IACT IT Services - the skills to succeed

IACT classroom courses can be delivered in our state of the art training centre on Fitzwilliam Street in Dublin 2 or onsite anywhere throughout Ireland or Worldwide.

Training staff improves morale and efficiency in using the tools they work with everyday. Typically each euro spent on training returns at least a ten fold benefit on investment.

What courses do IACT offer?

IACT was founded in 1993 – and we offer a wide range of courses including: • • • • • • • •

Microsoft Office suite of applications to all levels – Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Project, Access Visio etc.

DTP and Graphic Design courses including Adobe PhotoShop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat and QuarkXpress Programming languages such .NET, JAVA and JavaScript Database management systems including SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL Networking and Operating Systems courses including Windows Server and Cisco CCNA Certification programmes Web design and programming courses including HTML, Wordpress GDPR Compliance and DPO Training Soft-Skills courses including Presentation Skills and Time Management

How large are the classes?

We recommend training classes have at most 12 participants. We provide seminars for large groups in a different format environment. Our trainers can work efficiently with this size of group ensuring each candidate gets the time they require. We organise pre-course assessments if required to group similar levels and training requirements together.

What are the benefits of sending teams on training?

Training improves staff morale but also efficiency and productivity. Most studies have shown a ten fold ROI from training investment.

Onsite courses – save time and money in transport and accommodation costs We can run our courses at your premises – saving you and your team time in travel and accommodation. We can provide a full lab of equipment including laptops and projectors or use your training facilities. We can also organise to use a nearby hotel or other facility if this suits better.

How much do they cost?

We run open courses that can be attended individually and private courses that can be held on your premises or ours and customised to cover topics and areas you particularly want to focus on. Courses vary in price depending on numbers, topics and location but we are very competitively priced.

Classroom Courses Key Benefits: • Run in our training centre or onsite at your location • We can provide laptops, projectors everything needed for an onsite course • Our Pre-course evaluations help group similar requirements and customise the course • Certification options and reporting on staff feedback • Course customisation to focus on the most important topics for your business • Courses for everything from Microsoft Office to Coding, Web Development and Networking and GDPR

Interactive seminars provide a great way to update and motivate staff on key IT skills Why run a seminar?

IACT’s seminars are a great way to brief staff on updates to systems or processes and help them learn tricks and tips in applications they use every day. Its a very cost-effective way of providing ‘training’ which is time and people efficient.

What do I need to run a seminar?

We need a space in your office for the seminar to run. It needs to be interruption free and a good learning environment. We can also host them in IACT or arrange to run them from a hotel.

How many people can attend?

Seminars Key Benefits:

•

Highly cost effective

•

Interactive – allowing users to ask questions

•

Can be scheduled throughout the day for maximum attendance

•

Short seminars cover topics that can immediately be put into action

•

Very motivational providing training at a lower cost for bigger groups

•

Lunchtime and flexible schedules mean higher take-up of spaces

Seminars work with groups as small as 4 to 1000 people – depending on the content and the venue.

How long do they last?

We usually run seminars for about 90 minutes – and we often run them over an extended lunch break. They are run at a fast pace and cover a lot of material to keep the audience active and focused. They are high intensity rapid learning environments. There will usually be a Q&A at the end of the seminar or time for the speaker to meet and talk to the participants and answer any specific queries.

What are the benefits We provide seminars that are high-intensity rapid learning environments that cover a lot of material and spin off many of the benefits of a full training course. 80% of the most powerful features of products like Excel are in 20% of the application – that’s what we focus on. Seminars save time, travel and accommodation costs and we can customise the seminar to demonstrate key features of a tool important in your business.

Seminars also provide an opportunity to learn from other attendee’s questions and to ask questions of the speaker. Many attendees learn about products they’ve never used and see what the benefits can be for their role.

Sample seminars • • • • • •

Office 2016 and Windows Migration Outlook Time Management Excel Safety and Security PowerPoint presentation tips and tricks SharePoint Power Users Excel Macros

Webinars provide a quick and easy way to update staff on new processes and learn new tips and tricks or assist in multi-location IT rollouts

Webinars What is a webinar?

A webinar is a live presentation delivered over the web that can be viewed on a laptop or tablet. Users are able to watch and listen to demonstrations of products (like Excel or SharePoint) and interact with the presenter asking questions just like in a regular seminar.

Benefits:

•

Can facilitate multiple separate locations.

•

Highly cost effective

•

Interactive – allowing users to ask questions

•

Can be scheduled throughout the day for maximum attendance

•

Short seminars cover topics that can immediately be put into action

•

Easy to setup – use a laptop to iPad or even smart phone.

