Digital Classrooms

Digital Classrooms

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Tuesday 24th March 2020

Mazars – welcome to our Digital Classrooms!

We are opening our Digital Classrooms to individual registrations, making our world-leading financial modelling training courses available to all organisations and individuals in every part of the world. Whether by preference or forced by the impact of COVID-19 – if you want to participate in a course  from the convenience of your office or from home – this is for you.

The Mazars approach to online training

We have delivered financial modelling training courses to more than 10,000 people from over 500 organisations. We are now using our extensive experience developed over the last 15 years to launch a world-leading e-learning financial modelling training format, which achieves an even greater learning experience than the traditional classroom experience.

At Mazars we have always maintained that the biggest value from our classroom based financial modelling courses is attributed to the fact that the Trainer, or Instructor, ensures an optimal learning experience  tailored to the unique blend of participants’ personalities, their industry backgrounds and of course their technical foundation skills.

Digital: Ensuring an interactive, personalised learning experience

We have always resisted becoming followers in the world of impersonal ‘recorded online video’ courses as it was imperative for us to retain our core values that made us a global leader in financial modelling training. Our digital learning classes retain the following benefits of our traditional in-person training:

  • Instructor-led, highly interactive classes working in individual Excel workbooks
  • Follow-the-leader style workshops, with “looking over your shoulder” individual coaching
  • Small groups participating in discussions
  • Open forum for any questions about financial modelling – if not covered in the Agenda, it can typically be covered in the breaks or after the course
  • Sharing of industry experiences and different perspectives by the course participants from developers, investors, lenders, government and advisors

What are the experts saying about ‘Digital learning’ – McKinsey Accelerator

Our approach of designing the learning experience from the ground up, instead of simply ‘packaging it’ has taken its time. We were delighted to see the McKinsey earlier this month focused on this topic highlighting many of the attributes of a digital training experience that we had earlier identified.

https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-accelerate/our-insights/adapting-workplace-learning-in-the-time-of-coronavirus

“Adhering to several principles can help migrate an in-person course to a fully digital experience. Start by reframing the “learning problem” as a design opportunity and rethink the learner’s end-to-end experience as a designer would. Set priorities for the essential learning objectives and focus intently on selecting the content that will meet them. Design for shorter interactions and provide more time between sessions to strengthen learning. Focus on human connections whenever possible, creating intentional, meaningful interactions. Finally, support a seamless learning experience from first contact to last and ensure the same learning experience for all participants.”

Which technology is right for online / digital financial modelling courses?

For the last decade we have been evaluating various technologies and facilitation mediums but, until now, have not been impressed enough by them to associate our name and reputation with them.

A major factor contributing to the earlier deficiencies has been that the cost of the training is inevitably one of the primary drivers for enhancing a digital learning experience, which is why the industry has seen so many sub-par ‘solutions’ which have lacked the intuitive technological environment and ultimately the quality of the learning experience that our clients have now come to expect from us. Now in this new COVID-19 world ordinance, when safety, rapid development, accessibility and high

performance are the most essential drivers we have decided to launch our training offering to the market – without any compromise in quality of the learning experience.

As we are not looking to deploy impersonal mass-market recorded-video + quizzes-style training, we will have far more limited capacity to offer our unique training offering than some other organisations. Our ultimate ambition is to ensure that the learning experience from a digital classroom course with Mazars Financial Modelling provides the same, and arguably (hopefully and quite possibly in the near future) – a better, learning experience for our clients.

Extending our global public schedule with the Mazars Experience

We will gradually commence the scheduling of our digital courses across the world. We are giving priority to existing clients who have already originally registered for a classroom course in the upcoming months as well as to our key global corporate clients around who have invested their time and resources to maintain continuity in the training and upskilling of their staff even if they are in enforced quarantine or if they prefer to work from the safe environment of their homes.

Pragmatically this will result in our financial modelling courses evolving to become more accessible for clients in locations where we had previously not been able to deliver our courses in our traditional workshop format. We are excited by this new innovation and our committed to extending our global reach to every corner of the world where demand for our courses exists (so long as the internet remains stable and functional!)

Tailored corporate financial modelling courses – what’s new with digital / online?

A typical corporate course in financial modelling is usually scheduled for 2-5 days at the premises of an organisation. Of course their effectiveness (when able to be run safely in their traditional facilitation) remains unaffected and in fact we consistently receive raving feedback from the organisers and the participants alike at the conclusion of one of our tailored financial modelling courses. Most recently we are very pleased to now be able to offer a parallel facilitation method which retains the same personal touch and achievement of key learning objective coupled with the addition of  significantly improved flexibility through the leverage of an exciting new medium – Mazars’ Digital Classroom Experience.

Traditional approach:

  1. 3-5 days on-site course, typically in a large meeting room

Classroom + Digital learning course:

  1. Digital: 2 x 1.5 hours introductory digital sessions: lecture + workshop + homework
  2. Digital: 4-hour Excel foundation skills session to get all participants to the same level prior to the course
  3. Digital: Q&A / Forum discussion leading up to the course date
  4. Classroom: 3 days focused on case studies, commercial analysis and group discussions
  5. Digital: 3-hour follow-up session with clarifications, extension of case studies and example
  6. Digital: Peer-to-peer + instructor-led coaching

HR professionals have known for years that blended learning formats achieve the best results.

What’s next?

If you have already registered to a class-room course, we will be contacting you shortly to discuss your new preferred format for learning. If you have not yet registered but wish to take advantage of our new learning medium, we will start adding courses to our Financial Modelling Course Schedule this week.

It should be noted however that whilst we are working hard to scale our offering to make it accessible to more of our clients around the world, we unfortunately won’t be able to satisfy everyone immediately. We kindly request your patience and understanding for our hard-working teams as we continue fine-tuning our processes for communications, course delivery and technology set-up.

Whilst we are experiencing difficult challenges during these unprecedented times we hope that these positive developments are well-received by you– our loyal clients – and we very much look forward to working with you and supporting you, to the best of our capabilities, to help you make the leap forward into a new digital world where specialist expertise can be shared and made accessible to all people in all locations.

Warm Regards,
Rickard

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Rickard Wärnelid Partner, Head of Deals, Financial Advisory Services & Energy, APAC

Rickard is the global head of Mazars Financial Modelling, developing financial modelling training programs all over the world. Prior to his +15 years with Mazars/Corality, he worked in Project Finance, Quantitative Fixed Income/Risk, VBA development and served in the Swedish air force. Rickard's academic background is in Physics (Stockholm) and Finance (Sydney).

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