More and More Firms Providing External Webcasts

The trend of Accounting Firms providing client facing accredited webcasts continues to pick up momentum and shows no sign of slowing. The catered lunch and learn session that once took place at the local office level has moved online and is becoming a bigger part of an accounting firm’s overall marketing strategy.

The big four accounting firms have been providing external webcasts for a number of years and many provide programs almost daily. Over the last couple of years other national firms such as Grant Thornton and BDO Seidman have begun to provide external CPE worthy webcasts to their clients and prospects. These firms began offering webcasts a few times a year and now offer programs almost weekly. Now many other firms are jumping in to provide webcasts to their clients.

Historically Law Firms have provided content to their clients through in-house programs or more informal teleconferences. Many are now seeking a more efficient delivery method and intuitive user experience.

“Within a competitive environment, such as the legal and accounting marketplace, positioning your firm as the knowledge leader and trusted advisor in dealing with new laws is critical to staying ahead of your competition. The culture of the accounting industry; new standards, approaches, and processes are compelling us to become champions of effective change. Knowing about the change and being able to help execute successful change creates a collaborative relationship with our clients. By using a tool such as LearnLive, we are able to reach out to our clients, involve them in making decisions about their business sooner, and provide them with a rich educational experience. Learning is not just limited to our employees; learning has to be a commitment from us to our clients. The forum that LearnLive gives is going to propel us into the next level of service.”

- Julie Kirsch : Leader of Firm Learning : Reznick Group, P.C.

“Training delivery has never had as many options as it has today. It is not always feasible to incur the travel costs associated with live training, and LearnLive provides us with a tool that allows us to reach professionals that are located in different offices and different schedules. Now we can focus on developing the best training material rather than dealing with all the logistics that go along with face-to-face training.”

- MaryEm Musser : Director, eLearning and Educational Technologies : BDO Seidman, LLP

LearnLive Version 6 Announced!

LearnLive Technologies is excited to announce our version 6 release, scheduled for January, 2008. This much-anticipated release is packed with a slew of new features in a variety of areas within the LearnLive platform. A few of the more notable updates are listed below - for a full list of new features and upgrades, check out our Version 6 Release Notes.

Our front-running new feature this release is a powerful, student-facing content search engine. A simple, streamlined user interface will allow your professionals to search or browse any and all existing content in their catalog, from general program descriptions to embedded section titles and tags. Simply input a key phrase and you will receive a detailed list of instances where the phrase appears within any available course. From there, you can directly link to the section of the course that contains the information you requested. The days of fast-forwarding through an entire course to extract a few minutes of necessary information are over – with a few simple clicks, you can access any segment of any course, and begin learning right away. This system will revolutionize the way that your professionals learn and reference archived material.

LearnLive Technologies' podcasting tools are a significant focus of this upcoming release. We are releasing a newly-updated, user-friendly podcast creation process that will allow you to create a podcast in minutes from any existing LearnLive Capture or LearnLive Connect program. The system is geared to make podcast creation and distribution a truly simple process. In addition to standard mp3 podcast creation, we will also be offering full video podcast functionality, using the high-quality industry standard H.264 codec to produce portable mp4 video files. What's more, we are offering a ground-breaking tracking system that allows you to track your students' participation in any given podcast with ease. We have added the option of automatically adding audio codes, spliced in at random intervals within the podcast, that your students are required to enter into an online form in order to receive credit for the podcast. No manual work or post-production editing is required - simply click a button and our system does the rest.

We are also packing in a number of new features to LearnLive Capture, our easy-to-use course authoring system. In addition to recording your course online through our streamlined recording interface, we are now offering the ability for you to upload pre-recorded media in a wide range of formats. You will now be able to quickly and easily upload and convert any audio or video file (Windows Media, Quicktime, mp3, mp4, and many more), into an online course in our system. Take advantage of instant online availability, our state-of-the-art participation tracking system, and all of our integrated reporting tools instantly from any piece of media you want to make available.

For additional information on these or any other features included in this release, contact us today!

Contact us today to find out how your company or firm can host one of your training events with

LearnLive Technologies.

206.812.4700 – http://www.learnlive.com