What do you need to run one?

You need a broadband connection and sometimes the use of a conference telephone can sometimes be useful. Most webinars can be viewed over a 4G connection meaning you can watch from a phone or tablet if you have suitable network coverage or good Wi-Fi.

How long do they last?

Webinars are usually about 1 hour in length – this encourages maximum participation – and several Webinars can be scheduled for the same day.

What are the benefits Webinars can be broadcast from your location or from our training centre and watched from anywhere with a broadband connection. This means staff at home or in separate buildings can still take part in the webinar – saving travel and commute costs.

Attendees also have the ability to ask questions and learn from other people’s questions.

Sample webinars • • • • • •

Excel Power Reporting Outlook Time Management Excel Safety and Security PowerPoint presentation tips and tricks SharePoint Power Users Excel Macros

One-to-One Workshops After a training session or seminar is completed our team can work individually answering specific queries about custom projects and how to put the training into action.

Our trainers build a trust with your team while helping them automate and put into action some of the skills they have learned into tasks they meet every day.

How does it work?

The trainer visits your company and either sits at staff desks – or is based in a central location where staff can arrange a time to visit where they discuss any applications they have questions about.

One-to-One Workshops Key Benefits: •

Work directly on a oneon-one basis to help solve problems

•

Makes the training directly applicable and immediately valuable

•

Allows topics to be explained in context

•

Reinforces the classroom learning and puts the learnings straight to work

•

Helps identify other areas for additional training

•

Builds trainee confidence in the training process and like all training will improve morale

•

Allows questions on other applications outside of the main training topic for small refresher opportunities

How long do they last?

Typically users will spend between 15 and 30 minutes with the tutor. The oneto-one sessions can take place in conjunction with our webinars and seminars – utilising the trainers time between sessions. In-company visits usually last between 2-3 days depending on the size of your organisation and your requirements.

What are the benefits The one-to-one sessions help put the training immediately into use – sometimes in situations the trainee would not have thought possible. Viewing spreadsheets or other documents and their structure allows the trainer to advise on best practice and make suggestions to help improve the documents going forward.

On an individual basis – questions which are sometimes not asked in a classroom or seminar setting can be asked freely.

Sample one-to-one sessions after seminars or training • • •

Upgrading to different versions of Office Using Windows / Mac laptop for first time Excel consultancy and advice

Follow-up training with Excel, Access, Word and PowerPoint One-To-One Workshops

Our eLearning courses provide training whenever and wherever you want it – as often as you need it.

What is it?

eLearning

IACT’s eLearning provides online training programmes that can be delivered anywhere and rolled out instantly to every employee – providing a powerful communication and training tool for your business.

Large library of content We provide a large library of content covering everything from Excel and PowerPoint skills right through to Health & Safety and GDPR training.

We provide a clean and easy to use interface with a powerful interactive dashboard so you can see progress and completion levels of content.

Key Benefits: •

Rollout updates and training to the entire organisation instantly

•

No scheduling, travel or room hire costs

•

Immediate feedback and compliance assured

•

Fully customisable we can create and edit content to meet your needs

•

Viewable on any device including tablets and smartphones

•

Works with your existing LMS (we can provide SCORM files) or with ours

•

Full library of content including IT Skills (Office, Web, Excel) and compliance courses (GDPR, Health & Safety

We build all our own content – or yours!

With nearly 20 years of eLearning experience - we build all our own content – so we can adapt or create a new course just for you – including any branding, messaging or specific requirements you may have.

Customised Branded Portal We create a customised portal for you and your company so that your content sits neatly in your own environment.

etc.)

Ask for a demonstration – and talk to us about building customised eLearning content for your business.

Our award winning eLearning is used by Microsoft and over 1 Million users Worldwide.

•

Very experienced eLearning providers – over 20 years experience

•

Very cost efficient

GDPR Consulting and Training Services The General Data Protection Rules Since May 2018 the GDPR has become law in Ireland and across Europe – with far reaching implications throughout the World. Essentially the GDPR regulates how businesses should manage the data it holds on EU citizens and what rights those individuals have to their data.

The regulations have far-reaching implications for businesses no matter where they are based and breaching the rules can incur fines of up to 4% of annual global turnover.

GDPR Consultancy & Training Key Benefits: •

Expert professional trainers with a legal and data security experience

•

Certification for your Data Protection Officer

•

Training for all your staff to ensure they are familiar with the foundations of the GDPR

•

Toolkits and templates to assist in creating the required documentation

•

Assistance with data audits and data clean up and security needs for your IT Systems

•

Consultancy for data breaches and working with the Data Commissioner

•

Subject Access Requests consultancy and advice

•

Data Privacy Impact Assessment and privacy by design consulting

What does the GDPR mean for your business?

