LearnKey Blog

MTA Security Fundamentals Released!

Today, we are excited to announce the release of our MTA Security Fundamentals course.

MTA Security Fundamentals (98-367)

LearnKey’s MTA Security Fundamentals course is geared toward those looking to learn basic operating system security fundamentals. This course will also prepare students to take and pass the MTA Security Fundamentals exam (98-367). The four main topics covered in this course are: security layers, operating system security, network security, and security software. This course will also improve employability prospects for those trying to gain an entry-level IT support/desktop position with some basic security knowledge requirements.

Our hope is that through our courseware we may provide learners with the guidance, preparation, and skills they need to succeed. For more information and to learn about additional LearnKey products visit our website.

Introduction to Programming Concepts and QuickBooks 2017 Courses Released

Today, we are excited to announce the release of our Introduction to Programming Concepts and QuickBooks 2017 courses, and the Access 2016 MasterExam.

Introduction to Programming Concepts

This 90-minute course is an introduction to basic programming concepts and is perfect for those who want to learn how to program, but don’t know where to start. Rather than focusing on a single programming language, this course will teach prospective programmers three basic principles: introduction to objects, program design basics, and coding basics.

QuickBooks 2017

LearnKey’s QuickBooks 2017 course is designed to improve the employability prospects for any company needing someone who can work with QuickBooks efficiently. The course also serves as a preparation for the QuickBooks Certified User Exam. The course goes through all ten exam domains: QuickBooks Setup, General Product Knowledge, List Management, Items, Sales, Purchases, Payroll, Reports, Basic Accounting, and Customization. This course will give users the confidence to work effectively with QuickBooks for businesses of all types.

Access 2016 MasterExam

LearnKey’s Microsoft Access 2016 MasterExam will help you prepare to take exam 77-730. This educational training product is intended to be used in combination with LearnKey’s video courseware. The MasterExam has hundreds of questions to test your knowledge, helping you become a certified user of Access 2016.

Our hope is that through our courseware we may provide learners with the guidance, preparation, and skills they need to succeed. For more information and to learn about additional LearnKey products visit our website.

Access 2016 Released!

Today, we are excited to announce the release of our Access 2016 course.

Access 2016 (77-730)

In Access 2016, the relational database app in Microsoft Office, you can design your own databases or use templates to create databases to share with others, namely coworkers. LearnKey Senior Instructor Jason Manibog will take you through creating databases, creating tables, building queries, building forms, and building reports. These five topics are also the topics on the Microsoft Office Specialist exam for Access 2016 (Exam 77-730). This, combined with what you will learn about relational database structures, will improve your employability prospects in any position needing skills with small to medium-sized relational databases.

Our hope is that through our courseware we may provide learners with the guidance, preparation, and skills they need to succeed. For more information and to learn about additional LearnKey products visit our website.

Time To Get Animated With Our Upcoming Adobe Animate CC Course

How many of you remember when Macromedia Flash first became a big “thing” on the Internet? No? How about Adobe Flash? Maybe? How about this question: How many of you feel skunked when you tap to a website on your mobile device only to get the dreaded message, “Your browser does not support Flash”?

Well, you’re not alone if this has happened to you. And just as Flash was the big thing years ago, HTML5 is now. However, Flash and HTML5 did not really work well together, because, to export from Flash, you had to get a plug-in or tool or some kind of extension. It just wasn’t a smooth, seamless process.

Fortunately, those days are over. What was once known as Adobe Flash is now Adobe Animate, one of the newest additions to the Adobe suite of programs. In a nutshell, Adobe Animate is Flash plus the ability to easily create files for ActionScript (the native Flash format), HTML5, and WebGL (Web Graphics Library).

With a new program comes a brand new Adobe Animate course, due to launch late spring/early summer. This course is going to be a thorough, yet clear and concise, introduction to Adobe Animate and will serve two purposes: to improve your employability skills in the areas of web and graphic design as they relate to Adobe Animate, and to get you prepared to pass the Adobe Certified Associate in Multiplatform Animations using Adobe Animate CC exam and obtain your ACA in Animate.

