Supporting a digital community using e-learning



VETR, is the digital learning community for the Australian education and training sector. They support an extended community of approximately 9,000 education and training professionals with the resources and just-in-time professional development needed to support their ongoing professional practice.To date over 1,300 education institutions across the Australian region have engaged in various VETR resources and services. Phill Bevan, Community Advisor at VETR, shares his experience with using CYPHER Matrix™.
What were the business's challenges before CYPHER Matrix?
Phill Bevan, Community Advisor: Our operations had reached a crossroads – we had a web presence that was run with multiple sites & applications that wasn’t meeting the full service needs of our community. We were preparing to expand our offering with a variety of digital live events and micro-learning with no effective technology approach. Feedback from our community was that our sales and registration process was disjointed. They really needed further efficient and timely training support for the use of our resources and to assist with growing regulatory and scope of practice topics.
We were also stuck with wanting to trial and implement a range of business models across our product and service line, such as: individual and group purchases, pre-purchasing, subscriptions, integrated product and service lines, and free events. We were struggling to achieve this with the existing technology solutions that we had in place. Also, the manual administration within the business was starting to strangle us as we continued to grow.
How did you find a solution?
We knew within minutes of first seeing CYPHER Matrix that we’d found our solution. Being learning professionals, we have been using LMS technology for several decades for various purposes, but on watching the initial CYPHER Matrix demo we’ve never seen anything like it. Mobile responsive, attractive interface, easy-to-use, huge range of features, gamification, extensive integrations, amazing automation engine and a built-in social community with an e-commerce feature that does all of the various business model options we were looking for.
How did the adoption process go?
The initial implementation was one of the smoothest transitions we’ve ever been involved with. We did all implementation and training in-house, using CYPHER Matrix’ help and support function that we think is second to none. It took us less than 30 days from initial installation to go live with our community - a whole platform transition in one go.
We have used CYPHER Matrix to replace all of the prior sites we were running and it is now the technology underpinning our entire community.
Automation and integration has also been a breeze, with our operations having CYPHER Matrix integrated with email marketing, finance, webinar and credential issuing platforms to drive engagement and reduce administrative work across the entire business.
What improvements have you noticed since using CYPHER Matrix?
We’ve used CYPHER Matrix to drive our entire digital community approaching two years now. We could not run our business and support our community of educators as effectively any other way. Our team has been able to focus on supporting our community engagement rather than heavy manual administration processes.
We have used a myriad technology and LMS solutions over the years and CYPHER Matrix is simply the most attractive, fully-featured, easy-to-use option available.
How did CYPHER Matrix help boost performance in your company?
CYPHER Matrix has allowed us to re-invent and continue to grow our business dramatically, while launching and providing new services to our community members. We continue to break new records each quarter in various engagement and sales measures and revenue has more than doubled since implementing, without adding any new personnel.
The incredible automation options of the technology we keep talking about has removed so much of the mundane manual administration that was weighing down our team – we believe we will be able to double in size again in the coming two years still without any new administrative personnel being required.
Which features are most helpful to your company and why?
The visitor presence is a key part of our implementation. Digital media resource sales have continued to grow exponentially since transitioning to CYPHER Matrix, and the e-commerce functionality now allows us to provide microlearning, live digital events, packages of events, bundled products and services, monthly and annual subscription packages. and pre-sales. We can run any business model approach we want on a product line basis.
Within the community across our various product lines, we’ve been using gamification and digital credentials to recognise achievements, to develop content and release schedules to control and curate our participant experiences. We’ve also used social community features to really drive ongoing engagement with community members online.
With our live streaming solution also embedded directly into CYPHER Matrix, our event attendees don’t have to go to another platform or worry about links and access. It all seems seamless and attendees can just focus on the great event they’re joining and the pre and post activities around the live sessions that the technology enables. Every business should consider CYPHER Matrix as their go-to solution for digital learning & online communities.
What do you like most about CYPHER Matrix?
The best result we’d note is that our VETR community loves using CYPHER Matrix. Since the initial transition we have received nothing but positive comments around how user friendly and easy the technology is to use. Individuals can focus on the tasks and topics they are looking to achieve, rather than worrying about how to work with the tech! We’re asked all the time, “What’s that great LMS you use?” The answer is CYPHER Matrix.