Close-Ups
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August 1-15, 1996
Rockwell Institute: A class act at increasing productivity

Index
Making the grade
Scoring big on the Web
Taking the future home

Rockwell pic As a small business with few employees and limited resources, making the most with what you have is an everyday challenge. Rockwell Institute in Bellevue, Washington knows that increasing the productivity for just one employee can make a huge difference. Rockwell Institute offers continuing education and pre-license training for real estate and insurance state certifications exams. But what puts Rockwell in a class by itself is the fact that it is the only company in the country that produces computer-based software training that meets the 60 hours of education required by the real estate industry.

Making the grade

You could say that Rockwell’s success is built on the success of its students. More than 90 percent of Rockwell students pass the state’s licensing examination on a first attempt. Their largest competitor averages only 73.5 percent. To help its students succeed, Rockwell relies on Microsoft® Windows® 95, Microsoft Office for Windows 95, and Windows NT® Server 3.51. "It’s a fast and reliable system, and in most cases the software does a lot more than what we’ll ever need," Program Manager John Hunt said. With the speed and power of Windows 95, Windows NT Server, and Pentium-based computers, the staff can spend less time waiting on their computers and more time developing and enhancing software titles. "Our new network is a lot faster than our old system. And that makes a big difference when developing CD-ROM titles because we sometimes must transfer 60 or 70 megabyte files to and from a server, which can eat up a lot of time." Daily activities such as registering new students in the student database has been dramatically improved with Microsoft Access. "We used to have to wait 10 to 15 minutes to pull up a student name in the database (which has about 5,000 to 7,000 records). With Microsoft Access it’s cut down to 30 seconds at the most," Hunt said. "Plus, we now have the ability for multiple registrars to access the database. So if one staff member is signing up a student over the phone, another student can be registered at the front desk at the same time. It’s been a big help." Rockwell pic The intuitive design of PowerPoint allows Rockwell’s instructors to quickly and easily develop professional-looking charts and graphs for live lectures. Even instructors with little computer experience are able to produce great looking documents, says Hunt.

Scoring big on the Web

A cornerstone to Rockwell’s marketing effort is its web site, where potential customers can learn more about their services, check out class schedules, read the company’s monthly newsletter, and more. In a recent contest sponsored by Microsoft and Success Magazine, Rockwell’s web site was named "Most Innovative Small Business Web Site." During the duration of the contest, more than 3,500 people visited their site! Even though John knows HTML, the code system used to create web pages, he choose Internet Assistant for Word to create the site. "I used Internet Assistant for Word because it’s so easy," said Hunt, who created the site in less than one week. "It was just a matter of throwing it together in Word. I did use NotePad and Microsoft FrontPage to make a few minor changes, such as adding a video clip, but most everything was done quickly and easily using the Internet Assistant."

Taking the future home

At some point, Rockwell hopes to deliver pre-licensing education directly to future realtors via their computers. "The possibilities are really exciting for us," said Hunt. "Instead of people having to come to our facilities to train, they’ll be able to do it from their PCs, wherever they are - and that opens a whole new world of customers to us."

Vital Statistics

Rockwell Institute
13218 NE 20th Street
Bellevue, WA 98005
Telephone: (206) 747-7272, (800) 221-9347
FAX: (206) 747-8127
World Wide Web: http://www.realestateeducation.com
E-mail: JHunt@MSN.COM

Rockwell Institute uses the following Microsoft products:

  • Microsoft Windows 95
  • Microsoft Office for Windows 95
  • Internet Assistant for Microsoft Word
  • Microsoft Windows NT Server 3.51
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0