Every business has to put in place procedures to comply with the regulations and ensure all staff are fully trained and aware of the GDPR regulations – regardless of their size or location - once they have customers in the EU. That pretty much includes every business in Europe and nearly every large business World-wide as well as many smaller ones.

This regulation – although onerous - can provide a great opportunity to review what data you store – allowing you to re-examine what you need and what data you can or should remove from your systems. It can provide a good opportunity to review some of the procedures and systems you have in place – and we can help you with all of those systems.

How can IACT help?

IACT provide training for Businesses and Government departments in the GDPR regulation. We were awarded a cross-EU tender by the Irish Government to train the Data Protection Officers in all departments beating competition from across Europe thanks our team of GDPR experts – specialist Solicitors and Barristers with wide ranging data protection experience.

We have a toolkit and templates for your company to help review your policies and procedures and help with keeping your company compliant.

In the event of a breach we can also work with you in the event of an investigation by the Data Commission in preparing your response and ensuring your ongoing compliance.

We can help train your designated in-house Data Protection Officer as well as providing end-user training for everyone in your organisation using our popular eLearning GDPR solution.

GDPR solutions for your company • • •

Private and open courses for your Data Protection Officer leading to certification by IACT Toolkits and templates to help with creating and updating policies and procedures assisted by qualified Barristers and Solicitors specialising in GDPR and Data Protection End-user compliance and GDPR training for all staff using our eLearning platform or seminar format.

Toolbar and Template Customisation to standardise and speedup the creation of documents, presentations and spreadsheets.

Speed up and standardise document creation If your team are creating presentations, reports and other documents or spreadsheets they should all look like they come from your business. Building standard templates and customised toolbars helps speed up the process of using templates and ensuring design standards and rules are always followed.

Toolbar & Template Customisation Key Benefits: •

Provide a consistent look for documents and presentations

•

Toolbars make it quicker to produce documents and help them remain consistent

•

Easier for users to navigate between different documents and update them

•

eLearning provides a quick start guide for new recruits to get up to speed quickly editing documents

•

Can facilitate some automation for publishing to different environments

Add customised functions and toolbars to Word, Excel & PowerPoint that speed up working with and in-house using templates and styles.

Do I need a customised Template or Toolbar?

If you have a team producing large documents and regular presentations – building a professional template and a custom toolbar will save time everyday and help your organisation stick with a professional format. We can help with the design or work with your design team to implement their design within Microsoft Office.

How does it work?

Once the templates and toolbars are created – we provide online training and a seminar demonstrating how to work with and use the templates and toolbars correctly. The online eLearning means instructions are always available to new users at any time.

How long does it take to build the templates?

Depending on the number of templates you require and the complexity of the design it usually takes between one and six weeks to create the toolbars and templates and rollout the training.

What are the benefits The templates provide a standardised format for presentations and reports as well as safety and security considerations with Excel documents. Users become familiar with the design and work with the tools in an efficient way making document and presentation creation quicker and more professional as well as safeguarding the data they present.

How much do they cost?

Toolbars and templates are created as a bespoke product and quoted on request.

Sample toolbars and templates for • • •

Excel (including structure & design for audit) Word report and tender templates PowerPoint presentation templates

Excel Modelling, Automation & Auditing Excel is the most widely used and most important of all business applications. It is used in every business whether large and small for a myriad of different applications.

Excel Modelling & Automation

How can we help?

We have taught thousands of users how to work with Excel since it ran on Windows 3.1 and we’ve seen it used for everything from banking to modelling complex leasing arrangements for aircraft. We have a team of Excel experts who can help automate your spreadsheets to save you hours or even weeks of time each month or design specific spreadsheets for your models.

Key Benefits:

We can also Audit your spreadsheets and identify common errors or problems and help when the original designer of the spreadsheet is gone.

• Document complex spreadsheets and have them re-checked externally

Importing data and updating models We can help update models directly from data feeds or other sources (e-mail, text files, log files etc.) and clean-up that data when its imported – often automatically.

Securing and testing models We can help secure existing spreadsheet models and document and simplify the design of large spreadsheets – making them easier to update and safer for everyone.

Automating and simplifying inputs – working with PowerPoint & Outlook We can create forms to help update and fill-in information into a spreadsheet so the end-user is not required to understand the model or won’t inadvertently make a mistake. We can also feed the information directly into a spreadsheet or an e-mail if required – updating a presentation with customised business information or names for example as well as refreshing charts and tables in the presentation.

How long does it take to automate?

Depending on the complexity of the design it usually takes between one and six weeks to automate spreadsheets and build the required resources.

