Delivering effective product training – enhancing Gwynedd’s use of Cygnum’s reporting functionality remotely

In the face of a global pandemic, traditional training methods have been disrupted. CACI devised FUSIONhub to keep projects moving remotely. This case study looks at how the Cygnum team successfully delivered remote training to Gwynedd Council.

Gwynedd Council uses Cygnum to support its care services across the county, scheduling carers and keeping track of those in care. These essential services have remained in full flow throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and it has been vital that they have been kept running smoothly to ensure the ongoing safety of those in care and those providing the care.

Deploying a team of 330 carers to operate their services, Gwynedd has been using Cygnum for 10 years. There have been many changes, not least in personnel, during that time, so Mark Hughes, systems manager at the council, required training for himself and his colleague, Chris Griffith, systems officer.

The challenge

“Neither Chris nor myself were in our current posts when Cygnum was first implemented at Gwynedd,” says Mark. “It is something I’ve inherited following an internal restructuring and I was keen that we get up to speed with the system as quickly as possible in order that we can get the most from it.

“Chris was more familiar with the system than me, having been trained on it by his predecessor, but we wanted some formal training to better understand Cygnum’s reporting functionality.”

In normal circumstances, CACI would have arranged for the course trainer, in this case Cygnum product manager, Matt Lewis, to visit Gwynedd’s offices and deliver a two-day training course to Mark and Chris in person. With lockdown rules in place, however, this was not possible.

The solution

CACI devised its FUSIONhub project delivery methodology around virtual management. Just because people have stopped going to the office so frequently, it hasn’t meant that projects have shut down. Keeping them moving has been vitally important not only to CACI, but to its customers as well.

Matt used Cygnum’s standard training course in a way which was responsive to Gwynedd’s specific needs around Cygnum’s reporting functionality. The course was set to be delivered across four half-day sessions, rather than the usual two full days, via Microsoft Teams.

“Matt was very professional and really knew his stuff,” explains Mark. “He ensured that the sessions were very informative and interactive, and kept it interesting at all times. Matt was brilliant, to be honest.”

There had been some apprehension for Gwynedd around delivering such an important training programme virtually, but it was a step that needed to be taken.

“The sessions over Teams worked really well, much better than we anticipated,” says Mark. “Utilising Teams meant we could share screens seamlessly and we could ask for assistance with exercises when required. Matt could easily show us his screen to show us what to do. Running four morning sessions instead of doing it in two long days was a great idea, too, and made it easier to digest.”

The results

“The training has been invaluable,” says Mark. “It has enabled us to make richer use of Cygnum’s reporting functionality and to improve some of the work processes we have in place. We have managed to automate several reports and decrease the manual intervention to format others, giving the end user and managers better quality reporting to use across our services.”

“The training has also enabled us to create reports much faster than before, and it has really opened the door for us to improve other areas of our services as well.”

FUSIONhub is a central component of CACI’s FUSION methodology, helping to ensure that all projects can be managed and completed wherever they are.