Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Enroll for PMP Exam Prep Courses to Become a Certified Project Manager


A project is a temporarily undertaking that has a defined start and a defined end. A project consumes organizational resources. Examples of resources consumed are time, labor and money among other scarce resources. Since a project consumes organizational resources, it must be managed properly. The work of managing a project is left to a project manager. Every project is unique in itself--no matter how a project looks similar to a previous one, they cannot be the same. The uniqueness of different projects arises due to the time budgets and resources budgets differences. Even if the budgets are similar, which is unlikely, the start-times and end-times of the two projects are likely to be different making the two projects unique.
A project manager is a professional involved in the task of planning, organizing, managing, controlling and directing organizational resources to achieve a projects goal. The manager oversees the project from inception to completion. He or she ensures that the project takes up the planned amount of resources to deliver the expect results. A project manager needs to possess additional skills over and above those of an ordinary business manager. Not every manager can manage a project.
Since a project is a unique undertaking within the organization, the person to manage it needs to be in possession of project management skills. Although these skills can be acquired from the field over time through experience, it is advisable you get the skills formerly by enrolling with a training institution. By enrolling with a training institution, you will get the A to Z of project management. Through training, you will be able to make thought-out project decisions. There will no longer be cases of guesswork. When you make sure decisions, you reduce cases of project failure and increase chances of the project delivering expected results.
With the busy world we are living in, it becomes a great challenge for managers to enroll for project management courses. You find that many local colleges that offer the courses do not have flexible training timetables. They do not cater for the working group that wants to further their studies. To solve this challenge, you can enroll for Project Management Professional (PMP) exam prep courses. PMP prep courses allow you all the convenience you want in this busy world. The courses are offered in evenings and weekends. To increase accessibility, the courses are also offered online. With this kind of flexible training, no manager can have an excuse for not enrolling for a project management professional prep course. After successful completion of the course, the student (manager) takes an exam that leads to their certification.
After successful certification, you can undertake any kind of project. Although each project is unique in itself, training gives you the general and important skills that every project manager needs to possess. Training also gives you the tactics to go about the unique and special project. With a certified project management professional, the organization can be sure that their projects are in safe hands. No organization would be ready to leave their resources in the hands of unqualified managers.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Excel - An Important Analytics Tool in Corporate Environment


In recent surveys which have been conducted around the world, it has been concluded that Analytics is one area where organisations are going to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Gathering information from raw data with the use of analytics and taking informed decisions based on that information is the way forward for most of the organisations in today's times. For this purpose, organisation make use of several tools.
Excel is one of them. Excel is widely used in most of the organisations. Be it a small startup company or a major MNC all organisations in today's times use Excel. It might seem like a basic tool for conducting data analysis, but people who know how to make in depth use of Excel can gather immense information with the use of this tool. There are several options in Excel like goal seek scenario, Pivot tables, What if analysis which can be used to create multiple scenarios from a given set of data to aid decision making. Apart from these, there are functions which are inbuilt in excel such as financial, statistical and several others which can be used to perform quick analysis in just a matter of minutes. Excel has several chart options such as Pie Chart, Bar Chart etc. These charts can be used for Trend analysis, or looking at Company's market share vis-a-vis its competitors or its performance for a particular product or in a particular region. One can use a line chart to look at the Trend analysis as to how the company has been performing over a period of time.
Bar charts can be used to make comparisons. Then there are advanced filters which can be used to filter out only information which meets a particular criteria or to extract information meeting specific criteria from raw data. There are financial functions which can help quickly arrive at EMIs or loan Prepayments or arriving at the Internal Rate of Return on Investments. These financial functions can also be utilised to arrive at the Net Present Value of investments or arriving at the yield. The possibilities are endless.
In view of the above, there are several educational institutes, training institutes, coaching classes who provide a variety of training courses in Excel. They provide Excel training both as online trainings or classroom trainings. Executive across the world know that in the absence of knowledge of Excel they could be left behind and are signing up for these courses to upgrade their skills and knowledge.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Green Deal Advisor Training - Get Involved