How are we going to do this, you ask? First, we are going to cover animation terms and definitions and build a project in this course while focusing on these five major exam topics:

  • Setting Project Requirements
  • Understanding Rich Animated Media
  • Understanding Adobe Animate CC
  • Creating Rich Animated Media Content Using Animate CC
  • Testing, Publishing, and Evaluating Rich Animated Media Elements Using Animate CC

To cover these, we will have several (but not too many) hours of video training, pre-assessment and post-assessment tests, practice labs, and a project workbook full of practice exercises. All of these tools are here to, again, increase your employability prospects and help you obtain the Animate CC ACA certification.

Finally, for those of you wondering which version of Animate we will be covering, technically the course is going to be built for the latest certification offering, which is Animate CC 2015, but the course will work just as well for anyone trying to learn Animate CC 2017.

MTA Windows Operating System Fundamentals Released!

Today, we are excited to announce the release of our MTA Windows Operating System Fundamentals course.

MTA Windows Operating System Fundamentals

The MTA Windows Operating System Fundamentals course (exam 98-349) has been updated to include Windows 10 features and delete any features from Windows 7 not supported in Windows 10. This is a perfect course for someone who wants to learn how to manage Windows 10 and gain the skills necessary to pass the 98-349 exam. LearnKey Senior Instructor Jason Manibog will take you through these Windows 10 topics: Understanding Operating System Configurations, Installing and Upgrading Client Systems, Managing Applications, Managing Files and Folders, Managing Devices, and Understanding Operating System Maintenance. This MTA certification is a precursor to an MCSA certification for Windows 10.

Our hope is that through our courseware we may provide learners with the guidance, preparation, and skills they need to succeed. For more information and to learn about additional LearnKey products visit our website.

Can You Become a QuickBooks Certified User Without Being a CPA? Absolutely!

That question above was one of many questions I got when I used to teach QuickBooks in a classroom setting. I’m not a CPA and I’m a certified QuickBooks user, so you can become one too. What is QuickBooks, you ask? It’s an industry-leading accounting software program, geared toward helping businesses of all sizes organize and perform their accounting duties.

We are currently working on our updated QuickBooks Certified User course, which we have completed filming and are in the process of fine-tuning. This course maps to the 10 domains on the QuickBooks Certified User certification exam. The 10 domains are:

  • QuickBooks Setup
  • QuickBooks Utilities and General Product Knowledge
  • List Management
  • Items
  • Sales
  • Purchases
  • Payroll
  • Reports
  • Basic Accounting
  • Customization and Shortcuts

Our new QuickBooks course covers these 10 domains in such a way to help you prepare to pass the QuickBooks Certified User exam (done through Certiport) and obtain your QuickBooks Certified User certification. We present the material in a very concise, easy-to-follow format, kind of like the QuickBooks program itself.

This course will have video training, pre-assessment and post-assessment tests, practice labs, and a project workbook, all geared toward solidifying your QuickBooks knowledge not only for the certification, but also to improve your employability prospects for any position requiring QuickBooks knowledge. Or you may have a small business of your own and want solid knowledge of QuickBooks, so you can let it do the major accounting work for you, leaving you to do what you do best—run your business.

So, back to the original question: Can you get the QuickBooks Certified User certification without being a CPA? Yes, indeed! And you can get this without being a financial planner or tax preparation expert or, well, you get the drift.

Stay tuned to this blog space for my update next week. I promise you, it will get “animated” at times!

Outlook 2016 Course and Workbooks Released!

Today, we are excited to announce the release of our Outlook 2016 course.

Outlook 2016

In this course, LearnKey Senior Instructor Jason Manibog will take you through what is needed to become proficient and efficient in Outlook 2016, the personal information management tool in Microsoft Office. Specific topics include: email, calendar, contacts, tasks, and notes. The course will also prepare you to take exam 77-731, the Microsoft Office Specialist exam for Outlook 2016.

Our hope is that through our courseware we may provide learners with the guidance, preparation, and skills they need to succeed. For more information and to learn about additional LearnKey products visit our website.

