UMBC Training Centers

Background
UMBC Training
Centers
www.umbctraining.com
UMBC Training Centers is the premier provider of technical, engineering, and
professional skills training in the Mid-Atlantic region for individuals, businesses, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies. Their exclusive Rapid Applied Learning
(RAL™) unites highly interactive, participatory learning, and exceptional content with
UMBC’s instructional excellence.
Goals
Industry
Education, Training
Partner
Brave New Markets
10811 Red Run Blvd., STE 210
Owings Mills, MD 21117
+1 410-902-0801
www.BraveNewMarkets.com
Marc Waldeck
Chief Results Officer
[email protected]
Website operations had become a bottleneck for the organization. Executives at UMBC
Training Centers sensed that the website should be able to generate more training
revenue. However, backend administration had grown so complex that only a few staff
members could accomplish what should have been simple tasks. The decision was
made to replace the site with a platform that featured strong content management
capabilities, automated business rules, flexible e-commerce, and overall ease of
administration.
Specific goals for the project were:

Increase utilization of the website for attracting prospective clients, delivering
information, and generating class registrations.

Create a central, online repository for course information.

Automate website content using various data such as class date, delivery
method, and certificate program.

Integrate class registration and inquiry data with Salesforce.com

Promote search engine optimization (SEO) strategy and facilitate the creation of
multiple landing pages for marketing/advertising programs.
Challenges
UMBC Training Centers offers hundreds of course titles with multiple delivery
methods—on-site and off-site classroom, group, online, and self-paced. This created
complex content management, registration, and inquiry challenges. Prior to this
project, the website was comprised of thousands of static HTML pages for courses,
classes, registration, and inquiries. It was almost impossible to keep content current.
There was also no time remaining for user experience (UX), search engine, or landing
page optimization.
If UMBC Training Centers was going to realize the revenue from their website that was
essential to their business strategy, it was clear that they needed a change.
Solution
To transform their business online, UMBC Training Centers chose Brave New Markets
to deliver managed digital marketing services. Following a thorough review, the
decision was made to deploy Kentico CMS as their website platform. Compared to the
competition, Kentico delivered a more flexible and versatile suite of features.
At the heart of the new website is a comprehensive online course catalog that exploits
Kentico’s powerful CMS capabilities. Along with an HTML course description, numerous
additional data fields support automated business logic for grouping courses into
certificate programs, building class schedules, processing registrations, automating
marketing landing pages, and much more.
Numerous data handling forms and business processes were created to allow UMBC
Training Centers’ team members to edit the course catalog, create classes, and manage
online registrations. Class fees are collected through online credit card processing
(Kentico E-commerce) and invoices that are created through a data connection with an
existing billing system.
More structured navigation and
content, combined with robust
meta and tag data, facilitates
content relevancy with search
engines.
To support the sales group, client
data collected for registrations,
inquiries, and other interactions is
fully integrated with their
Salesforce.com account.
Results
Results for UMBC Training Centers have been transformative.
Search optimization and marketing programs are delivering more website traffic. Clean
visuals and intuitively organized navigation greet every visitor. Class information is
always up-to-date. For administrative personnel, maintaining the website is no longer a
guessing game. Common editing tools and automated business processes have made
their job easy.
Goals Accomplished:

Increased website traffic and inquiries with online marketing

Implemented online registration with credit card processing

Fixed content management problems

Eliminated out-of-date information on the website

Automated Class Schedule

Integrated lead and sales information with Salesforce.com
Key criteria for selecting Kentico




Powerful content management
Content and business logic capabilities
Ease of integration with external applications
Search engine optimization (SEO) features