Five Steps to Convince Your Boss To Get You iBwave Certified

These days, there are resources and training materials on practically every subject you can imagine. It can be a daunting task finding training that’s both effective and relevant to your job. But without training, how can you be expected to stay up to date on the latest wireless trends and innovations? And once you do find the right course to enhance your skills, there’s the tall order of convincing your boss to pay for it.

So how exactly are you supposed to do that?

It’s not as intimidating a task as it might seem. We’ve compiled five tips to prepare yourself for pitching to your boss to approve your training. Follow these steps and you just might find yourself attending an award winning training program like iCP.

Step 1: Gather Information About Training Programs

It might seem like a no brainer, but many employees skip this step when pitching to their boss to ante up for training. Since there are so many courses online and in class, finding the right one is crucial to getting approval.

First, compare training programs you want to attend. Is one more expensive than the other? Does one offer more relevant topics to your industry? Is the training online, in person, or are both options available? Do they have a quiz you can take to see if the training offered is right for you? These are the first types of questions you should be asking when finding the right training program for your job.

Did you know iBwave has a world class, award winning training program? It’s true! The iBwave certification program (iCP) provides expert learning through three levels of courses on in-building wireless design with the software suite. With training packages offered in-person, online, or virtually, and a suite of different subjects to learn about, iCP is a proven program that caters to your specific needs. Best of all, iCP is BICSI certified, so you can be sure you’re getting quality training.

iBwave offers comprehensive details on their training program, including testimonials, pricing, and course information. This is where you should begin your journey.

Step 2: Compare Training Costs To ‘Lack of Knowledge’ Costs

Ok, you’ve found the training program you want to take. You have an idea of how much it’s going to cost and what level of training it will offer you. The next step is to compare this cost to the alternative – either in-house learning or nothing at all.

Does your lack of training on the subject cost your company money? Quite possibly. Lackluster teaching leads to drops in productivity and quality of work. And if you have a technical question outside of your realm of understanding, who are you supposed to turn to for support if no one is trained on the subject?

The bottom line: undertrained and undereducated employees cost a company money and reduce efficiency. Highlighting this point to your boss is crucial if you want to convince them to pay for your training program.

Step 3: Highlight Return on Investment for Your Company

Managers often tend to be big picture thinkers. Simply telling them that attending a training program will enhance your skills is probably not enough for them to sign off on it.

With that in mind, we suggest showcasing the high return on investment that paying for a training program offers.

It isn’t enough to tell them the training will benefit you. They need to see how it will benefit the company.

No sweat! We’ve gathered some of the most common benefits a company gets if its employees complete effective training:

Designs and projects are finished faster.
Training empowers employees to take ownership of their role in the office.
Knowledge is contagious – trained employees can share their learning with others in the company
Higher education leads to innovations and advancements in your workplace

The key here is to move the focus away from yourself and on to the company itself. The more you highlight the benefits of the big picture and less on your personal development, the more likely your boss will see why attending training is so crucial.

Step 4: Showcase the Trickle Down Effect

We touched on this on our last point, but the trickle-down effect really is a meaningful benefit to an employee getting training.

Employees who are trained on a subject can pass this knowledge on to others in their office that have not attended the training. This can take many forms, from informal conversations to structured presentations.

The net benefit is that the overall knowledge level of workers is increased, all while fostering a workplace culture centered around learning and development. You can even teach your boss the skills and insights you picked up while training.

Step 5: Demonstrate the Benefits of the Training

You know those before and after pictures of people on workout plans? Believe it or not, this tactic can also apply to convince your boss to pay for your training – both before and after you’ve completed it.

You won’t be showing your boss your new physique, but you will be able to compare the quality of work done before and after a training.

If you’ve yet to attend the training, show your boss some testimonials from the training program you want to take so they can understand the tangible benefits that it would provide.

Once you’ve completed a training, your pitch isn’t over! It’s important to show your boss how the training benefited your organization even after you’ve completed it. The best way to do this is to compare a project you worked on before the training to one after. Many training programs also offer official certification, which provides a global standard mandated by many tier 1 carriers. and professionalism that will reflect well on both yourself and your manager’s team.

There you have it! We hope we’ve demystified the process of convincing your boss to pay for your training. We’d also love to hear your tips on how to get your manager to approve a training program, so please share below!

What better way to begin your research on training programs than starting with one of the best?

Customer Spotlight: Electromag

Here’s a scenario many businesses encounter: profits are booming, the client pool is growing, and now it’s time to expand to new markets. How do you balance that growth with maintaining your company’s reputation for excellence? As they say, with great growth comes great responsibility. To remain known as a dependable company, it requires dependable tools.

Enter Electromag!

An industry leader in in-building DAS design, iBwave’s customer Electromag Wireless has become synonymous with dependability even as they continue to grow. We sat down with Electromag to find out how iBwave has helped their business expand into an affordable, time-saving solution for clients across the US and Australia.

Before we dive in, let’s learn a bit more about the solutions Electromag provides to their customers.