2017 Best Training ROI for your employee’s and customers?

customerservice

It is all about better communication resulting in a better customer experience.

It’s a no-brainer that bad customer service will cost your company business. But it turns out employees’ behavior toward each other can affect your bottom line, too.

So the question is: are your employees properly job ready trained in the areas of dealing with difficult customers, meeting consumer needs, the art of customer service, listening under pressure, workplace ethics, email etiquette, social media at work, and bullying in the workplace?

A well-known study of retailer Sears revealed that a five-point improvement in employee attitude results in a 1.3% increase in customer satisfaction, which then drives an 0.5% increase in company revenue.

Which is why LearnKey’s 2017 video-based training series on customer service is the perfect solution for your organization. It’s relevant for today’s workforce, high quality, available anytime/anywhere, and can help you deliver a solid ROI for both your business customers and, most importantly, your employees.

In today’s digital world it’s all about the customer experience:

What is customer experience and why is it important?

Customer experience is your customers’ perceptions of how your company treats them. These perceptions affect their behaviors, build memories and feelings, and may drive their loyalty. In other words, if they like you and continue to like you, they are going to do business with you and recommend you to others.  Note: If one of your customers has a bad experience there is less than a 10% chance they will tell you about it, but they will choose not to do business with you in the future.

Why should you focus on improving your customer experience?

According to a recent walker study, by 2020 customer experience will overtake price and product as a key differentiator. By now it should be clear that customer service can no longer be relegated to the basement of your brand’s focus. It must be front and center of your organization, alongside marketing, as a priority focus for customer interaction and retention.

Contact us today for a no-cost proof of concept on how this training can improve your ROI.

Premiere Pro CC 2015 Test Prep Released!

Today, we are excited to announce the release of our Premiere Pro CC 2015 Test Prep course.

Premiere Pro CC 2015 Test Prep

LearnKey’s Premiere Pro CC 2015 Test Prep course is a complementary resource to go along with the Premiere Pro CC course, authored by Expert Ryan James. Although the Premiere Pro CC course readies you for the Premiere Pro CC exam, there are new objectives and types of test questions which are covered in the Premiere Pro CC 2015 Test Prep course. LearnKey Senior Instructor Jason Manibog takes you through these changes, so you will have the tools you need to confidently pass the Premiere Pro CC 2015 exam.

Our hope is that through our courseware we may provide learners with the guidance, preparation, and skills they need to succeed. For more information and to learn about additional LearnKey products visit our website.

Trending 2017 Education as a Benefit (EaaB): Enabling Employers To Retain Great Talent

Great leaders know the importance of continuous education for their employees: “Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.” – Richard Branson, Founder Virgin Group.

As retention and staff development continue to challenge service companies specifically in the areas of customer service, IT help desk, and front & back office support, we are actively helping our customers solve that problem, as well as improving retaining employees and enhancing their current skillsets.

To that extent, LearnKey can help you build a custom Education as a Benefit (EaaB) program. Customer feedback, as well as findings by a recent Corporate Learning Insiders report surveying top L&D leaders published 1/19/17 on LinkedIn’s learning blog, further validates this need:

  • A majority, 57%, predict that employers will increase education benefits more than traditional benefits in 2017. Evidence exists that this could be a powerful way to boost retention and keep people from job-hopping as much as they might otherwise in today’s economy.
  • 71% predict that partnering with outside training providers will be the best strategy to get ahead of the widening skills gap.
  • Additionally, Insiders believe that micro-learning content delivered in small, specific segments – and on-demand learning – content accessible at any time, from any device – will see the most growth among learning technologies in 2017

Closing The Skills Gap

What’s interesting given the projected education-as-a-benefit trend is that many have noted that the skills gap is not entirely caused by educational organizations inadequately preparing students for today’s jobs, but also by employers retreating from investing enough in the training of new employees.

Let us schedule a demo today so you can learn how LearnKey’s experts can customize career pathways for your employees by leveraging our digital and video-based training library that covers topics in the areas of Technology, Customer Service, Professional Development, Microsoft office, and more.