The government has invested millions of pounds to train people to become Green Deal Advisors. What with all this money being invested into a new environmental scheme, what we all really want to know is what is a Green Deal Advisor, and what does Green Deal Training involve?
What does Green Deal training enable you to do?
Well the training ultimately enables you to go into households and improve their energy efficiencies, through the support and information provided through the training.
An advisor will create a 'report' by visiting a household and assessing the suitability the property has for energy efficiency changes.
The outcome of this visit will be formulated into a 'Plan', which will advise the household how improvements can be made to the property, to improve the household's environmental efficiencies. As an advisor you will then be able to advise the household on financial options available to them enabling to make the changes which will save them hundreds of pounds a year, as well as being better for the environment too.
Why yourself or your business should think about Green Deal Training?
Training will give you the cutting edge within your market, as only qualified advisors will be able to provide the customer with the official advice, undertake the work and give the customer access to the funding on offer.
How does the training work?
The Training course is broken down into theory and practical assessments, and is certified by EDI/ABBE.
The theory features of the training:
The trainee will learn to present and provide accurate and relevant Green Deal information to the customer.
The trainee will become highly capable and confident in offering advice on the basis of a detailed property assessment.
The trainee will have the ability to demonstrate Green Deal Domestic Advice reports, in a manor relevant to the customer.
The trainee will be able to offer financial plans & solutions to suit the customer's needs and requirements.
The practical features of the Training:
As part of the training the trainee will be required to create at least two onsite reports that will then be assessed.
This practical training involved the Trainee visiting suitable properties and preforming an Energy Performance Certificate and then formulating a report using the approved software.

Friday, August 10, 2012

How to Make the Most of Your Online Classes?


With easy access to education these days, a lot of students are happily enrolling into online classes and courses in order to pursue better career options. However, academic institutes and independent researchers have found that not all students have successfully completed their courses online and some of them have left such a course midway. The reason being they were unable to cope up with an online classroom ambiance and ended up losing focus and motivation to excel in their chosen programs. Majority of the learners started their elementary education in traditional schools that constituted of face-to-face interactions with the teachers and the classmates and attending classes at specific times. Now, online classrooms have no set class timings plus teachers and students can interact only via chats, emails or through video conferencing and webcams.
Thus, to succeed in online classes, you need to develop the mentality to work independently and communicate with the teachers at scheduled times.
Let's focus on the top tips to make the most of your online classes.
You must have Access to a Computer
Before you take admission into an online class, think twice about whether you have reliable access to a computer or laptop with a steady internet connection! Without a computer, you won't be able to view or download course assignments, class catalogs, calendars, etc. Moreover, if you don't log onto to the given class website on a daily basis, you will not be able to attend classes and communicate with instructors to submit homework or your projects.
Read Everything, Download, and Print if Required
Students new to the online environment should spend time reading through the school website and follow the instructions properly to view or download specific learning materials. In many cases, you will get the option to take a print out of a document. It is good to retain a hard-copy of an important post rather than to read and forget later.
Choose a Suitable Time to Communicate
Mutually discuss a suitable time to communicate with the professors. Online learning experience gives you the opportunity to learn and discuss at your convenience. Thus, online schools are seen creating a forum where both teachers and learners can log on at anytime to question and converse class-related problems and learning issues. While having a group discussion, it is important to follow up with what others are saying - reply with an open mind and come up with suggestions and share information as much as possible.
Wait for Others to Reply
Give some time for others to reply to your questions and queries. Don't just start sending numerous mails or go on posting messages without giving them some time to response. Even if you feel that your questions are very important and you need urgent responses, you have to be patient and passionate.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Significance of Online Training Event Solutions in Today's World


Training events were always a priority; however, its significance has increased manifold nowadays because of the frequent usage of various high-tech tools and solutions in daily business operations. These tools help you execute and manage most administrative works smoothly. Training event solutions includes registration applications, online payment services, communication platforms, and marketing systems, to name a few.
Organizations around the world often struggle to meet their training needs specifically if they are arranged on a recurring basis or at short intervals of time. With additional staff recruitments, the problem of managing training events still persists and invites a lot of stress to the organizers. In an effort to battle the issue out and seamlessly manage trainings a number of training organizing companies have started using online solutions to automate the whole process.
You can utilize the online registration solution to setup forms online. Customization is also possible to give each form a similar look to that of your company website. People can easily recognize your form and thus it increases your brand credibility too. People have the convenience of filling up the form and submitting the same online within a prefixed time. However, the benefit of such a solution is that you save time and cost that was required to be invested in case the organizers had opted for the same old, manual registration methods.
With registration comes the payment part if your training event happens to be a paid one. There too you need additional investments in terms of setting up payment counters and hiring people to collect the fees and keep a track of the daily accounts. However, you can save hard-earned capital by opting for a Cloud-based solution that enables you to receive funds over the internet. It lets the registrants facilitate payment transfers by using their credit cards. Individuals with a PayPal account can use it as well to transfer the registration fees on time. Other standard payment methods can also be used by training organizers to receive the funds. Such online processes are fast, secure, and convenient for both the sender (registrants) and the receiver (you).
Managing training means not only looking after the registrations and payment aspects but also maintaining good communication with past and future attendees. For that, you need to send out repeated messages (emails or SMS) to the attendee base informing them about future programs. They might be interested attending some of them. To attract the attention of more prospective participants, you should post your event information on Facebook, Twitter, etc. plus add photos on Pinterest and Instagram to let them view the same and decide on whether to participate in your event.