Barnardo's introduces online training and online meetings to reduce travelling time and cut costs

Working with WebEx Enterprise Edition, Barnardo's introduced tools for online meetings (Meeting Center) and online training sessions (Training Center). WebEx also provides an audio conference service (WebEx Audio), which could replace the company's existing conference call system. The system also means that new staff can be inducted more quickly when they join, whichever region they are employed.

Three years ago, 75% of the charity's training sessions would have taken place in face-to-face classroom sessions, with 25% carried out on site. Now 50% take place online, with the rest split evenly between classroom and on-site visits.

Lisa Johnson, information services learning and development manager, said: "Barnardo's staff are predominately social workers, rather than IT experts, so we didn't want to intimidate them with an overly complex system. The fact that WebEx runs over the web without a lengthy installation process meant that it could be integrated easily with our existing applications and that users could be up and running relatively quickly."

"Classroom-based training sessions require not just the trainer, but all relevant staff, to congregate in one place, meaning significant travel time. Now we can easily do as many as four online training sessions in a day, with no travel required."

 "Classroom sessions need to be booked in advance, and we'd often wait for a certain number of people to need them before scheduling. For a new joiner that could mean a week or more before being formally inducted and trained on basic IT processes. WebEx gives us the freedom to host those sessions remotely, whenever they are needed, enabling new recruits to get going much faster."

Barnardo's is currently putting together a deployment plan to communicate the benefits that have been realised so far to the rest of the business, and to put in place plans for further implementation.