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How to Design Better Meetings and Trainings

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Message from Laura Noel, Director,
Strategic Development


Once I heard a brigadier general give an address to a group and what she said that day was: “Be seen, be brief, be heard, be gone.” And secondly, “I am going to describe what I am going to tell you and I am going to tell you again and I will close with what I’ve already told you so I can be sure you ‘got it’.”

This address was before the advent of our modern technology. Today, if that general were speaking, depending on the topic, we might capture what was said for posterity’s sake so that we could repeat her recorded message. However, how would we know you as the audience “got it”?

That’s a driving question in any training. Is the audience hearing what’s being said? Are they getting the key points? How do I know my message is getting across?

Well, at Miller Tanner Associates we can help answer those questions!

With Miller Tanner Associates as your event logistics team, we use technology that enables you to interact with your audience live and in real time, tailoring your message to make sure your audience is “getting it”.

Also, we have created the Virtual Assessment Learning and Training Source, VALTs, to help with making your repeatable message reusable and with the ability to test the viewers to make sure that you’ve gotten your point across. We can capture your message live, at your office, virtually and repurpose it so your key points are repeatable via a secure link.

My hope is that as you are reading this, you realize Miller Tanner Associates is more than “just a meeting planner”; we are your partners making certain that your audience is understanding your message loud and clear.

Sincerely,

Laura Noel, Director, Strategic Development

{Infographic} 8 Ways to Design a Better Meeting for
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Meet MTA: Wendy Robbins, Financial Compliance Manager

The Miller Tanner difference is our people. That’s why we want to introduce you to our team of superstars that brings our corporate meetings and events to life for our clients. Today we introduce you to Wendy Robbins, Financial Compliance Manager. With her impeccable attention to detail, Wendy plays a critical role in the Finance Department to ensure all documentation is in order and meets compliance specifications.

Meet Wendy Robbins

Tell us about your current role with MTA. What are your primary responsibilities?  

My current role with MTA involves preparing all service contracts and amendments for every event MTA plans ensuring compliance with each client’s MSA and template requirements. This includes all F2F meetings for our Global Events Team as well as all virtual programs and VALTs hosting for our Media and Production Department.  I also prepare and send all deposit invoices for each of these events and assist in other key internal projects.

How long have you been with MTA?  I’m privileged to have been with MTA for 4 years.

What did you do before joining MTA?  

Prior to my career with MTA, I was an accountant in the business office at a private school where I wore many hats, including handling accounts receivable, billing for all tuition, and was the administrator for our employee benefits.

What do you feel are the most fulfilling aspects of your job?  

Knowing that I contribute to every event across the board at MTA gives me great pride and satisfaction in that I touch every program we service.  I love seeing every event our team is executing.  Assisting our clients in understanding and executing the contracts and contributing to MTA’s Event Planner are other parts of my role that I enjoy.

What are some ways that the Finance Team takes the burden off of the client when planning an event?  

Pre-event, we prepare the service agreements for all events for each client depending on their current template, keeping track of their updates and preferences.  We put all the details together freeing our clients’ time for only review and signature.  Post-event, our billing team pulls together the billing portfolio of complete documentation for each event for our clients’ records.  These are just a couple of the ways our Finance Team supports our clients, making their event planning much easier.

What do you do for fun?  

For fun, I really enjoy spending time with my family in all sorts of outdoor activities as well as watching funny movies, and exploring new places.  We enjoy sports, travel, and fun projects around the house.

What makes Miller Tanner stand out as a meeting planning company?

What I think stands out is how do we do what we do more efficiently, and differently from our competitors.  MTA takes every event and provides our services for that event as if it were the only meeting we had, giving our 100% dedication every time.  Right from the proposal request all the way through to sending of the billing portfolio, our entire team gives every event our all, ensuring our clients have exceptional service each time.  We go beyond the extra mile to true excellence to which our client feedback attests.

Where do you live and what do you love most about your state/city? Any must-see tourists spots?  

My family and I have recently moved this past year from Lebanon, TN to Cookeville, TN.  I miss being closer to Nashville, but am finding all the great things I’ve heard about living in Cookeville to be true.  It’s a small town with southern charm halfway between Nashville and Knoxville. Cummins Falls is a popular tourist destination less than 10 miles from our home.  People come from all over the U.S. to see the falls, swim, hike and experience nature at this beautiful place.

Anything else you’d like to add? 

At MTA, I work with an amazing team of people who are outstanding at providing exceptional service and memorable experiences for our clients.   We also provide this internally to one another through our unique and special culture.  We are a true service-driven company, both externally and internally.  I’m always excited and looking forward to what the future holds for MTA!

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Using Video and Visual Content to Improve Your Onboarding

How video content and images can help improve onboarding and training

If you are looking for a creative approach to onboarding new employees, optimize your onboarding with video and visual content as part of your training.

