We met with Skilltech Solutions’ Customer Success Executive Laura Dean to talk about the ever-changing education sector, her passion for helping apprentices to achieve their goals, and her projections for the future of EPA platforms.
Laura Skilltech Solutions in 2024 with a wealth of experience in education and end point assessments. A former apprentice herself, she’s passionate about enabling every apprentice to succeed through streamlined, accessible learner journeys.
Laura sat down with us to talk about her career to date, her perspectives on a changing training sector, and her excitement at seeing Skilltech’s newest platform, Accolade transform EPAs in the General Awarding sector.
As a Customer Success Executive, my role is all about supporting customers through demonstrations of our platforms, epaPRO and Accolade, and providing ongoing support through regular meetings with customers.
I also attend various conferences up and down the country to meet with potential customers and engage with our existing ones. My day is varied, and I love this about the role. I am either attending meetings, investigating a query or reviewing new functionality ahead of presenting this to my customers, so it keeps me very busy.
Prior to joining the Skilltech family I worked at a large EPAO as a Digital Solutions Manager, working across nine different digital platforms to provide customers with demonstrations and training to support them to get the best use out of the digital offering.
Prior to this, I worked in the education sector with a local training provider for 20 years, where I occupied various roles including managing a small team of Assessors and IQAs across a variety of standards. I kept my hand in with teaching and loved to find engaging ways to deliver our curriculums.
I am passionate about apprenticeships: I first started, all those years ago, as an apprentice myself! My passion is the customer journey, especially using digital solutions to help apprentices achieve their aims. I love meeting with my customers and investigating ways to help them use the platform effectively and support their processes or show customers new functionality that might make their lives easier. Every customer works in a different way, so this approach needs to be unique.
It’s the ever-changing landscape of the education system. For example, recent changes like the removal of functional skills for those over 19 at the start of their apprenticeship, the upcoming changes to shorten the on-programme learning period for some standards, the revisions in standards and assessment plan changes – these have all created challenges for EPAOs. It is important for Skilltech Solutions to be prepared for modifications within the platform, to ensure that we provide an easy transition to make to every Apprentice’s end point assessment journey in epaPRO as easy and as smooth as it can be. To make sure that we’re responding to our customers’ real-world challenges, Skilltech regularly hold user group and UAT meetings, where we listen and feedback on developments to support changes in the assessment world.
We have a great team, with a wide range of backgrounds and skills. Our team listens to what is happening in the education system and discuss how our platforms can support these changes. We hold regular meetings with our user groups to ensure important topics are discussed and that new features are presented, tested and feedback is gathered before changes go live on customer platforms.
As part of the Customer Success team, during our regular monthly catch ups we are always listening to their ways or working and offering solutions, or taking improvement suggestions forward into a new feature request that can be developed. I only joined the team six months ago and its fabulous to see how engaged the team is with our customers.
epaPRO has been so successful in helping customers to manage their end point assessments, and I am so excited about our new platform Accolade, and the positive impact this will have in the General Awarding world. Having an easy to use and effective system is vital for organisations and, coming from my background, I can see how making customers lives easier has such an impact, enabling them to provide an excellent service for learners and apprentices and making it easy for them to achieve.
Apprenticeships have continued to grow over the years, and we see the change in new apprenticeship standards being offered alongside the evolving skills landscape. With continued changes in what’s required for an apprenticeship, such as the removal of functional skills for apprentices after 19, opportunities are opening up for more learners to gain new skills and qualifications through the apprenticeship route.
Technology has changed so much in my lifetime already, and I think this is a continuing area of change: to drive new technologies, such as the use of AI, in order to equip the workforce with the skills they need to use these tools in the future.
With these, I am proud to be part of a team that is deploying monthly release cycles, with new features being added to the platforms that ensure we are staying in line with the ever-changing academic world.
As I mentioned, I have only been with the team a short while, but my proudest achievement so far must be all of my ‘first’ achievements as a Customer Success Executive. These include the first live training provider webinar I delivered, my first customer face-to-face visit, taking the lead on my first UAT demonstration, as well as settling into the team and taking on my own customer caseload.
If you’re looking for an end point assessment platform that delivers excellent customer experience, listens to your feedback and grows with your organisation, look no further. Whether you specialise in apprenticeships or are looking to manage more general awarding/qualifications, Skilltech Solutions’ platforms streamline the process, bringing all of your essential functions into a single, intuitive platform. If you want to see how it could work for you, all you need to do is book a short demo to see it in action.