Training for iProfessionals by iProfessionals

Continuing Professional Development: Interactive Companies

Skills are company assets

Whatever size company you are, whatever interactive sector you operate within—web, advertising, iTV, e-learning, mobile, games, museums, libraries, publishing, marketing, e-commerce etc—or whatever interactive service specialisms you might offer—search-engine optimisation, graphics, web design, web build, animation, databases, e-commerce, CRM, asset/content management, streaming, hosting, ISP, voice-over-IP, IPTV—just to mention a few, the skills of your employees are important and are part of the value of assets of your company. From the range of interactive activities just noted, you can get a feel of how complicated it is to try and decide the precise skills needed within a company. It is hard enough for an individual to define what he or she might need to progress a specialist interactive skill! So what can you do? We'll give you a kick-start with the process we describe and the schema template that's available for you to download free.

General and specialised skills

There are high level management skills that serve all companies and can be common across all sectors with the added value brought through direct experience with working in the specific field. The experience helps shape the general skill. Take financial management as a skill block, for example. All companies need financial skills to operate successfully but then if you are in e-commerce, financial skills for running a company and financial skills for working with e-commerce clients are both needed. The particular experience with the sector adds value to the general financial skills. Your company may well have 2 or more people to deal with the different parts or it might not. That's where only you can define the precise needs of your company according to the personnel you have, the skills they have and the skills gaps you find in the company that need filling in some way to enhance your efficiency. To take another example, software skills will vary across companies according to the interactive services they offer, so this is another area where the high level identification of a skill set needs to be tailored by you for your specific requirements.

More: Companies, skills and CPD

[What is the Template?] [Get the Template]

In association with the British Interactive Media Association