NCMA

The National Concrete Masonry Association (NCMA) is the national trade association representing the producers and suppliers of concrete masonry products. The Association’s mission, through nearly a century of advocacy, is to advance, protect and promote the common interests of its members. Through leadership, promotion, education, research, government relations and partnering, NCMA ensures that members’ products are the building materials of choice.

Education has always been a high priority for the association. During the last economic downturn, the NCMA experienced a decline in demand for their on-site courses which historically had great attendance. After analysis and research, the association realized education was changing. To engage more people NCMA needed to embrace online training.

Nicholas Lang, Director of Business Development states – “When I was initially asked to research online training options I knew nothing about online learning and LMS’s besides having taken some online courses. I did a LOT of research and evaluated around 15 – 20 solutions. I came across LearningCart in my research and they ended up at the top of the list especially in the context of our specific requirements – including seamless integration of e-commerce, flexible discount codes and categorization and the ability to easily maintain the site ourselves.

We liked that we could have the interface custom-designed to be consistent with our current online branding. The LearningCart user interface was simple and our goal was to have a system that could be used by as many people as possible. Another important factor was LearningCart’s moderate pricing options - we really didn’t know how well the site would be utilized so to make a huge investment in setting up an LMS was a fairly big risk and the lower cost helped to moderate that risk.”

Once NCMA made the decision the implementation process was fast and painless. "I feel that we were listened to and received exactly what we needed," says Nick. Since deploying LearningCart, NCMA has continued to experience great growth.

"We use LearningCart for delivery of our online education but we also use it to distribute access to design software that we own. The fact that our users can purchase and download the software package has been very helpful as our previous solution didn’t have an easy mechanism for product distribution.

LearningCart has helped us to greatly increase our reach via online training and has had a net positive effect. We’ve been able to save money relative to the resources needed for training as it’s much easier to create a program and make it available. It’s also allowed us to be a little more aggressive in expanding our repertoire of training programs as the risk and initial outlay is lower than with on-site training.

In general it’s an easy interface from both the user and the administrator’s perspective. Once we have a course developed I can have it online in 5 – 10 minutes. You don’t have to be an expert in html code to maintain the site. LearningCart has been a positive benefit for us and our industry!"

Nicholas Lang
Director of Business Development, NCMA

Read more about the National Concrete Masonry Assocation at www.ncma.org