FEATURED CASE STUDY:

LearnLive Transforms Dixon Hughes into a More Cost-Effective and Flexible Learning Culture

“LearnLive was a key partnership selected by Dixon Hughes to assist with utilizing virtual learning and improving delivery efficiencies throughout the organization. LearnLive helped the firm become a more cost-effective and flexible learning culture, a firm initiative that saved $1.52M in one year.”

Customer: Dixon Hughes (www.dixon-hughes.com)

Dixon Hughes is the largest accounting firm based in the Southern U.S. and ranks among the nation’s top 20. With a staff of over 1,200 located in eight states, the firm provides a wide array of assurance, tax and consulting services to clients of all sizes.

Client:
Cate Miller, Director, Learning Development

ROI
LearnLive was a key partnership selected by Dixon Hughes to assist with utilizing virtual learning and improving delivery efficiencies throughout the organization. LearnLive helped the firm become a more cost-effective and flexible learning culture, a firm initiative that saved $1.52M in one year.

Problem/Solution:
The firm’s professional development culture is built around a clear passion and deep commitment to its people resources and people development. “We view professional development as a lifelong experience -- from the individual and their on-the-job training all the way to mentoring and coaching by senior leadership” says Miller.

Dixon Hughes had been conducting on-site training and development across 27 offices in eight states. The travel requirements to ensure its professionals maintained up-to-date Knowledge & CPE had become extremely expensive.
The learning team needed to transform Dixon Hughes into a more cost-effective and flexible learning culture; one that could, for example, deliver live, virtual and self-study options.

The company streamlined its learning operation, setting up nine regional learning centers, offering flexibility when the professionals needed it and when it worked with their client schedules.
“It was obvious we needed to enable both live and virtual classroom delivery of coursework, leverage the investment that would have gone into travel costs, and reinvest those savings into programs that have a more direct impact on our people by offering a better work-life balance” continues Miller.

For example, less travel back and forth for training makes it that much easier to service the client onsite. “Our professionals can be required onsite at the client for six months at time. Trying to mix in training travel can be quite daunting for the professional and expensive for the firm. Now, for example, we recently offered a North Carolina ethics course – we had a project team of 15 who were able to take the course at lunchtime, onsite at the client, and complete their CPE.”

Miller also required a proven system that would be NASBA compliant and needed to partner with a vendor intimate with the accounting industry. More than that they wanted a partner who, like Dixon Hughes, put customer service first and understood its challenges.

Miller, whose team of 3 supports 1,200 professionals and up to 25 ongoing projects, was adamant about deploying a system that “needed minimal internal support after the basic support and work required to get up and running. She didn’t have the time to continually address something that didn’t work.

“During our vendor evaluation process, we looked at implementation steps and how long each vendor estimated it would it take to deploy their system. The LearnLive estimate was accurate and while this was somewhat complex and has risk, it went quite smoothly and we were up within a month.”

Says Miller, “LearnLive knows the accounting space and right at the start made us feel like a big account; basically it was ‘we’re here to help no matter what your size is’. We’ve not always received that kind of service from software vendors.”

What Cate Miller of Dixon Hughes likes most about LearnLive:
• Minimizes travel expenses
• NASBA certified
• User interface design is clean, easy to navigate and use
• Set-up was straightforward
• Takes minutes to set up classes and instructors, and streamlines registration process;
getting event from class to instructor to participants is simple
• The people are great!