About Electromag

Electromag is a specialized iBwave certified RF engineering team that provides in-building coverage design service for DAS, small cells and Wi-Fi. They’ve worked on over 200 sites globally, primarily across Australia, the United States and United Kingdom. They partner with System Integrators and OEMs to provide designs for various types of venue such as hospitals, airports and convention centers, employing a range of technology types. The team also has hands on industry experience with iBwave’s advanced RF design tools.

Recently, Electromag has seen a massive increase in demand for in-building Small Cells and Public Safety designs.

With this increase in demand, Electromag has added a wide pool of talent to make light work of difficult project designs. They also adapted their business process to provide an affordable and quick turnaround time for such projects and can complete them in 1-2 working days.

How is Electromag able to provide such quick turnaround time for projects of this scale?

With the help of iBwave software, of course! Since adopting iBwave for in-building design report generation, Electromag has been able to drastically reduce the time needed to complete projects.

The Electromagnetic Frequency, Link Budget, and Antennae reports generated by iBwave are all essential to Electromag’s mandate to provide swift service to their clients.

“Prior to the adoption of iBwave design, our workflow involved the use of AutoCAD to create schematics and antenna layouts. This was a rather cumbersome design process. It’s now a thing of the past, thanks to iBwave.”

Not only does automatic report generation save time, it also increases accuracy.

How has iBwave increased in-building network design accuracy for Electromag’s clients?

iBwave’s 3D imaging provides unprecedented control when planning network design. The software can automatically generate a three-dimensional model of a building by uploading its measurements. Not only does this relay a remarkable level of detail to Electromag’s clients, it also provides them a powerful tool for visualizing and communicating project-specific information.

iBwave’s cloud connectivity feature lets Electromag communicate seamlessly with project stakeholders. If design revisions are necessary, having access to documentation and project-specific info makes it easy to deliver updates and reduce the need for trial-and-error troubleshooting.

“iBwave has become synonymous with RF Design because of its transformative effect on the way we design and document venues.”

Which iBwave products does Electromag use?

What are the different types of venues and technologies that Electromag designs for?

Electromag works with System Integrators and OEMS to provide designs for many types of buildings such as:

They also design for a wide portfolio of technologies including UMTS, GSM, LTE, CDMA, Public Safety and Wi-Fi.

What are some of Electromag’s biggest accomplishments?

What better way to share Electromag’s greatest accomplishments than testimonials from some of their customers?

I appreciate that you have a group of individuals who can take a project and run it to completion. Your iBwave designers do well to coordinate with our members on project kick-off, progress reviews, and final submittal. Additionally, the time change has proven to be extremely beneficial when deadlines area tight because we get 24 hours, around the clock progress.
– Director of Engineering, System Integrator in Georgia, USA
Electromag brings a team of highly skilled RF Engineers who work as an extension to our in-house design and project team, and we have successfully worked with this model for the last 4 years. The ability to utilize the substantial experience of their team of Engineers has proved to be crucial when taking on complex projects. Electromag helps RFI attain “round the clock” productivity and surge through the peaks and troughs of the project flow cycle.
– Head of Services, System Integrator in Australia
Electromag has been very responsive to all of my requests and has consistently met all requested timelines. At this point, I am utilizing Electromag for some of my most complex DAS designs because of the confidence I have in their abilities.
– Director of Design and Implementation, System Integrator in New York, USA

What are Electromag’s three most valuable features of iBwave software?

3D Modelling
Report Generation
Prediction Accuracy

A final thought from Electromag:

“It’s clear to see why iBwave design has become so widely accepted in the industry. It’s also clear that iBwave is the go-to tool for Small Cell, Wi-Fi and more complex heterogeneous networks. It’s a truly powerful and versatile tool for any RF engineer or project manager.”

A big thank you to Electromag for taking the time to chat with us!

To find out more about Electromag, visit www.electromagrf.com

To check out other entries in our Customer Spotlight series, visit https://blog.ibwave.com/tag/customer-spotlight

New Feature! Quick Connection Tool

In the newest release of iBwave Wi-Fi a new feature was introduced called the ‘Quick Connection Tool’. And if you often do the cabling in your designs, this is a feature you’re going to appreciate.

What does it do?

It completely automates the cabling of your sources to your APs, enabling you to cable your designs in just seconds whereas before it could take up to an hour or more, depending on the size and complexity of the venue you are working with. For many of our customers, this is a new feature that offers big time savings.

Here’s how it works.

Using the example floor plan of an office space, we can see the placement of the source (switch), the access points, and cable trays (purple lines) on the floor plan.

Note: quick connection tool can be used with or without the cable route defined already, in this case I have placed cable trays which the tool will use to automatically route the cables.

From here, it’s quite simple – simply click on the ‘Quick Connect Tool’ icon from the menu, which presents you with this screen:

Next, you need to do a few things to tell the tool how to connect.

Select your source (in this case the switch)
Select the APs to connect to
Select the cable trays through which the cables should connect (optional)
Select the cable from the smart list of acceptable cables (i.e the software will suggest cables based on your source/APs)

Here is what it looks like…

And voila, you now have your sources/destinations connected – from here you can simply run a Bill of Materials or Cost Details to get a report/estimate of your network design parts.