At Miller Tanner Associates, we use our own VALTs, Virtual Assessment Learning and Training Source, for onboarding and to introduce new hires to all aspects of our company. We go a step further to create visual content that will improve engagement and excite our new employees about their new role with our company.

Training magazine has an excellent list of 10 reasons to optimize your onboarding with videos and visuals. 

Here’s our take on their list of reasons

10 Reasons to Use Visuals and Videos to Improve Onboarding

  1. Helps retain learning and improves engagement: Knowledge retention and training engagement should be a priority of your training goals. Studies suggest that visual content improves retention. Text combined with visuals, like graphs, infographics, videos, and graphics, can increase comprehension and retention by 50 percent, making visuals the preferred method.
  2. Accommodates multiple styles of learning: By diversifying your content, you’ll have a greater chance of tapping into the different learning styles of your new employees.
  3. Allows you to address FAQs from new hires: Use visuals to address the most frequently asked questions by new hires. You can then repurpose these resources for future onboarding. This minimizes repetitive questions and back and forth emails within the company to more efficiently assist your new employees.
  4. Allows creativity with tutorials: You can turn boring content into a creative animated explainer video. Use infographics to explain complex procedures. Get creative with learning tools to increase engagement and knowledge.
  5. Establishes a company culture: Deliver your content to new hires with an enthusiastic onboarding video message from your CEO or with interviews with other employees. This gives insight into the personality and the company culture of their new colleagues.
  6. Enables distribution of your message to remote teams: Because Miller Tanner is a virtual company with employees located around the world, we often use video to get our message to our team as a way to personalize company-wide communication and connect with our team members. Videos are an excellent method for delivering your message to a dispersed team.
  7. Showcases the work you do in various departments: Use it as an opportunity to highlight the work that each department does. For example, interview different departments to tell and show what they do through video. This is a great way to get other employees involved and convey company culture.
  8. Engages more feedback: Visual content and video can engage more feedback from your new hires. Follow up with a survey and find out what resonated most.
  9. Easy to create: With so many technology tools available, creating visual content and videos is easier than it has ever been. Use an iPhone to record and create impressive videos, free stock images to evoke attention, and Powerpoint’s built-in animation to design a more interactive tutorial.
  10. Better Content: The more you produce visually captivating content, the better your content will become. When you can measure the feedback from your viewers and the quality of the content overall, you’ll have a better gauge for how to improve on future content.

If you need help going virtual with your onboarding using our virtual training solutions, we’d be happy to assist. For more info about VALTs, watch the video:

MTA VALTs from Video Instruction on Vimeo.

Source: https://trainingmag.com/trgmag-article/10-reasons-videos-and-visual-content-optimize-onboarding/

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How to Improve Your Meetings and Trainings

Message from Mary Long, Chief Compliance Officer

Training yesterday versus today… 

When I first started working in the CRO industry (back when the dinosaurs roamed), the training of healthcare professionals selected to participate in an investigational trial took on two basic formats: 1) holding an investigator meeting that lasted at least 2-3 days and 2) site initiation visits that lasted all day at each site.  This is still the most common practice today; however, the time spent at the investigator meeting and the site initiation visits has been cut in half.  Investigational studies have not become less complex in nature, but the industry has invested and embraced technology. 

Back in the days of yore, investigator meetings (IMs) were grueling not only for the length of the meeting but for the audience and the presenters alike, primarily because the method of transferring large amounts of knowledge about the drug/molecule and detailed study procedures were provided by “stand and deliver” method only – rather than focused sessions with interactive communications and content engagement tools.  A site initiation visit was a repeat of the same materials to review with the site staff – you just had to talk faster!  If the statements above have you going down memory lane, then you also remember 3-part NCR CRF and paper data queries via fax.   

All I can say is thank goodness for change.    

Clients have now begun to engage with more effective platforms and methods for training to meet the needs of the audiences and to convey their critical messaging.  As clients begin to rethink their training approaches, they are asking themselves great questions:

  • What is the best forum to communicate their message?
  • What specifically does the audience need to understand about their study design and product?
  • What topic(s) not to include for their audience that already has knowledge/experience?
  • How best to engage an audience to actually participate in learning?  

With MTA’s proactive approach, over the past 20 + years, to advance and improve event experiences, the company has evolved from providing expertise in event planning and logistics to now becoming a true partner and collaborator with our clients.  By developing tools that help clients determine the best forum (face-to-face, virtual and/or hybrid), while sharing agenda content best practices, as well as content engagement ideas/platforms, and using video/audio captures for virtual training solutions, Miller Tanner is not just your ordinary event planner. MTA is much more.