What are the benefits Excel can be automated and the savings in time can be huge. Depending on the requirements which we can determine quite quickly we’ll let you know how much time you are likely to be able to save. We’ll ensure the design is well structured and minimise the chance for errors.

How much does it cost?

Automation is a bespoke product and quoted on request.

Sample automation tasks • • • • •

Importing and cleaning up banking records Importing data from text files and SAP reports Auditing finance models for aircraft leasing Auditing and automating drug test reports Creating custom presentations for clients based on spreadsheet data (for example insurance / pension / logistics information)

• Save time automating common tasks in Excel

• Integrate Excel with the other Office applications to automate proposals and reports • Have your models Audited for safety and security • Clean-up imported data and consolidate multiple sources at the click of a button • Build customised Toolbars to automate common tasks in Excel (or other office applications).

Software and App Development Services Whether it is a web app to promote your brand or a fully functional desktop application – we can help.

Whether your business needs a customised database to track your systems or processes or you want to create an iPhone or Android App to promote your business and keep in contact with your staff or clients we can help.

IACT have an expert team of developers who work in a wide range of programming and database languages from low level C/C++ code to C#, VB.NET, JAVA and JavaScript. We develop our own internal systems as well as developing software for companies and training teams on a wide range of development languages.

Would you like us to support your database system or help you migrate it to the cloud? Would you like us to develop a bespoke system for you that integrates existing platforms and systems into one easy to navigate platform?

Software & Database Development Key Benefits: •

Long established and deep knowledge of many programming languages and environments

•

Experienced team of developers with wide experience on web, app and desktop application development

•

Training for your team after production ensuring support and application adoption success

•

Employ AI technology to automate and improve application interfaces

•

Deploy to wide range of platforms – Windows, Mac, iPhone and Android or web platforms

•

Integrate our software with existing SQL Server, Oracle or MySQL databases.

What platforms do IACT develop for?

We can develop for Windows and Mac desktop environments as well as creating web based interfaces that can run anywhere or assist with cloud migration. We can develop cross-platform Apps for iPhone and Android phones.

How long does it take to a build a complete solution?

The time it takes to develop a solution depends on whether we have created a similar solution previously and the complexity of the required software system. Before we begin we will create a detailed specification which will allow us to estimate the time and costs of the project.

How much will it cost?

Software applications are created after a detailed software needs analysis and following a discussion with the client. Rates are quoted on an individual project basis or we can provide a resource to work in-house on your project at an agreed weekly rate.

AI Consultancy and Development Services

Artificial Intelligence is being used widely in many industries – and we can see examples today on our phones and our desktop PCs AI is becoming a widely used technology helping hundreds of millions of people every day on their phones, at home and in the work-place. Most users are unaware of when they are now actually interacting with a machine in many situations.

AI has some way to go before it can carry out certain generally useful activities but it can still be used effectively today in all of the following areas: •

Voice recognition – including phone call automation and authorisation of transactions in banking

•

Automated chatbots are widely used to answer common questions on websites and are powered by simple AI bots

•

Language translation – converting up to 95% of text and audio into hundreds of different languages saving enormous amounts of effort – including real-time captions on sports events and other video sources

•

Security and networking monitoring for attacks and virus prevention

•

As well as the widely publicised use in self-driving cars, use in advanced robotics for walking, dancing and acrobatic robots.

AI

Consulting Services Key Benefits: •

Help automate some tasks in your business employing AI tools

•

Learn about the advances in AI and what that can mean for you going forward

•

Use AI to keep your support lines and website active 24 hours a day

•

Your business can leverage the billions invested in this technology to benefit your business

•

AI can now automate many text and image based processes including translation and basic human interaction

•

Voice recognition technology is now a mature and reliable technology

•

State of the art computer generated speech is now hard for most users to distinguish from real human voices

Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Facebook have all invested billions in developing this technology that can be harnessed in every business today using their libraries and toolkits.

What can AI do for my business?

AI will in time transform every business replacing at the start many mundane and tedious tasks moving to more complex and useful skills allowing us to focus on what we are good at. How AI can help your business depends very much on the tasks you would like to consider automating and using tested AI skills. Some tasks can be quickly and easily implemented others will take time or are not yet possible with existing technology.

How can IACT help?

We have a team of developers working with the libraries and tools provided Microsoft, Google and Amazon that can help implement AI solutions for your business levering the power of their cloud solutions. Depending on the complexity of the task – many AI development solutions already exist that could be plugged into your business.

How much will it cost?

Rates are quoted on an individual project basis or we can provide a resource to work in-house on your project at an agreed weekly rate.