Practice Labs Systems - Most Valuable Response by a Business Development Team

Company: Practice Labs Systems, Kent, UK and Silicon Slopes, Utah
Company Division/Group: Practice Labs
Company Description: Practice Labs is a secure online environment where people can gain 24/7 access to live computer equipment – loaded with popular hardware & software – to practice their hands-on digital & technology skills. Step-by-step guides help to build digital confidence & performance assessment tools allow users to assess their exam or work-readiness, and measure their real-world digital competence & ability.
Nomination Category: COVID-19 Response Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Most Valuable Response by a Business Development Team

Nomination Title: Working together to address the impact of COVID on students and institutions

For us, COVID wasn’t a PR opportunity; it was a chance to do our bit to help during the pandemic and an opportunity to ‘live’ our culture and our mission.

Hundreds of emails were sent out by our BDM team – either directly to their own contact lists or via membership bodies. This resulted in 102 requests for help from institutions. Accounts were subsequently set up for 41 of those and free access granted to over 900 individual students and apprentices. We also offered free access via COVID initiatives such as the British Educational Suppliers Association’s LendED.

The monetary value of the free access we gave away currently stands at more than $120,000 – not including the time and internal resource involved in liaising with institutions to ascertain their needs and integrate our solution into their systems.

Nine of the organizations we supported during the first lockdown have gone on to become paying customers and a further five are in discussion with us re becoming customers during 2021 – reinforcing Ricky’s mantra that ‘what goes around comes around’.

Briefly describe the nominated team: its history and past performance (up to 200 words):

Our business was built on partnerships with US universities and colleges e.g. WGU, large training providers e.g. Skillsoft, Cengage and ITProTV, publishers e.g. McGraw Hill, and awarding bodies e.g. CompTIA and the British Computer Society. Our direct BDM team was set up in 2019, focusing on the US/UK education sectors. It consisted of three US sales reps and a UK sales rep – headed up by our co-founder, Ricky Doyle, who managed the partner side of the business. Ricky is also our ‘CREW Captain’ ("CREW is the Practice Labs’ terminology for our staff - representing the four pillars of our culture – Challenge, Respect, Enjoy, reWard) and our company mission ‘to help people be the best they can be’. 2019 revenue was circa $3.5 million.

https://practice-labs.com/our-culture
https://practice-labs.com/our-mission
https://practice-labs.com/covid-nineteen

When COVID struck and remote learning became the norm, Ricky instructed the BDM team to reach out to existing customers and prospects. We offered support in delivering digital classes to their students by providing free digital lab environments to help those who could no longer access live equipment at college or university – or who would benefit from hands-on experiential learning to reinforce their teacher-led theoretical training.

Explain why the achievements you have highlighted are unique or significant. If possible compare the achievements to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the team's past performance (up to 250 words):

We’re not a large EdTech company with significant reserves or VC funding. We’re privately owned and financed. To our knowledge, we are the only SME in the virtual lab space to react as we did. While others stuck to reassuring customers that it was business as usual and, at most, waived some onboarding fees and internal training in platform usage, none of our competitors offered access to their solutions for free.

The employee support Ricky introduced was equally unique. This included:
-100% flexible working – allowing employees to adjust working hours to fit in with home-schooling, voluntary work or other commitments.
-Wellness Wednesdays – blocking time in diaries for employees to take time out to re-group.
-CREW & Culture Check ins – informal ‘how are you?’ check ins to provide a safe space to talk.
-Weekly ‘How was your week?’ surveys – a pulse check to gauge general mood and an opportunity for employees to feedback anonymously.
-CREW Captain updates (weekly during lockdowns) – raising morale, keeping us aligned and united when we’re not physically together
-Access to 24/7 Counsellors – including therapy/CBT sessions.