The Working Process

Octivo aims to make working with us an easy and joyful experience. To this end, we have developed a Working Process that ensures effective communication and that we hit all your targets, on time and on budget.

Initial Contact and Scoping

The call

Whichever way you reach out to us, the first step is for either a meeting or phone/zoom call. This will normally involve one or two of our staff and the aim is to understand your business, the project and any constraints. If the initial conversation is with only one of us, we may book a second meeting that involves one of our Project Managers and someone from the Design Team.

We deliver

Octivo can deliver a huge range of services, as discussed elsewhere. This stage of discussions is helped by open and clear discussions of your “must haves” and “would likes”. We also need to understand your organisation’s experience in learning and the profiles of your learners. If many of your learners have poor English language skills, for example, if helps us to understand this early as it will impact the approaches that will produce effective learning

Game Plan

Coming out of these first discussions we will be aiming to really understand your needs, expectations of things like media preferences, style, target audience and platform requirements, and your timescale and budget. We call this the Scope of the project. We also need to understand any requirements of authoring tool. Once we have enough information, we move on to the Quote stage.

Quoting

The written quote.

Next, we will provide a written quote. The quote will spell out our understanding of the scope of the project, any choice of options, the anticipated timeline and the cost and payment plan requirements. For larger projects we may provide a mockup of how we are initially thinking the design will look.

The Quote will spell out exactly what is included and what is optional. Optional items could include alternate pricing depending on authoring tool choice, different pricing depending on whether you provide the video content or whether we are shooting it, the use of actors and so on. It will be clear what is included in the price and what is not. Standard Octivo inclusions will be spelled out in the quote and include up to three rounds of edits on the Storyboard, Design and the final product.

Factors that impact the quote are whether you are providing a Subject Matter Expert (SME), or we are (the SME provides the content of the course), how much video is being used and who is providing the onscreen talent, the amount and type of interaction and of course the duration of the training. The mode of delivery also impacts the pricing significantly. A digital learning course will be more expensive than a webinar, for example.

We are used to working with companies that are new to learning and those with an existing vast experience of it. We tailor our approach to suit your needs. We can design a complete learning strategy for you or just develop one training module.

We are always happy to discuss this quote and adjust if we have misunderstood the scope in any way. Likewise, we may be able to come back with an alternative that better meets your needs.

Once the quote is formally accepted and the deposit paid, we move on to the next stage.

Information Gathering

A key stage is developing the Intended Learning Outcomes.

We work with you and the SME to develop a set of clear statements about what the outcomes will be of doing the training for the learners. This guides the way we develop the content and things like the design of assessments.

Following this we work with the SME to gather the actual information that will be taught.

The Storyboarding Phase

The document that we use to capture all this information and plan out the details of the training is called a Storyboard.

A Storyboard basically identifies each item in the training. These items might be the contents of a slide or screen, a video, a quiz, or a roleplay.

The Storyboard is bounced backwards and forwards between us until it is word perfect. The aim is to work out any issues of sequencing, missing content and such before moving onto the more time consuming and thus expensive period of actually building the training.

Once signed-off, no significant changes can be made to the storyboard without a cost penalty, and the learning will be created from the Storyboard. Minor changes to wording is acceptable, but no structural changes are possible after this point within the terms of the agreed cost.

Design

At the same time the Storyboard is being worked on, the Design Team will be working with you to get the look and feel of the training right. This involves mockups and developing the templates that will be used in actually building the functioning training.

We’ve found that great visual design improves learner engagement, so we work very hard to make the design beautiful and appealing within your constraints of corporate style, platform and budget.

The Design is signed off when you are satisfied and no significant changes to this can be made after this point within the scope of the agreed price.

Production

The best solutions for you

Depending on your choice of Authoring Tool, we may produce a full mockup of the learning or go straight into production.

In production we build the desired learning course fully.

Depending on needs, we may be shooting video or capturing voiceovers, and capturing images on location for scenarios, in addition to the computer work of building out the training.

Learn More

We’ve got your back

During production there will be multiple stages of you providing feedback.

With some of the Authoring Tools we can provide a review link that makes feedback easy. In the case of other tools we work out a suitable way for you to review and provide your feedback.

When you are satisfied there is another sign off.

Learn More