The Information Technology Certification Council (ITCC) is now accepting submissions for its ninth annual Innovation Award – an award recognizing leadership initiatives that have positively impacted the IT certification industry or your company.
We’d like to highlight some of the award’s past winners and share how the award changed things for their organization. In today’s blog, we’re catching up with 2020 Innovation Award winner Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), who won for their innovative approach with certification testing and their scalable, secure, remotely proctored, fully automated (consistent) scoring, practical exam on live hardware. This innovation addressed the business need for scalable, globally delivered, practical exams on live hardware to best ensure that partners and customers have the skills to design and deploy complex HPE solutions and elevate the value of their top-level certifications.
The primary benefit of this innovation to HPE is that this is scalable PBT for our global program, and the “delivery” cost for this exam is dramatically lower in this format – estimated to be 80 to 90 percent less to conduct. The previous solution resulted in a financial loss for every delivery, whereby this new innovation creates a positive cash flow.
Keep reading to hear from Jim Lucari, Senior Manager of Certification Solutions at HPE.
How has winning the award helped you/your team within your organization? Has it changed/impacted the way leaders/teams across your organization engage or interact with you/your team?
In our situation, the award has helped other internal HPE leaders see how we innovate in certifications. Other organizations began to understand more about certifications and how they are built. It is often referred to by others as a model of new thinking and ideas.
What made you/your organization decide to apply for the Innovation Award? Did you know all along (as you were working on the project) that it would be a good fit for the award, or did the idea come to you later?
We knew all along that our project was a true innovation. We didn’t know if we would win the award, obviously, since there are so many other great teams out there devising new solutions for their problems. We knew it would help us but didn’t know if it would help others.
What was the hardest part of the application process and how did you get through it?
The hardest part of the application for us was coming up with the metrics. Our innovation was just released a few months prior. We had no history. But we did know what the outcome would be regarding cost savings compared to previous approaches, so we presented those numbers instead.
What advice do you have for others who are considering submitting an application? Any tips or insights to share?
Be certain your application is about real innovation, something new and useful. It has to have some measurable and practical benefit.
Learn more about the ITCC 2023 Innovation Award
If you or your organization are interested in submitting an application for the 2023 Innovation Award, visit the 2023 Innovation Award page on the ITCC website for all the details. Submissions will be accepted through January 13, 2023.
