As technology continues to allow more efficiencies, and its effectiveness has been confirmed, companies and educational institutions are adopting the digital world as an alternative to being hostage to real estate investments. Not only is it cost-effective but the impact on the environment is significant as proven during the initial COVID pandemic that shut world travel down, creating an 11% decline in CO2 emissions that put us back to 2009 levels.
Many companies have committed to continuing virtual work and learning environments as many saw performance increases by as much as 47%. Considerations for shared workspace where an employee might come in 2 days a week and work from home 3 days with another employee coming in on alternate dates are being considered.
Most employees prefer the virtual environment. Not only do they save between $2,000 and $6,000 per year in work-based expenses, but the frustration of rush hour traffic and the loss of several hours from their day is significantly reduced.
Educational institutions and companies beginning to embrace virtual education and training and exploring enhanced teaching and learning techniques that virtual technology can bring them. These include ways to keep the people engaged, optimize the learning experience and identify what each person did during class.
Jigsaw Interactive is one of the leading companies providing technology for virtual training and education. Jigsaw is the only solution that was designed specifically for teaching and learning. Their technology offers a robust and easy to use platform focused on optimizing learning and understanding. They are known for their interactive learning experience, the personalization for each participant and the multiple ways a virtual class can be executed. They have a large customer base in all sectors of business and education. Jigsaw Interactive wants to change the face and reputation of virtual training and education. Their innovative technology, unparalleled customer service and their commitment to continual innovation to meet the changing demands of their customers are what sets them apart.
The Company and Their Road to Success
Jigsaw Interactive is a technology company that specializes in virtual training, education, and learning through its intuitively advanced platform. Their technology optimizes the learning experience by providing multiple ways through which the participants can engage during learning sessions.
Having a learning environment that lets each of us review information and focus on certain things without impacting other participants during a session, makes a difference in how much learning and engagement is done.
Josette Fleszar
Jigsaw’s multi-dimensional platform allows every individual to actively look at information in the way they learn and work. It offers many immersive and engaging opportunities so, as the facilitator manages the session, they can easily engage participants on either an individual or group level. With unique capabilities like customizable break out rooms, recordable role-play rooms and multi-screen sharing, Jigsaw is truly an immersive, dynamic, powerful, and best-in-class virtual learning environment.
Every company, and educational institution, strives to provide the best learning and work environment for their employees, students, and customers. Company survival depends on having employees whose performance and productivity meets identified goals while schools are focused on test results and overall student performance.
To help ensure goals are met, instructors need the ability to understand what’s happening during class, training, work projects, etc. Whether that’s through testing, evaluations or other means, being able to collect and easily analyze data helps in understanding whether their educational programs are effective.
Jigsaw’s engagement and performance analytics provide an understanding of what happens during class, training, or project work. These analytics assist in identifying individual and group learning, engagement, and performance behaviors. They also provide valuable information around the teaching and leadership styles of instructors, and the learning and work styles of participants. The goal of these analytics is continual quality improvement and increased learning and performance, so organizations know where they, or their team, fall short. This provides the necessary information to put remedial processes in place so they can work toward meeting projected performance goals.
Some of the initial challenges faced by Jigsaw were competing with giant, well-known companies, building a marketing program to gain brand awareness on a limited budget, getting companies and educational institutions to try their services as they were relatively new to the industry. The next stepping stone was getting people to understand the differentiating factors between Jigsaw and video/web-conferencing systems. Companies often lump training in the same category as meetings, so assumptions are made that a web-conferencing system will work just fine, but in reality, it is completely different.
The initial challenges helped them understand the what companies face and how traditional web-conferencing systems fall short of meeting the needs of learning and development departments. This information helped them develop the best technology and services with the focus on customer needs.
The company’s growth can be credited to their unparallel service and their unique technology. Partnering with the second largest virtual school in the country and, in working closely with them they achieved significant improvements in their student and school results had a huge impact on their growth. When they introduced their solution on HTML5/WebRTC, it further enhanced their capabilities and growth. The next big step was securing several well-known companies that became anchor accounts and offered to be references to their technological strength and their customer care program.
Factors adding to the growth of Jigsaw Interactive
Jigsaw Interactive believes innovation and change are the keys to success. Their solution was designed with learning in mind. Their platform was built by a team of experts along with the knowledge feedback from teachers, trainers, and students of all ages. The end users know what they need and want, so Jigsaw incorporated their customers’ input with their technical and business knowledge to deliver the best-in-class virtual learning environment.
Their corporate mantra is ICARE.
