Users can access content on their smartphone or tablet in two ways – via a browser or by downloading an app. You should be making sure that potential customers can access your content via one of these options:

• Browser – Websites (desktop, mobile & responsive) and Web Apps
• Application – Native Apps

So which one should you choose? Use our helpful guide to decide!

We run an Android App Workshop, teaching you how to design, develop and market apps for the two most popular mobile operating systems - with a combined market share of 82% between them!

Today we have an insight into applying ITIL® to a real business situation from Damovo's ITIL Expert Andy Prentice. Andy discusses the challenges faced when trying to use ITIL as a set of rules instead of a framework. Come down to Brighton for your ITIL Foundation course to begin your ITIL Training.

After I had achieved my ITIL Expert certificate, I decided to join a number of forums/groups on LinkedIn to discuss my favourite subject – ITIL – with like-minded individuals, much to the amusement to my colleagues who see the exercise as me overly-indulging in ‘geekdom’.

Admittedly, there have been a few discussion threads and responses that have made me chuckle and sit back in shock in equal measures. But there has been one debate in particular that has divided opinion and has reminded me of the importance of remembering that ITIL is a framework to work towards and not a set of hard-and-fast rules to live or die by.

The question posed was “Should a Password Reset be treated as an Incident or a Service Request or a Change Request?”

My initial reaction to the question was simple; it’s a service request.

Why? Because when I request my password to be reset (typically on internet websites that I rarely use – or a service which required a password strength beyond my ‘usual’) it is because I am the reason it needs resetting – i.e. I have forgotten it and therefore I am my own root cause to this break in service. In fact, I would be embarrassed to call it a break in service so I’ll just ‘request’ that the Service Desk kindly throw me a bone…

It would have been remiss of me not to consider the logic behind the other options though.

Change management is the most significant leadership challenge of this decade. We are operating in an environment of fast paced change frequently driven by technological innovation. The scale of the change is far reaching often because business processes and system usage are so inter-dependent that a change in one can affect many others across different departments and functions.

For this reason effective change management requires matrix management, as the authority to change a process in all the departments that it moves through cannot be delivered through a silo based management structure.

We've been running Change Management Courses for years but recently added APMG's Certified Change Management Practitioner Course which is set to take off in 2014.

Change management brings together two distinct streams of work:

• Delivery of structural change through the introduction of new systems, processes, people, product and service innovation and the creation of new markets, suppliers, customers and competitors.
• Behavioural change leading to a new emphasis, new culture and values, and changed priorities for each individual impacted by the structural change.

Delivery of structural change can be “mechanised”, relying upon a foundation of project management processes and skills. Activities can be identified, their duration estimated, and schedules and plans developed with a reasonable level of certainty.

Behavioural change though requires an understanding of how the organisation operates as a living being, the power plays operating beneath the surface of the organisation structure, the values that individuals apply to their work and the forces that generate commitment, loyalty and motivation. Behavioural change can generate resistance, confusion and stress, decreased productivity and distancing of the individual from the ‘organisational good’.

As with structural change, resources in behavioural change must be assigned to take responsibility for developing and applying the change management methodology, communicating throughout the change, continuously measuring progress, recognising and rewarding results, and reinforcing change so it becomes embedded in the culture.

We've summarised the video below with some great tips on how to plan your own session.

These are edited highlights of this section of our workshop. We cover a lot more besides on out 2-day train the trainer course here in Brighton, Sussex - so why not come along and hone your training technique?

Communities are your best social media tool when starting a business.

Stop shouting into a void and start communicating; they are a great way to engage with potential customers, investors and brand advocates.

Offline networking is still a powerful tool but online communities can give you a global reach and are often more time and cost effective for your limited resources.

In this post you'll find out why communities are so vital and how you can start using them.

To learn more about using social media & communities to grow your business and engage with consumers and influencers, come on our Social Media workshops and Blogging courses. Together they will give you a powerful toolset to boost your brand online.

Why It's Important

You've started new business with a new idea. How do you get people to care? 

You could spend money on advertising, but it would have to be a very good campaign to convince prospective buyers to take interest in a company they've never heard of.

Social proof is a strong selling point; it's not surprising why social media platforms are trying to take advantage of it with social ads (your friend X like our product) and why consumers are so protective of how their actions are used as social proof.

Recommendations are most valuable when they come naturally. It's easy to tell the difference between a genuine review and one prompted by a promotion or giveaway.

If you can create a community around your business or convince an existing community to take notice of your business then they will do a lot of the hard work for you, giving you the initial investment that you can later use on advertising to grow outside of the community.

We've drawn on the experience of our Assertiveness trainers and the content of our life-changing Assertiveness & Confidence Building Course to put together our free Confidence Building Exercises eBook.

Download the eBook for free and begin the journey to a more confident attitude at work and at home.

Continue your self-improvement with our 2-day Assertivness Course and start taking action.

Whether it’s at an interview, the first day of a new job, after receiving criticism or when given additional responsibility - sometimes you just need to take a bit of time to address your confidence levels and take ownership of improving them.

In this free Assertiveness eBook you can learn 5 exercises to get an instant boost of confidence and take control of situations.

Even if you don’t want to try all these exercises at once, you can pick and choose depending on the situation. The main thing is that you do take action. Knowing that you’re taking responsibility for improving your confidence will – guess what – start improving it.

Exercises covered in the eBook:

• Exercise 1: List your strengths
• Exercise 2: Practice confident body language
• Exercise 3: Record your achievements
• Exercise 4: Challenge yourself to compliment others regularly
• Exercise 5: Practice speaking up

?For more help with self-improvement at work, see the Personal Development category on our blog.

Download our Free InDesign Paragraph Style Sheets eBook

With our InDesign Paragraph Styles eBook you'll learn how create and load paragraph styles and set up simultaneous paragraph styling throughout your document. 

Formatting text in InDesign is easy but can be a repetitive task if you're working on large documents or want to use the same formatting throughout multiple documents - for branding etc.

Formatting large documents manually can easily lead to mistakes - inconsisent paragraphs, titles and bullets that don't match up. With InDesign Paragraph Styles you make sure that your documents and branding are consistent and save time individually updating chunks of text.

We've combined our blog series on InDesign Paragraph Styles into a free downloadable InDesign eBook to keep and refer to when learning InDesign.

Coming on our InDesign course will teach you lots of ways like this to save time and improve accuracy. Even if you're a self-taught user of InDesign, coming and learning from a trainer in person means you can be much more efficient - and creative - later on. Many thanks to our trainer Sharon for her efforts putting this tutorial together.

Our InDesign courses also include InDesign ePub training and InDesign Interactive PDFs training.

Green Belts and Black Belts? Similar to martial arts, Lean Six Sigma uses a coloured belt ranking terminology to define the level and function of Six Sigma practitioners.

But what do the levels mean?

In this guide I'm going to run through the Six Sigma belt levels to explain their role and function and how you can achieve each level.

This should help you when deciding what level of Lean Six Sigma Training different team members require to successfully run Lean Six Sigma projects.

To learn more about Six Sigma including the Belt levels, download our free eBook 'What is Six Sigma?'

Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt

Yellow Belts are team members on Six Sigma projects. They need to understand the key processes and some of the basic Lean Six Sigma tools to work on a project but not to the level of Green Belt.

We run a 2-day Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt course to enable Six Sigma team members to improve their understanding and awareness of Lean Six Sigma tools and processes.

Training team members to Yellow Belt level improves performance and reduces timescales on Six Sigma projects.