PRODUCTIVITY INC

Habitech’s powerful new online knowledge resource means you can learn at your own speed without ever having to leave your seat says Justin Martin Lawrence.

Today, everybody leans on the internet for work, for play, for socialising, and naturally for learning. It’s the go-to source for how-to info. If you want to see how to fit a door on a fridge, or a nylon spool to a strimmer, you go to YouTube. Nobody reads manuals these days. So we’re transforming our own knowledge base to include more of everything online, including document libraries, instructional vids, online webinars, live streaming, even remote hands-on training. The aim is to dovetail interactive video content with our traditional classes to create the widest, most versatile mix of learning opportunities yet conceived. Launching in September, we’re calling it the Habitech University, or Hab-U for short.

KNOWLEDGE BUILDS RELATIONSHIPS

From the very start, Habitech has understood that CI’s promise of awesome product performance and fault-free installation hinges on the support of high quality know-how. It’s no secret that better trained integrators make more money by avoiding the spiralling costs of system failure - not just the expense of sending a fixer, but reputational damage as well. By reducing the risk of downtime, a meaningful exchange of information is the key to every successful business relationship. For the supplier it builds confidence in its brands and products; for the integrator it reduces time on site, generates more powerful and reliable outcomes, and secures happy clients and future work. The virtuous ecosystem that sustains the entire CI food chain from the customer down is rooted in great training, which is why the new Hab-U platform will boost rewards all round.

YOU CAN PLEASE EVERYONE

While everyone benefits from a rich training diet, the level of nutrition relies on matching content with the consumer. For instance, a sales course promoting the business advantages of a product line is unlikely to be as useful to an engineer as a hands-on nuts-and-bolts installation course. Conversely, the weeds of a networking seminar are less likely to appeal to a project or business manager. What Hab-U presents is a wide menu of online training goodness, from which every member of an integration team can pick, according to their role and without ever having to leave the home or office.

This means that our business partners will avoid the time and expense of a trip to Habitech if all they need is a brush-up on the tech. You can simply choose the learning tools you need to fill knowledge gaps at your leisure. The entire curriculum is available, so managers can refresh their understanding of the latest advances in Wi-Fi and networking for instance, check product benefits or appreciate the practical challenges of installation, while engineers, (usually preoccupied with system architecture), are able to digest a product or brand backstory by clicking through to a vid on the portal.

Not only do the more agile training advantages of Hab-U deliver a better targeting of information and cost savings to your business, they’re also available as back-up in high pressure situations. All too often staff shortages force dealers to send an untrained engineer to a job. Hab-U is designed to equip the team with the know-how required for a successful fix, at any time at the speed of a click or two. The idea is that everyone gets what they need with maximum efficiency and minimum cost.

CLICK THROUGH TO HAB-U

As an evolving open platform, Habitech University will help you develop your skills in lockstep with the industry and at a pace that suits you. From September, you’ll be able to click the training tab on the top nav bar of the Habitech website to explore all the training courses and a growing resource of ‘how to’ instructional webinars, product intro vids and spec sheets by brand. To book a course, click the registration link on the training page and a member of our training team will get in touch to set you up on HAB-U and book in-person training if it’s applicable to the course. It is possible, however, to graduate from certain courses without ever leaving the office by completing a series of modules and assessments. Join live training streams from our inhouse team or from manufacturers such as Ruckus, Draytek and Naim via a zoom link. Even hands-on courses may be accessed remotely via web GUI and VPN to practice switch settings for instance.

NEW PATHS TO SUCCESS

While we put the finishing touches to the new syllabus, here’s a broad idea of what to expect. Join us live online or in person for the next Habitech ProNET networking courses, which have been raising the bar since 2012. The one-day Foundation course is the ideal way to get your head around the fundamentals of networking: cable and fibre types, routers and switches, Wi-Fi, planning the network, flat vs segmented networks, IPv4 and IPv6 broadband, adding resilience and speed, network health and testing. Meanwhile the advanced threeday ProNET integrator course covers bandwidth management, load balancing, understanding VLANs and Virtual Private Networks before handing over to specialists from Draytek and Ruckus onsite for a hands-on tour of system set-up and capabilities.

Other highlights from the menu include ‘Cinema Essentials’ for anyone new to home cinema or for integrators wanting to refresh their knowledge on audio/video basics and design best practice. ‘Cabling for Success’ covers the choices and techniques required to build future-proof infrastructures. ‘Naim and Wisdom - The Home of High-End Audio’ course sees two giants of the high-end audio world unite to define the parameters of integrated high-end system design, while the ‘Resimercial AV’ seminar guides your transition from residential projects to success in semicommercial and pure commercial spaces. Then there’s the ‘Home of Cinema - Advanced Calibration’ day dedicated to audio optimisation through hands-on calibration with Dirac; ‘The Integrators guide to Complete Outdoor Luxury’, which explains how to ‘cover the ground with sound’ from cottage gardens to estates, and ‘Conference Solutions End-to-End’, which deals with the more advanced aspects of CAV deployment.

WHAT, WHY, HOW, NOW

Because the pandemic has put the world of work on a ‘remote’ footing, we’re developing our training outreach to match. You’ll benefit from easier online access to a much wider range of learning tools created to demystify today’s evolving design challenges, at a time that suits you. In a faster moving tech environment, Hab-U’s always-on enlightenment could be the smartest way to add productivity to your business.

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