Jitasa: “With iSpring, 96% of our employees regularly engage in eLearning, and training is now an integral part of our company culture.”
7 minutes
Jitasa is the largest accounting and bookkeeping service provider in the U.S., working exclusively with nonprofits. With its focus on effectiveness, affordability, and efficiency, Jitasa provides high-quality services and exceptional customer care. The company has 400+ employees and serves 1,300+ clients.
In this case study, Bobby Powers, Director of Learning and Development at Jitasa, shares how incorporating iSpring’s online training software into the company’s L&D initiatives has helped Jitasa achieve record employee training engagement and build a solid learning culture across branches globally.
Background
Bobby Powers, Director of Learning and Development at Jitasa
The name of our company, Jitasa, means “The Spirit of Serving Others.” This is exactly what our 400+ employees do: we help nonprofit organizations handle all things accounting so they can focus on making the world a better place.
Unlike many companies of our size that have 10-15 departments with various roles, we have a unique structure where 90% to 95% of our employees are accountants who do similar jobs. That’s why we provide all kinds of accounting training for our workers to make sure they’re equipped with the skills and knowledge to deliver exceptional service to our nonprofit clients.
Given that our company spans multiple countries, we are committed to delivering high-quality online training that is accessible to all employees for consistent skill development.
As Director of Learning and Development, my job is to make sure we use the best possible eLearning tools that help us create, launch, and evaluate our training programs.
The Challenge: Build a strong training support system with a robust LMS
Jitasa has been practicing blended learning for years to train employees. They combine live sessions with recorded Zoom calls accessible to distributed employees, as well as a digital knowledge base with key documentation and text-based learning materials.
Before discovering iSpring, Jitasa used the LearnDash LMS. However, the platform was slow, crashed often, and provided an overall poor user experience. This led to a lower rate of training adoption among employees and affected training effectiveness.
On top of that, the company struggled to provide the same level of training support across their various countries of operations. This required a robust online learning solution with a friendly user interface and experience (UI/UX) and a rich feature set that’s available in multiple languages.
Employees had difficulty finding what they were looking for, and our old LMS struggled to support a lot of the different training materials that we used. When I joined the company, I saw the LMS and realized we needed to do something different. No one at the company disagreed.
The Solution: iSpring Learn
Bobby began his search for the perfect eLearning solution by consulting fellow L&D specialists and performing extensive online research on the feature sets of various LMSs. The company considered such platforms as TalentLMS, WorkRamp, and Tovuti. What immediately stood out to Bobby when trying iSpring Learn was the user-friendly UI/UX — something the older LMS was missing. iSpring Learn’s range of capabilities was also competitive, offering a comprehensive way to onboard, upskill, and certify employees effectively.
The CFO and I were aligned on the need for a new solution, so the decision-making process was quick. iSpring also provided an account manager who helped us make the most of the LMS. It’s important to have one main point of contact with a vendor — it’s so different to have a person who knows your company rather than just sending requests to a generic support line. Our account manager has been great.
On-the-job training checklists: An effective way to certify employees’ skills
The iSpring Learn feature that Bobby considered to be the biggest asset for Jitasa was the on-the-job training (OJT) checklists.
Since we’re an accounting firm, it’s really important that people have excellent accounting skills. We wanted to have a solid way of certifying employee competency and assessing different accounting skills. iSpring Learn’s OJT checklists, combined with the assignment feature, gave us a great solution.
Jitasa is now using the OJT checklist capability to help employees develop their skills through real-world tasks and assignments. It’s also easy to grade these assignments, evaluate each employee’s performance, and certify accountants.
Insightful reports: Closing knowledge quickly and efficiently
The report feature has also come in handy for Jitasa’s training initiatives. The company has an extensive 90-question quiz for new hires. Each new employee takes the quiz at the end of their first five months of onboarding training to prove their skills and knowledge of their role.
An example of a question from the Jitasa Special Agent Quiz.
Thanks to informative reports in iSpring Learn, employees’ managers can now easily spot knowledge gaps and assign additional training on a relevant module or topic.
It’s so helpful to see what questions people miss most often across our company and various departments. It helps me spot what areas of training are the most challenging and provide targeted training support swiftly.
360-Degree Reviews: Assessing employee performance the smart way
Bobby highlights 360-degree reviews as another capability that helped optimize the training processes at Jitasa. He illustrates the value of the feature with a case from the company’s Costa Rica and Philippines offices.
David, the head of the branch, didn’t like the old performance appraisal process and the outdated tool used for it. We had just launched iSpring Learn, and David managed to set up and run effective performance reviews in our new LMS in just two weeks, with little involvement on my part.
An example of questions from the Jitasa Performance Review.
The company was impressed with how easy it is to build the performance review protocol for two countries in such a short time. According to Bobby, this is a great sign of the flexibility that iSpring Learn offers.
Results
When Bobby was launching training with iSpring Learn at Jitasa, his main objective was to make learning part of the company culture. He’s excited to share that this goal has been achieved:
I wanted at least 90% of employees regularly logging in to iSpring and taking courses. Now 96% of workers do that consistently ─ far more than any other company where I’ve worked. We don’t just assign courses to employees in the LMS. We also publish all-hands call recordings and company news and encourage interaction in the comments. Online learning is now an integral part of Jitasa’s DNA, and iSpring Learn has played a big role in helping us embed learning into our culture.
Bobby and his colleagues have already created 50+ new courses with the bundled iSpring Suite in the nine months since they launched the software, from company-wide content on general skills to bookkeeping and accounting assignments. The process of uploading and assigning courses to trainees via the LMS is so easy that more time is now available for improving the existing eLearning content and creating new programs.
Thanks to training optimization, the time needed for new employee onboarding has been reduced by one to two months. Additionally, the company now provides the same high-quality level of training support for all branches across the company, thanks to standardized procedures.
Employees at Jitasa love iSpring Learn for its ease of use, intuitive content management, and the quick access it provides to crucial professional knowledge. Bobby and the company’s senior management are completely satisfied with their choice of iSpring Learn as Jitasa’s go-to eLearning solution, and they hope to achieve even more impressive results in the future.
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