Corporate Microsoft and Computer Training
Training scoped to your team, your systems and your files — rather than a fixed public syllabus that fits nobody exactly.
PowerConcepts has been training organisations across North America since 1998. The client list on our services page runs from municipalities to national charities to manufacturers, and the thing they have in common is not an industry — it is that somebody looked at how the work was actually being done and decided it could be done in less time.
A public course teaches a level. Corporate training teaches a team, which is a different problem: the skill spread inside one department is usually wider than the gap between two consecutive public courses, and the material that matters is whatever is currently being done by hand. So scoping starts with your files rather than with a syllabus.
Three ways this usually runs
Most engagements are one of these, or a mix of the first two.
On-site training
Discuss instructor-led training at your workplace, with the syllabus, practice materials and delivery arrangements confirmed in your quote.
Live online training
Plan a live instructor-led session for a team working across offices, with access, timing and practice requirements agreed in advance.
Excel for teams
Plan Excel training around your team’s starting skills, recurring spreadsheet tasks and the results learners need to check.
What does the training have to save to pay for itself?
Crude arithmetic, deliberately. Hours saved per week is an estimate whatever anyone tells you, so this is framed as a payback period rather than a return. A working year here is 46 weeks, not 52 — holidays and leave come off first. Put your own numbers in; the defaults are conservative.
| People | Hours saved each, per week | Loaded rate | Recovered per year | Pays for itself in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | 1 | $45 | $8,280 | 20 weeks |
| 8 | 1 | $45 | $16,560 | 10 weeks |
| 8 | 2 | $55 | $40,480 | 4 weeks |
| 20 | 1 | $50 | $46,000 | 4 weeks |
The number that moves this most is people, not hours — which is the argument for training a team together rather than sending one person. If you want to sanity-check the hours figure, the honest way is to ask two people how long the monthly report takes them. See Excel training for teams for what that usually turns out to be.
Who we work with
Four of the organisations named as clients on our services page, and the training problem each shape of organisation tends to have.
Kal Tire
Multi-site retail and industrial services
A BC-headquartered, nationally distributed business — the classic multi-site training problem.
Sun-Rype
Food and beverage manufacturing
An Okanagan manufacturer — production, inventory and finance all running on spreadsheets.
City of Vernon
Municipal government
A BC municipality — many small departments, wide skill spread, public-sector procurement.
Canadian Cancer Society
National charity
A distributed national charity — regional offices, volunteers, and a hard cost-per-outcome test.
A note on what these pages are. They describe the shape of the training problem rather than reporting engagement results, because the results have not been published and we are not going to invent them. Read the full explanation, which is short.
Getting started
Corporate training questions
How is corporate training priced?
By the engagement rather than by the seat, because the scope varies so much. The public course prices give you an order of magnitude, but a day built around your own files for eight people is a different product from eight public seats and is quoted separately.
What is the minimum group size?
There is no hard floor, but below about four people the public schedule is usually better value unless the content genuinely has to be specific to your systems. Above four, a scoped session almost always beats sending people separately.
Can you train on our own files and systems?
Yes, and it is the main reason to book corporate training rather than public seats. Working on your real workbooks means the exercise and the job are the same thing, and it usually surfaces problems nobody had thought to ask about.
Do you travel outside British Columbia?
Yes, with travel quoted as part of the engagement. For teams outside BC, live online delivery often works out better than on-site — nobody travels, and sessions can be split into shorter blocks rather than consuming whole days.
Does the free retake apply to corporate training?
Participants get the same one year free retake on the equivalent public course, and the same 90 days of video-library access. For an organisation with turnover that effectively means training the role rather than the person.
How long does scoping take?
Usually one conversation. We ask what people are doing by hand, what breaks, and who has become the bottleneck. That is generally enough to propose something concrete; looking at two or three real files sharpens it further.
Choose a corporate training scope that can be delivered
A useful corporate brief names the applications, participants, starting skills and work outcome. Include the delivery preference and date constraints so Power Concepts can propose a realistic course or private-session arrangement.
Agree the syllabus, preparation, group size, price, location and follow-up terms in writing. Existing public-course benefits are a reference for those bookings, not an automatic private-package promise. Use safe examples and identify who will review the team’s work after training.
Related options: Excel skills assessment.
Choose group size around the exercise
The published public-class package specifies a maximum of 10 learners. A custom group should be scoped separately around starting skills, interaction and the task being taught; do not assume the public-class cap is a universal private-workshop policy.
For a quotation, provide the learner count, roles and spread of experience. Consider separate foundations and advanced groups when one session would otherwise require beginners to keep up while experienced staff wait through material they already use.
Related options: Excel skills assessment.
Assess the work before choosing the workshop
Ask learners to complete a small representative task and explain their decisions. For an Excel group, that might mean building a table and checking a summary; for collaboration training, finding the current shared file and its next action. Record the specific step where support was needed.
Use the results to group learning needs and choose the course outline or custom scope. A self-rating can start the discussion, but an observed task provides more useful evidence than asking everyone whether they are a beginner or an expert.
Related options: Excel skills assessment.
Agree the follow-up arrangement in the training scope
Public courses include the published video-access and same-course retake benefits. For custom training, agree the follow-up materials, contact route and any review session in the quotation rather than assuming unlimited support is included.
Before the course ends, select one workplace task to repeat and decide who will review it. A dated check on that task makes follow-up useful: it can identify a remaining skill gap, a software-access problem or a process decision that training alone cannot resolve.
Related options: Excel skills assessment.