Centriq Blog Category: Corporate IT Training

I could ramble off several mistakes people make when it comes to optimizing their productivity. I could also offer solutions to fix those mistakes. But in the end, I haven’t answered the most important question: how much time is it going to take to adopt the best solution?

In 2021, Forrester performed a TEI (Total Economic Impact™) study, and determined that the solutions built through Power Platform showed a 3% efficiency gain within a single organization and within the first year of adoption. Without a doubt I know this to be possible just by watching our trainers and operations team build out automation tools on the fly, but we also have the most knowledgeable training team out there. What if  a non-technical person (like me) tried to build a solution through Power platform?  Would the risk of wasting time learning how to build a Power Platform solution outweigh the reward?

Windows 11 is changing the way we work – for the better. Each version of Windows has enabled us to be more productive and efficient than the last, and Windows 11 doesn’t disappoint. And as with previous versions, we’ll continually see updates to the operating system that further enhance our Windows experience. But what do we have already? In this post, I’ll highlight three of my favorite changes that come with Windows 11. 

Our 2021 Producer of the Year committed themselves to being a Centriq Champion in many ways! In addition to being the top Corporate Sales Producer in 2021, this team member exemplified the following Centriq values:

I recently presented a webinar on utilizing the various Microsoft 365 task management apps. I did a deep dive into the Microsoft To Do app. It is the leading app to manage all your personal and small group tasks. To Do can help you create, manage, and prioritize personal tasks — but many don’t know about the lists and groups features within Microsoft To Do. These functions can help keep us organized and focused on specific projects with other team members.

We live in a world where online presentations and meetings take up a huge chunk of our time. With so much information and content to retain, a lot of presentations just become part of the noise and are often forgotten. One of the skills (out of many) that our trainers learn and evolve as they manage training sessions is how to engage and captivate their class so that the content presented is absorbed. One of our trainers, Nate Chamberlain was gracious enough to show us all of his secret presentation tricks he’s learned along the way. In a recent webinar Nate demonstrated the following tips you can use in PowerPoint that will make your presentation stand out from the noise:

1. Plan out your presentation
2. Take advantage of the Insert menu
3. Don’t ignore the Designer tool
4. Maintain brand standards
5. Help narrate your story by using animations
6. Set aside time to prepare your delivery

Continuous education is a hallmark of any profession. Education develops an individual, but it also benefits the organization the employee works for: creating opportunity, offering new or enhanced employee’s strengths and skills. It strengthens the person, the team, and the business. Lifelong learning has long been a passion for me. Having been in jobs that did not offer training, I know the frustration of feeling personally limited.

It’s no secret that the workforce is experiencing a big shift – the Great Resignation – and that as a result, organizations are realizing that it is time to examine their strategy around employee retention.

You have probably heard the “What if we train them and they leave?… What if we don’t and they stay?” quote many times over the years. Perhaps now is a good time to recall what Sir Richard Branson says, “Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.”

We’ve been using Microsoft Teams internally at Centriq for quite a while, but the product continues to evolve each month. This is an exciting reality, but it can also make it difficult for users to stay on top of all Microsoft Teams has to offer. Because Microsoft Teams is our digital workplace at Centriq, where a majority of our communication and collaborative efforts take place, we wanted to do something to help our colleagues boost productivity, unlock new ways of working together online, and communicate more effectively using the latest features available.

To address this, our Microsoft 365 team recently sponsored two virtual, internal Microsoft Teams refresher lunch ‘n’ learn sessions which also served as an introduction to tips and best practices for our newer employees.

Meet Centriq Technical Trainer Janet Nichols! Janet has been training with Centriq for over 14 years. Keep reading to find out her favorite Centriq class, the biggest differences between Server 2016 and Server 2019, and how workplaces can find success when managing environments that include Azure laaS-hosted Windows Server-based workloads.

In the years leading up to COVID-19, Centriq Training stood apart from other training companies because we offered a true classroom experience, in-person, with a live instructor. Although we have offered the option for learners to attend most of our classes virtually since 2012, Centriq has generally encouraged in-person attendance for optimal learner experience.  And the new M365 user courses we developed weren’t available virtually for public audiences.   But in March 2020, the pandemic created an immediate need for every Centriq course to be offered virtually with optimal student experience.