SNH was using SharePoint but nobody was using it.

When SharePoint failed, SNH turned to Huddle to build and manage training content, share knowledge, and track project information.

SNH provides tailored training solutions to businesses that want to improve sales results, leadership effectiveness and/or staff productivity. Since 2003 they’ve worked with businesses both large and small across a variety of sectors to solve their business headaches, keeping things simple, acting swiftly and offering practical solutions that are easy to implement.

 

“We were using SharePoint to house our course documentation, but people just weren’t using it. It wasn’t neat or well thought out, and it added a layer of complication."

 

When SNH Office Manager Esther Plumley began a review of SNH’s own processes, she set up an evaluation system to compare market solutions that could potentially meet the company’s specific needs. Working on a ‘red/amber/green’ scoresheet, Esther and her colleagues looked at eight different providers, including Asana and Basecamp. Based on the range of capabilities, the winner was Huddle, a decision that Esther says ‘has changed my life!’

“SNH is a highly successful and long-established company, and our procedures and processes are second nature to us. With ongoing expansion we needed something that would centralise and streamline the workflow, and automate some of the processes where applicable,” said Esther.

“We were using SharePoint to house our course documentation. We had a checklist set up and so on to make it as effective as possible, but people just weren’t using it. It wasn’t neat or well thought out, and it added a layer of complication, creating ‘another task’ for people to do. It wasn’t making things simpler – in fact, quite the opposite – so was missing the whole point.”

SNH determined whatever solution they switched to would need to meet a set of key requirements:

• Rapid and simple template creation and duplication

• Secure file storage

• Granular control over accessibility

• Easy, centralised access to each course for each client

“We went through a thorough process, reviewing the capabilities of all available solutions before selecting Huddle. It was not a quick decision – but once we saw what Huddle could do, it was an easy choice to make.”

SNH runs many courses in parallel, and customers can have up to 100 staff on a training programme at any one time. This means that a huge amount of documentation needs to be duplicated and personalized, sometimes in a very short space of time.

“We run 6 or more events every day and while the structure is similar, they will of course change with customer requirements. The introduction of Huddle means we can quickly duplicate templates and tasks across different courses and customers, and set up automatic reminders to ensure everyone keeps to the timescales. There could be 40 or 50 tasks and actions that need to happen during the duration of each course, but now our content is organised and easily found, and users don’t have to search here, there and everywhere to find information and instructions,” said Esther.

Using Huddle, each course is contained within its own area, allowing everyone taking the course to access relevant documentation and keep track record of their personal activities. Workspace areas are secure spaces which are separate for clients and SNH teams.

 

"Once we saw what Huddle could do, it was an easy choice to make"

 

SNH is using Huddle to retain knowledge, building course attendance records and tracking information on a project by project basis, and increasingly for internal collaboration within and between staff teams through project-specific workspaces. Weekly calls are documented, emails drafted, online discussions stored, and documentation and presentations uploaded for comments and approval. The workspaces are also used to store any interesting or relevant information for the team, (.e.g. links to external websites can be added) to share and enhance wider knowledge.

 “Huddle is really easy to use and the adoption rate is great. Adoption was one of my concerns, but it’s now second nature and Huddle’s customer help portal is a real bonus,” said Esther.

“We have found what we were looking for with Huddle. Huddle is having a huge impact on the way we operate– it’s changed my life!”