Achieving Growth and Compliance: InteServ Solutions' Success with Academy of Mine

Follow along below to read our conversation with Leslie Paton, CEO and Founder of IntServ Solutions.

Searching for an LMS After Starting a Business by Accident

Leslie's business started by accident when one of their contract clients, the Federal Aviation Administration, required their employees to take sexual harassment prevention training. Initially, they used Teachable to administer training to the FAA. However, once Leslie realized that the training they had put together was in demand all over the country, she began searching for more scalable, flexible options to package and sell the training.

“I needed to have a way for people to take the training at night or over a weekend or something so that the next business day at 8:00 AM they were good to work on the contract.” - Leslie P.

After developing the training for the FAA, one of the first states Leslie wanted to market to was California.

“I did some research to get a rough estimate of market size, and it was like, 18 and a half million people need to train over two years. Then I realized, all these small businesses out there don't have the resources to put together what I've already put together for my own business” - Leslie P.

Evaluating Potential Learning Management Systems

Before finding Academy of Mine, Leslie said the features she required weren't available through any other LMS provider. Academy of Mine had 99% of what she needed, and we were the only company willing to customize the platform to meet her remaining requirements.

During Leslie's LMS evaluation process, here are a few reasons we stuck out from the competition:

• The option to customize the software
• Clear communication from the support team
• User-friendliness of the LMS, for her team and for customers
• Integrations with their existing marketing and sales tools
• The platform's ability to grow with her business over time

When Leslie approached us with customization requests, we were happy to oblige them. At Academy of Mine, custom LMS development is our bread and butter, so we’re happy to build customized features and do custom integrations for clients whenever possible.

There were a few other requirements Leslie was looking for in an LMS:

• Easy for people to leave the course and then return to right where they left off
• Automatic tracking of how much time a user spends with materials
• Ability to require learners to spend a set amount of time in a course before earning a certificate

Most of all, she was looking for a trustworthy company with transparent communication. She wasn’t just looking for a software platform, she needed a partner to support her.

“We just wanted to find somebody that we could make a good, steady, long-term partnership with and keep the costs in line. And then as we grow, they grow on profitability, and everybody's good together.” - Leslie P.

Using an LMS as a Tool for Growth

At the beginning of her journey with Academy of Mine, Leslie wanted to provide training to California. After accomplishing that, InteServ wanted to expand to other states, starting with Illinois and Connecticut. To do that, they needed a reliable learning management system that could integrate with their existing WooCommerce store.

To keep InteServ steadily growing, they needed to focus on the following factors:

• Minimizing customer acquisition costs
• Maximizing customer retention
• Streamlining customer renewals and reviews

Leslie’s customers only take training once every 1-2 years, so it's critical to keep customer acquisition costs low and ensure that customers renew their certificates with InteServ. One way Leslie is able to do that with Academy of Mine is by sending automatic emails to past customers with a training renewal coming up.

“The renewal emails, that’s a big deal! I can send renewal emails to customers who bought a certain training in Illinois and California and remind them when their certification is expiring. And the email comes from the same email address as my WooCommerce store, so it’s more likely to make it into an inbox and not get marked as spam.” - Leslie P.

Meeting Compliance Training Requirements

Leslie's biggest goal was to invest in a platform that would fulfill compliance regulations. One of the features that helps InteServ maintain compliance in business is a course timer, which tracks how much time users spend with training material. This is important because supervisors and employees are required to spend a specific amount of time in training before earning a certification. Examples like this are why learner reports are one of our most popular features, and why we have so many customers in the continuing education industry.

InteServ operates in multiple states, all of which have different regulations around training and compliance. That's one of the reasons that they appreciate Academy of Mine's flexibility and ability to customize the LMS to meet specific state requirements. For example, one customization we built for them was requiring that users spend a specific amount of time with the course materials before they're rewarded with a certificate of completion.

How InteServ is Using Academy of Mine

InteServ provides training to a large range of customers, including:

• Doctors
• Nail technicians
• Cosmetologists
• Restaurant owners
• Nurses
• Psychologists
• Veterinarians

InteServ also provides custom training portals to clients with 50 or more employees. This is possible with our B2B portals feature, which allows you to create different training instances so that specific clients can receive their training in a silo.

Portals are important for selling professional training to larger clients who want their content branded and personalized to their organization. Effectively, they want to white-label your training to match their branding, and using Portals lets them do that. For example, they can use a company logo on their instance of the training, on their certificates, embed company-specific privacy policies and reporting contacts, etc.

Listen to Leslie describe what she’s using Academy of Mine for right now:

The Value of a Trustworthy LMS Provider

While talking with Leslie, she emphasized that she’s stuck with Academy of Mine for so many years because she trusts our team. Being able to talk to software developers and tell them what her goals are with the LMS has given her a lot of faith in the company. She went on to add that communication between her team and ours has always been reliable, quick, and transparent.

“It's a differentiating factor for Academy of Mine that they offer customizations and the other guys don't. Knowing that I can talk to the developers and tell them what I'm trying to do and then solicit their ideas for how Academy of Mine can build this is a great opportunity to build trust.” - Leslie P.

InteServ's Success in Compliance Training

InteServ has come a long way from their humble beginnings, from offering training to one contracted client to operating in three states. Through it all, they were able to rely on an LMS that offered:

• A customizable WooCommerce integration
• Course timers and detailed learner reports
• Other customizations as needed
• Trustworthy, communicative customer support

As a result, InteServ successfully grew the business, expanded into new markets, increased customer retention rates, and effectively maintained compliance with state laws. We're thrilled to see their success and we look forward to seeing what's next for them!

If you need help delivering compliance training to customers, get in touch today.