 |
We always been very busy even to improve... |
It has been a little over six months that the dynamics have changed dramatically in Pronoide, as well as it has changed for so other many companies, families and individuals. In its day we already exposed in this blog which approach we were going to take to face the convolution that was oncoming due to Covid19. In this article, I would like to do a bit of retrospective of this period of time and try to foresight what in the short-medium term holds for us with what we currently know.
 |
Here we see the Pronoide growth function f convolved by the covid-19 function g |
During the second quarter of the year, we focused on increasing our presence in social networks and gaining control over our digital properties... We reactivated this blog, our twitter account, and also caught up with networks of prefessionals on LinkedIn. We created Facebook and Instagram profiles. We produce a lot of videos on our YouTube channel. We also redesigned our corporate website. In fact, we are dedicated to all those things for what we never had enough time. Those first months of the crisis, ended with the integration of a payment gateway in our Website (Stripes). We also started to teach open calendar courses for individual students, instead of the business courses we normally teach. Now we can sell on our Website any training service that we develop.
During this time, we also learned to use Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn advertising campaigns to spread our activities and initiatives that were taking place in our company day by day. We have implemented marketing campaigns focused on Spain, but also others focused on Latin America. Honestly, now we would be able to teach Community Manager or Social Media courses for companies.
 |
We are finally present and active in most social networks |
At the beginning of the third quarter of the year, in July, we started a new project. We have created our own online training platform, which we have called Ergane, to teach courses in two mixed ways. On the one hand, webinar sessions led by the trainer; and on the other hand, self-service contents and exercises for students. We have managed to portray our materials generation methodology and everything that we have learned about video editing, now we can create training itineraries available to the student for a specific period of time according to the length of the course - such as three weeks, two months, etc-.
 |
Ergane, our teletraining platform now available |
Since the beginning of the crisis, we discovered that the business of online training for companies has made us accumulate significant 'losses' during all those six months from April to September. While child school life has not resumed it was not going to be as simple as perhaps we had thought at first. In addition to the losses related to the seasonal break that we always have in summer. Well, we always preferred to call it investment rather than a loss. In April, we reacted fast enough and we requested an ICO loan which we received. Although it does not fully cover our 'invested' amount, at least would cover the company over the next five years. So, we try to see this year 2020 as the year of concentrated R&D for the next five ones. It is also appreciated that among more than 30 individual investors on our project none have backed down during this fateful year. Throughout this period, the only economic measure we have taken 'against' the interests of our employees has been the adjustment of the length of the vacations to those defined in the labour agreement. Normally, in Pronoide the total vacation days taken by employees aren't tracked- it is a compensation for not having the highest wages in the market.
 |
We invest today to have benefits tomorrow |
Currently, we are already in the last quarter of the year handling turnover figures that do not differ much from the rest of the quartes of the last years - indeed they are a bit lower -. We do not know how it is going to end 2020. However, the other day a member of our team commented at the meeting: 'I know I always tell you, but we need more trainers on the staff'. And I smiled with joy. It is truth that in Pronoide the problem that has always limited us to grow is the lack of trainers to provide all the training demand comes to us. We get more course requests than those we can teach despite of the fact that we do not have commercials. So I take this old problem as a sign that all things are coming back to normal. -Like the true sign that we are recovering from the crisis and getting into a new scenario where a lot has yet to change. However, for us it means returning to our old challenges from the past with the new ones discovered in the present during this year.
 |
My face smiling the other day at the meeting |
In conclusion, to face all these challenges we are going to hire more employees - we are looking for three new to be part of our team - . We are going to accelerate digital transformation of our business process - trying to apply RPA techniques to manage tasks -. We are going to expand the scope of our project to the international market - we are looking back at Latin America and European market for training -. Finally, we are going to continue preparing ourselves for the upcoming challenges while we solve the problems that come from the past.
