved and they were so happy with it.
Speaker: Now, just being in mind, this was a half-day training sessions of two people.
Speaker: They then put 30 of their staff members onto training as well because obviously they wanted these kind of efficiency savings across the board.
Speaker: And another one which stands out of my mind was, I was working with a person at a well-known company in the North East, and this particular person had a task that took every Monday, weekly task, every Monday, the task would take between three and five hours.
Speaker: A lot of manual work, a lot of touch points, a lot of opportunity to make mistakes.
Speaker: And with the work that we did, we managed to get that task down to between 70 and 45 seconds.
Speaker: So now it's quite a significant saying as well.
Speaker: So yeah, our hard moments, yeah, there's a few of them efficiency-wise.
Speaker: Some of the main takeaways, some of the most useful things that people take away from the courses, and on a general scale, is the likes of pivot pace.
Speaker: People will not pivot pulse because they just fell for it.
Speaker: And to be honest, in my Excel history, my Excel career, I've had two wild moments and one of them was when I discovered the Tales, which was back in 2007.
Speaker: And I just thought they were the best thing since sliced bread.
Speaker: At the time, no one was really using them because everybody thought, well, I think it'd be too difficult.
Speaker: And I thought at the time, well, we're not that difficult.
Speaker: You just have to take it on and just try and understand what it's actually doing.
Speaker: And it's really going to pay off.
Speaker: But now, of course, everybody wants to use it.
Speaker: Not everybody necessarily understands it, but they all want to use it.
Speaker: And we should.
Speaker: We've got the tools there.
Speaker: It's available to us.
Speaker: Why shouldn't we?
Speaker: I am definitely somebody that likes a pivot table, but doesn't know how to use them.
Speaker: I am definitely in that camp.
Speaker: Thanks guys.
Speaker: The last question I've got for you both today is what course have you enjoyed delivering the most and why?
Speaker: That's a difficult one because, you know, sometimes
Speaker: You know, sometimes I'll enjoy your Power BI immensely, but other times when I'll be teaching a course that I haven't taught in a while, I'll get a lot of enjoyment from that.
Speaker: You know, so for instance,
Speaker: I just taught the Windows Client course, you know, the other day, and it's a while since I taught Windows Client, you know, and part of that's IP networking, and it's really geeky, but it's months, if not years since I've tried to explain TCP IP addresses and stuff like that on the board, but I was, like, really enjoying it.
Speaker: It was terrible.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: but but but uh i i i think generally speaking it it probably is the yeah power bi partly because people then realize how easy it is okay uh and uh and and and also the the the tsql scripting that i do as well again it's it's it's kind of like empowering people you know that's
Speaker: you know that's the uh the enjoyment there it's it's it's when i feel empowered then i get enjoyment so it's not a civic course as such yeah and i'm just playing diane can we please remind ian the next time i go running i'm asking them for a new course that he really enjoys new delivery or delivery hasn't done for a little while that's recorded ian
Speaker: So you can't run now.
Speaker: You can't run and hide from yourself.
Speaker: I can run.
Speaker: I can get a little bit.
Speaker: So the course that I enjoy delivering the most is one that I don't do too often, unfortunately.
Speaker: I wish I could do it more.
Speaker: I had more opportunity for it, but it's a VBA program course.
Speaker: And it's an eight-day course.
Speaker: And the reason why I enjoy this one is because it focuses purely on VBA.
Speaker: Now, if you don't know what VBA is, it's Visual Basic Applications.
Speaker: It's the back-end programming language studies that is incorporated in most of the Microsoft Office applications.
Speaker: And the simple way to describe it really is you've got Excel, and then if you use VBA, you've got Excel on steroids.
Speaker: So it is a way for you to automate tasks within Excel.
Speaker: It's also a way for you to get cross-communication between your different Office applications.
Speaker: So say, for example, if you have data in a database, we might have some personal information in the database and then the
Speaker: issues that you track, say, in the database as well.
Speaker: Now, you can then create VBA code that will get the database to talk automatically to an Excel spreadsheet and it can bring some information up, obviously, but some information, depending on what you read.
Speaker: It can do automatic calculations and gain insight and so on.
Speaker: And then it can maybe transfer that into a Word document.
Speaker: And then from the Word document, it can transfer it into a BDS document.
Speaker: And then it can build back into the database and maybe it can email customers.
Speaker: Say it's all the data that you've done and also say it will enroll.
Speaker: So you can have this whole flow of data across the Microsoft Office applications, which is what VBA allows you to do.
Speaker: So it is a full-on off-proclaiming language, and that's my favourite course at the end, because it just resonates with me.
Speaker: It's just, you know, it's something that I really enjoy doing.
Speaker: And I really wish that I'd get a happier chance to do more.
Speaker: Other than that, one that I'd be a little bit more about today is the Macro Schools.
Speaker: And some reason for that is because it incorporates VBA.
Speaker: They foliates an introduction to VBA, so, you know, at least it gives them the opportunity to talk about program and talk about VBA, which I quite happily do all day long with that group.
Speaker: It's amazing what you can do, isn't it?
Speaker: It's amazing what you can do and what we don't know we can do either.
Speaker: I think one of the biggest things as well, really, I think some of them you've been saying you've been enjoying doing some of the units of credit as well.
Speaker: So when people don't know about the units of credit, we do the one day training, but the unit and credit help that actually helps people embed the skills back at the workplace.
Speaker: So it's actually based on their own work.
Speaker: And I think that's where you've seen some of the major improvements for projects and things happening, where it's actually on people's work so you can see the end product as well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's definitely satisfying when, for example, that person I was referring to on later on, where I was working with him this morning, where you can see the project, you can see it grow, you can be part of that.
Speaker: And you know that what you're doing, what you're helping them all actually has a tangible difference in the company.
Speaker: And like I said, 20% time saving is huge.
Speaker: So to actually play my partner, that is satisfying, that is gratifying.
Speaker: There's another person I was working with just only this week, actually, where, again, it's a well-known, fairly well-known company in the Northeast.
Speaker: And, you know, they recorded a lot of information, things that are going wrong, and, you know, where they walk around the soft floor, and they try and audit certain items and see if there are any issues and so on.
Speaker: And they've been recording this for quite some time, but they couldn't get anything in from the back end of it now.
Speaker: What's the point of data if you can't actually do anything with your data?
Speaker: So the project that this person was working on was, okay, well, how can we change this so we actually get some real beneficial stuff off it?
Speaker: Now this person had the objective to finish off this project by March of next year because it was a fair size project according to his experience.
Speaker: And within a matter of weeks, we've now pretty much changed the project.
Speaker: And everybody in the company, well, all the stakeholders in the company, are strictly, strictly excited about this because now we are some real insight.
Speaker: Now we can compare departments against one another.
Speaker: Now we can, within departments, they can compare certain elements, certain parts of the deal, certain machines, et cetera, against other departments.
Speaker: They can compare
Speaker: They can slice and dice the data for like all sorts of different models, different parts of V, which just gives them massive insult, which now actually allows them to focus on the things that are important in their thinking.
Speaker: And yeah, being able to be part of that and being able to see that, and when really all of that stuff come up, say a one-day training course, they're going to have them if you fall afterwards, we need fearless insults, but honestly.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: Thank you very much, guys.
Speaker: And thank you very much for being on this podcast today.
Speaker: It's been great to hear about the IT skills that you're delivering at MTC.
Speaker: And I look forward to doing more over the next few months.
Speaker: So thank you very much.
