Profile of VET organisation

Name of organization: Stelma spol. s r. o.

Country: Czech Republic

e-mail[email protected]

 

Good practice title

E-SHOP WITH EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS

Baseline / problem

Customers of our training activities have the opportunity to become acquainted with our training offerings through e-shop. The e-shop includes training products, including their description, graduate profile, lesson scale, maximum number of participants in educational activity, prices and options to easily log in the activity. Thus conceived e-shop is suitable for both the interested parties from the public side as well as for HR within companies.

The reason for the introduction of the e-shop with educational programs was the fragmentation, lack of transparency and lack of educational offers. Creating an e-shop made the offering more transparent and improved the customer’s approach. Now the courses on offer are arranged and it is possible to consistently promote educational activities and utilise the principles of online marketing.

Good practice: (Measures, instruments, criteria, indicators)

Our organisation focuses on adult education and the provision of retraining courses. Offers of training courses in the Czech Republic are very wide, since the beginning of 90’s a large number of educational institutions of different profile have arisen, with different market strategies, business policy and with varying degrees of success. In recent years, the education market is "distorted" by EU subsidies and because of that it is very difficult to find customers willing to pay for education.

Our organisation faced the challenge how to assert themselves on the education market. We were looking for a suitable marketing tool that would be applicable to the market of further professional education of adults. Of course we firstly started analysing the market in the region of Pardubice (training needs and requirements), we continued with the creation of educational projects and their testing. Then we faced question of how to ensure effective sale of educational products and the implementation of courses and training.

The core of good practice is strengthening marketing in the promotion of educational activities. The ultimate aim is the dissemination of information about the programs offered by the company and therefore acquiring new customers.

By introducing the e-shop we haven’t completely solved the problem of attracting customers, it is still necessary to pursue other promotional activities. Therefore, promotion of the activities is also carried out through leaflets and other printed materials. Furthermore, we publish information from our teachers concerning this issue. We still have to monitor grant opportunities, participate in tenders, etc.

The process of implementing good practice involves a worker for marketing, we made use of external expertise, i.e. a company for creating the e-shop. For evaluating the success of the e-shop, we use the number of new customers and interview them to obtain information about our company and completed courses.

More information about the company and the e-shop can be found on the website: www.stelma.cz , http://shop.stelma.cz/

Problems and constraints encountered and solutions found:

The biggest problem is the necessity of staffing and the related costs for marketing. When introducing the e-shop we faced the financial costs and the need to ensure a uniform visual identity. The establishment of the e-shop was quite tedious. We dedicated a worker dealing with the promotion of the company on online portals and custom websites of the company. The information should be updated regularly, or changes made as needed.

Good Practice Category