2020 – The Year Revisited

A message from our Directors

We were particularly looking forward to the roaring 20s. What started out as an exciting decade with limitless opportunity, quickly became a year that will never be forgotten in the history of the world. We realise for many of you, that there were challenges and for some, immeasurable hardships.

But what we know is that the human spirit is such that sometimes these challenges can bring the best out in us. We personally witnessed the capacity of our team and our clients, to dig deep and display enormous resilience in adapting to their new circumstances.  We have recently reflected on the year past and although some low points, there was much learning and therefore, some real highlights. I think everyone would agree that we were required to flex our mental models and in some cases, this has been for the better.

We wish you all the very best for 2021, may it be a year of great success.

Let us share some of our highlights for 2020:

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#1 – We pivoted to working from home in one day!

On a Monday morning in mid-March, we met to discuss the alarming rate of COVID-19 occurrences. We recognised that first and foremost, our staff needed to be safe, and made the decision to start working from home immediately.

Our team responded in the most awesome manner to the news – they truly rallied and put a plan into place with the necessary technology to ensure success.

Providing a reliable system and excellent customer service was paramount, and we did this.

‍Naturally, there was a great deal of learning, but the truth is, business owners everywhere were changing directions in an effort to respond to these turbulent times. We were all in this together and so grateful for everyone’s patience and the team’s incredible input and enthusiasm.

#2 – We rocked around the clock with great success

It became clear that face-to-face learning was no longer possible, and those clients not already providing online training would need to urgently take their business online. We were able to assist clients to rapidly move their businesses to an all-virtual format, minimising disruption of learning programs and of course, revenue streams.

We learned that despite challenges, there will always be opportunities for those agile and brave enough to try something new.

‍Our decision to build on an online learning platform was one of the best decisions we have ever made.

Our phones were ringing off the hook from RTOs that were using a system without online learning. Around 200 new clients came on board in 2020 and the team worked tirelessly to onboard new clients and train them in our system.

We had a great deal to achieve and, given that everyone was working from home with a few more hours up their sleeve, we offered an extended day – introducing the ‘Rock around the clock’ initiative.

#3 – We ramped up our support

With more people building businesses online than ever before, the Customer Success team worked with amazing commitment, diligence, and extreme loyalty to continue to provide excellent service.

Between phone calls, email, and chat, our support team had over 8000 conversations with our customers, with an average 96.6% CSAT score, responding to over 19700 tickets. A big thank you for all the outstanding work Mark, Blair, Ty, Wes, John, Matt, Ashley, Tom, and all the team.  

#4 – We have some new leaders...

Meet Eric Fairall – the newest leader at aXcelerate, who we’re thrilled to have at the helm of the Marketing and Sales team. Eric has joined us with a wealth of knowledge, expertise and energy and has taken on the exciting challenge of growing not only our business, but also our clients’ businesses. We can’t wait to form business-growth partnerships with our wonderful clients with Eric’s lead.

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Meet Mark Gilmore – our new Manager of Customer Success who has been leading client support and onboarding. Mark’s commitment to not only providing exceptional service to clients, but also to his team, is inspiring, and we saw much of his hard work in 2020 with the Customer Success team’s outstanding results. We’re excited to see all of the great work Mark leads the way in this year.

#5 – We rolled out hundreds of product improvements

We rolled out literally hundreds of new features and product improvements...check out some key highlights below:

• aXcelerate has now become a fully fledged Learning Management System, with significant new features:

• Our new online assessment question types, with focus on mobile-device compatibility, have taken aXcelerate’s eLearning capabilities to the next level for our clients.
• We integrated a new Virtual Classrooms feature
• Lessons now enable clients to author their own learning content in aXcelerate and combine content, media and automarked quiz questions
• aXcelerate now enables student and assessor declarations and digital signatures for online assessment

• Our new partner portal allows you to set up specific domains for each of your delivery partners
• To assist funded clients to more easily reconcile their government payments, we introduced our auto contract reconciliation feature
• Our improved Xero two-way integration has provided even more productivity benefits
• Clients can now add QR codes to certificates in aXcelerate’s certificate builder, allowing for quick validation and viewing of achievement attained
• We improved our Ezypay integration to process single credit card transactions
  

We have some fantastic new features coming your way soon!

#6 – We celebrated wins

Jules was presented with a Telstra Business Women’s Award

One of the most exciting events of 2020 was Telstra presenting Jules with a winning Business Women’s Award. Jules is a fearless leader at aXcelerate, and champions leading with HEART–honesty, empathy, acceptance, respect and trust. From empowering women with her VET Women As Leaders initiative, to ensuring every aXcelerate staff member achieves success, Jules is one of the most inspiring people we know. Congratulations Jules!

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Scott O’Connell was voted employee of the year

Scott is a talented, thorough and diligent developer who has a strong focus on delivering quality well-tested code and outcomes for our clients. Over the last twelve months, our development team has grown significantly in size and Scott has taken time to mentor, coach, develop and improve the skills of each developer through code reviews and team-wide professional development sessions. Although Scott is an extremely versatile developer, he has spent a significant amount of the previous year involved in (and leading) compliance and security-related projects. We are extremely fortunate that Scott has chosen to bless our team with his amazing and sometimes (most times) sarcastic sense of humour. Congratulations Scott!

#7 – We welcomed new team members

We're so excited to introduce you to...

• Emma Johnson - Marketing Assistant
• Isaac Brandon - Marketing & Sales Coordinator
• Grace Buckman - Relationships Manager
• Connor Bouch - Outbound Sales Representative
• Tristan Drewett - Outbound Sales Representative
• Scott Reimers - Human Success Coordinator
• Mathew Moor - Customer Success Representative
• John Cam - Customer Success Representative
• Ashlee Jordan - Customer Success Representative
• Brad Sorensen - Customer Success Representative
• Tom Bassingthwaighte - Customer Success Manager
• George Burt - Online Enrolments Assistant
• Bryan Kassulke - Onboarding Assistant (Data Migration)
• Yasir Asiri - Java Web Developer
• Owen Peries - Graduate Web Developer
• Yangfan Zhang - Graduate Web Developer
• Jeremy Cheng - Graduate Web Developer
• Nikita Tkachov - Software Developer
• Belle Murray-Salter - Junior Product Designer (UI/UX)

#8 - We’re ready to take it to the #nextlevel in 2021

We’ve returned to aXcelerate with a bang! Our annual planning session was held at the Paddington Hotel. For some, it was their first day with the company and they couldn’t have been more delighted. We took time to celebrate our wins and set goals for 2021.  

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