- Integrity: Their commitment to ensuring teamwork and communication with the highest level of integrity is a key component of Jigsaw Interactive’s customer care program. They believe in having complete transparency and honesty between their team and their customers.
- Customer Service: Their commitment to providing a platinum level of customer service is at the center of everything they do. Their customer care starts internally through a commitment to each employee and each other.
- Accountability: They hold every team member accountable for delivering the best experience to their customers.
- Results: Their priority is to have their customers experience better results through their technology. By utilizing the key components of Jigsaw, everyone has an opportunity to truly engage and immerse themselves in a highly responsive virtual learning environment.
- Excellence: They are, and will always be, focused on delivering the highest level of excellence to their customers. They lead by serving others and always aim to exceed the expectations of their customers and partners.
The entire team of Jigsaw is not only committed to these values but makes sure it reflects in their work and their efforts. Jigsaw is proud to have received staggering amounts of praises and through the roof ratings for their customer service program and the commitment of their team to ensuring their client’s success.
The services defining Jigsaw Interactive, new additions, and the factors setting the company apart
Jigsaw Interactive provides a virtual learning environment that meet the unique needs of training, teaching, and learning for both corporate and educational organizations.
Their platform bridges the gap between teachers and students by providing effective learning tools that lets them work together in virtual environment. Offering teachers a virtual classroom that includes all types of media while giving them the ability to get students involved is an important factor in learning success. Offering students a classroom that is inclusive and immersive while allowing them easy access to the information and learning tools changes their learning dynamics and helps improve their overall success.
Teaching professionals need a platform that allows lots of engagement and project work, where they can use all kinds of content and resources. It’s not about offering lecture-based programs, it’s about delivering information in a learning environment that gives participants the chance to review information and engage in brainstorming to create potential solutions.
Social learning is another important factor in the learning equation. People need to connect with other people during class to question the information they are learning by either debating with the instructor and the class, or simply putting the questions out there for everyone to think about. On-demand programs, while they have great content and are convenient, do not provide the social aspects of learning. Jigsaw offers tools that encourage social learning and team project work.
Jigsaw is always innovating to ensure their technology keeps up with the changing needs of their customers and the industries. They are always working to ensure the various tools are super responsive. They launched their new in-class assessments this year and they will begin working on the next version which will give more options and reporting metrics.
Their Learning Behavior and Performance Analytics Dashboard provides detailed information about everyone’s learning journey. Being able to quickly access this information confirms learning, learning styles, teaching styles, curriculum design and many other data points that helps companies and schools improve their overall learning programs.
Factors proving Jigsaw’s excellence in the virtual learning space
Jigsaw’s technology offers a multi-dimensional virtual learning environment that has more tools available for instructors and participants than if they are in a traditional classroom. Because we all learn differently, and absorb information at different speeds, the learners have the ability to focus on a specific piece of information without interrupting the instructor or holding the group back.
- Jigsaw’s tools work together simultaneously so instructors can play a video, review a document or presentation, annotate on the information, drop details to the whiteboard while getting feedback or information from the group through a collaborative board. We live and work in a multi-dimensional world so when learning, being able to review information in a multi-dimensional format not only makes learning more interesting, it makes sense.
- Jigsaw provides information back to the instructor that help identify areas for student improvement and curriculum modification. Their Learning Behavior and Performance Analytics Dashboard offers a variety of information surrounding how participants learn, what tools most people prefer in a learning environment, what tools instructors are using, what level of engagement classes are getting, etc. These analytics can be sorted in numerous ways so schools and companies can continue to improve class content, teaching methods, and engagement projects.
- At Jigsaw, the customer is always the focus. They have a superior customer service program that includes account management and a technical support team. They value every customer and constantly work to improve everything they do. Their team works together to provide the best possible solution to the customer.
- Communication is the key to working together and they have built a system of communication tools that allow the entire organization to know what’s happening and who’s “owning” the question or concern from their customers. Their team’s commitment goes beyond taking care of the customer, they take care of each other.
They believe that their team is their most valuable asset and ensuring the team knows how critical they are to the company’s success and how much they are appreciated is a part of their winning formula. The management team understands that life happens, so employees know they can take care of those life events when necessary and other team members are there to assist.
CEO’s entrepreneurial journey and achievements
The company’s success is a result of many things including a team of highly skilled experts that have their finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the technology and virtual learning space. A team is only as effective as their leader, and for a company like Jigsaw, the leadership must a be a visionary and a realist. Jigsaw is fortunate to have Josette Fleszar as their CEO and President.