Kind regards,

Mary Long, CCO
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Meet MTA: Jenny Decker, CMP, Global Event Director

Meet MTA: Jenny Decker, CMP, Global Event Director

The Miller Tanner difference is our people. That’s why we want to introduce you to our team of superstars that brings our corporate meetings and events to life for our clients. Today we introduce you to Jenny Decker, CMP, Global Event Director. Jenny brings her extensive background in event management with expertise in conference and exhibition planning.  As a Certified Meeting Professional (CMP), Jenny is a valuable asset to our team, planning both clinical and commercial events for our clients.  Continue reading “Meet MTA: Jenny Decker, CMP, Global Event Director”

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Use These Powerful Strategies to Navigate Your Training

Message from Marnie

 
Hello 2019!
 
MTA has created a strong foundation and invested heavily into secure tools that capture event data to provide a more comprehensive, detailed snapshot of your event.
 
Data is more capable than ever to show us beyond simply calculating how many attendees are traveling to and from your event. It goes deeper to capture what’s happening inside the meeting room from defining knowledge gaps to identifying global trends for your specific audience.
 
Some of the features that our powerful tools offer:
 
•   Single Sign-On (SSO) enables one password to access all your data
•   Electronic, aggregated data accessible 24/7 securely in mobile formats
•   Customizable, real-time reports with tracking capabilities
•   Ability to identify trends among your audiences
•   Instant access to changes occurring within your event
•   Measure ROI more effectively
 
As we move into 2019, we look forward to discussing how your data can impact the efficacy and success of your events this year and how MTA’s tools can deliver a better return on your event investments.

Kind regards,

Marnie Miller Battistini, CEO
Give your training a tune up and navigate a new route. Here are 5 ways that you can drive your training ahead in the new year. Full article

HOT LIST: This Month’s Top News and Info
By improving your on-site evaluations and post-event evaluations, you can determine your meeting’s return on investment.  Full article
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Meetings are going mobile. Here’s how mobile tech tools can make the meeting process easier, add engagement, and create more on-site interaction. Full article
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5 Ways to Drive Your Training Ahead This Year

5 ways to Drive Your Training Ahead This Year

Behind every successful company is an equally successful training program to drive them forward. This year, give your training a tune up and navigate a new route. Here are 5 ways that you can drive your training ahead in the new year:

1. Put your learner in the driver’s seat.

Instead of assuming which training topics should be a priority, ask your teams first. Map out a clear direction with your learners. Survey them to find out what skills they would most benefit from learning. If you get their input, you are more likely to have increased engagement from your trainees throughout your training and, ultimately, you’ll have a better return on your training investment.  Additionally, identify gaps and create a training that addresses those gaps.  eLearning Industry suggests using your company’s tech help desk as a resource for mining the most frequently asked questions submitted from employees. This allows you to “easily spot general trends that reveal skill gaps and common workflow disruptions.”

2. Put your training on cruise control. 

Do you feel like you are spinning your wheels when it comes to delivering your training? Are you repeating yourself? Do yourself a favor this year and take advantage of technology that allows you to automate your training process. You can put your training on cruise control, using  a learning management system like our VALTs, Virtual Assessment Learning and Training Source. This allows you to easily:

  • Deliver training content
  • Reach all onboarding  requirements
  • Create assessments to validate comprehension
  • Generate completed training documents
  • Refresh rapidly changing content
  • Track progress

3. Let training data be your compass.

Your training data can be an excellent guide for delivering a successful training. It can get you from point A to point B.

What if you could:

  • Have instant access to deviations
  • Know what information or activities your attendees engaged with the most
  • Manage multiple events within one source and compare data
  • Identify the gaps in learning among your attendees and address in during your event
  • Measure, or even change, the behaviors of your attendees
  • See in real time how many people per roles per country are represented at your meeting

These are just a few examples of how data can improve the outcomes of your event. You can have your data accessible within a “dashboard” to provide real-time insights about your event anytime from anywhere. Data paves the road for predicting the success of your training. It helps determine your goals, content, assessments, and trends so you can improve on future events.

4. Test drive other training technologies.

Why not try out a new vehicle for delivering your training. If you’ve always done a face-to-face meeting, try a more cost-effective virtual meeting instead. Try using a learning management system like VALTs to conduct a pre-training or to downsize a lengthy face-to-face meeting. Mash up your training with a hybrid meeting (face-to-face + virtual). To prevent your audience from falling asleep at the wheel, use new technologies such as ARS (Audience Response System), polling, and gamification to engage your passengers.

5. Hire a co-pilot (and by co-pilot we mean a meeting planner).

When it doubt, hire it out. It may be more advantageous and cost effective to hire an expert to plan your training. The knowledge and time that it takes to design and deliver a seamless meeting can not be overstated – it’s a big, detailed job. A meeting planner is up for the task because they have an event road map complete with backup plans and alternate routes. They have the resources available and the relationships established to make sure your training reaches its final destination with no bumps in the road. ( 10 signs you need to hire a meeting planner) 

Let Miller Tanner Associates help get your training on the road to success this year. Contact our team today to learn more about our training options!