Josette believes the responsibilities of an entrepreneur is varied. “You have to be a risk taker and you have to believe in the team you put together, more than you believe in anything.” stated Josette. “An entrepreneur identifies a need and creates the possibility to supply that need in a way that no one else has thought about. It means pushing the envelope to do more with less, having the vision through proper planning and communication, to build the solution with hope and faith at the foundation. It means working day and night to see your vision come to fruition and doing so with continual inadequate budgets and funding. It means hard work, super hard work but with the satisfaction that when you succeed, you did it with the team that you put your faith in.” she goes on to say.
If it weren’t for entrepreneurs, there would be no Apple, no Microsoft and no Hewlett Packard. These and many more companies started as a dream and a desire to do something that would improve people’s lives. That’s what we’re doing at Jigsaw Interactive.
Josette Fleszar
Josette was born an entrepreneur and was running her first business at the age of 11. She started in middle school, selling roasted pumpkin seeds and cinnamon toothpicks, quickly learning the value of hard work and profit margins. She realized that providing value for the money spent is what people wanted. She realized that she had to add the cost of her time into the cost of the product if she was going to be successful and make money.
At the age of 13, she was lucky enough to be taken under the wing of another entrepreneur who owned her own healthcare company. She started filing papers in the office after school, learning the ropes of billing and collecting money for hospitals and using the values her parents instilled in her; do your best, be honest, and work hard. By the age of 17, she was meeting with hospital accounts receivable departments to help them identify how their services could help them collect more money, faster.
When she turned 35, she started her own company, with her dream team and spent 4 years building Receivables Process Management (RPM). In 2004, they were awarded the Second Fastest Growing Woman-Owned business in Georgia and the Fifth Fastest Growing company in Atlanta. Not long after that, they sold that business. Today it is a division within the United Healthcare group.
She decided to leave healthcare after 30 years, so with some of her old dream team, she started Jigsaw Interactive. Jigsaw is a virtual learning platform. Our goal is to provide an engaging learning experience for students of all ages. “We are all lifelong learners, and we all bring our unique characteristics and learning/work styles to everything we do.” says Josette.
Growing a new business to the second fastest-growing woman-owned business and the second fastest-growing company in Georgia are some of her biggest achievements. Her second biggest achievement has been the number of young, single moms who she mentored as a result of them working for her at RPM. Many young women weren’t as lucky as she was so they didn’t believe they could be successful. Mentoring them allowed her to instill the many values and lessons her parents gave her. She was amazed at how just a little encouragement and appreciation turned these women into a powerful team where their confidence and success grew daily.
What makes the Jigsaw team so special?
They believe that people are the very most important part of everything they do. It is always people that make the difference. You can build anything, it can be beautiful and shiny but in the end the beauty and shine fade. It’s the people who continue to make it shiny. So taking care of your team is of critical importance.
Everyone on the team is an integral part of the Jigsaw family. They work together to ensure the customer and each are taken care of. They celebrate wins and review their challenges as a team. We “shout out” those who have made a difference to a client and as corny as it sounds, we all have clappers that we use during team meetings to announce those who have been extremely helpful to someone.
Active and vocal appreciation goes a long way. Most people are too busy to take the time to acknowledge the work that has gone into helping a customer or coming up with a great idea. We believe these little things work to make the big things happen and we recognize that for and to everyone.
Through the dedication of our team, the unique characteristics and capabilities of our technology and in partnership with one of our customers, working together they saw a decrease of 43.2% in their school’s Close the Gap scores after a single semester. They saw a 70% reduction in student inactivity during that same time. This meant students were engaging in class. Another school won a national science competition using Jigsaw. Their science project was built, reviewed and demonstrated in Jigsaw. They won the competition and their project was sent to the International Space Station.
Companies are getting internal feedback that, what used to be boring and drawn out training is now engaging because they have the ability to review information and own their learning experience. Regardless of the type of training being done, our customers are seeing a shift in how their employees regard and participate in virtual training. Small group learning is easier and more effective in Jigsaw’s customizable break out rooms.
Others are successfully running virtual software training labs that allows their trainees to work in the software while the trainers look over their shoulders virtually. This is saving companies thousands of dollars and reducing training times to less than 50% because they no longer have to be on-site at every office or plant for these software labs to be held successfully.
Virtual sales and product training is more impactful because role play rooms are available and can be recorded. The goal of training and education is to improve learning and performance. The goal of Jigsaw is to improve engagement and learning, The sum of these two goals is that overall engagement is increasing which means learning and retention are improving. That translates into better performance and productivity.
