Quick facts about Comune di Cervia: 

Challenge 

Located in the internationally acclaimed tourist center of Ravenna, Italy, the Comune di Cervia is a public administration office with more than 250 employees. After beginning a collaboration with Learn365 partner, 4wardPRO in 2020 due to the emergency lockdown situation, the Cervia municipality knew they needed to rethink the entire set-up of the entity’s productivity tools. This prompted them to embark on a digital transformation journey with the goal of supporting smarter, more agile ways of working.  

“We wanted to bring our employees—about 250 people—towards knowledge and conscious usage, as well as a very thorough understanding of the functionalities of these new tools.”  

Luca Farabegoli, Head of Information Systems

The municipality’s ambitious and challenging learning goals were kickstarted by the introduction of the Microsoft 365 suite. However, it was clear to Luca Farabegoli, Head of Information Systems at the Comune di Cervia, from the very beginning that the introduction of these new productivity tools had to be accompanied by an efficient training plan, supported by a platform that would meet their team’s specific needs.

“4wardPRO and Learn365 were the absolute right partners to undertake a full immersion training on the Microsoft 365 suite at a time of great transformation for the City of Cervia.”

Luca Farabegoli, Head of Information Systems

Solution 

Comune di Cervia found in 4wardPRO the perfect partner to implement its “full immersion training” project. With careful planning, implementation, adoption, and training, the best services and toolsets were identified to get the training journey started quickly. 

Ultimately, the learning management system selected was Learn365:

“We liked the platform right away because it met all our needs.”

In fact, Luca Farabegoli explains that the Comune di Cervia’s priority when it comes to the learning experience was to reconcile very specific characteristics: ease of use, completeness, and diversified modes of usage. The Cervia team found that Learn365 met all these requirements perfectly. 

As Learn365 is the first and only learning platform that is deeply integrated into Microsoft 365, it provided Comune di Cervia with an unquestionable advantage as it has allowed users to explore and become familiar with the environments, thus achieving greater adoption of the tools. 

Luca Farabegoli also highlighted the importance of Learn365 allowing their admins to create customized training paths and content, provide employee support, and manage the monitoring and reporting of employee progress. 

Additionally, with Learn365, users are able to access their training wherever and whenever it was most convenient for them, allowing them to give their learning the best pace and more flexibility. Luca Farabegoli explains,

“It is very difficult to ask operators to take three or six hours to do training. It is much more efficient to invite them to take short moments in their day to complete training courses.” 

Results 

Once the collaboration between the Comune di Cervia, Learn365, and 4wardPRO was established and the solution was implemented, more than satisfactory results were realized. In fact, the project involved 250 users for an entire year, returning an excellent impact on the entire organization in terms of an increase in the skills of the municipality’s employees, as well as in the overall standard of skills, increased productivity and the activation of previously unseen forms of collaboration.  

Since implementing Learn365, Comune di Cervia now has 32 trainings available, with 29 of them already being completed by their workforce.

“We liked the platform from the start because it effectively met all our needs in terms of ease of use, comprehensiveness, and mode of use. We especially liked the possibility of doing “self-led” training, freely and in a short time.”

Luca Farabegoli, Head of Information Systems

4wardPRO’s Power Library was also a huge help to the Cervia municipality when building up their training content library. This Power Library collects about a thousand training courses or short lessons on each Microsoft 365 application, sorted by topic and skill level. The real added value of the Power Library training proposal is the simultaneous updating of content—with respect to Microsoft releases—which are readily communicated to users through the use of thematic email newsletters that to describe specific tool usage scenarios. 

Future  

Luca Farabegoli and his team in Cervia already have their eyes set on digging deeper into the vast functionalities of the Learn365 and 4wardPRO toolsets. Luca Farabegoli says,

“Productivity tools definitely have enormous potential, if properly used.” 

Luca Farabegoli went on to explain the team’s intentions for the future:

“At the end of the first year, we asked ourselves whether it was worth maintaining this type of service. We had no doubts, because we were convinced from the very beginning of the value of an ongoing approach to training on Microsoft 365, but also on Cloud environments that by their nature are constantly updating. So we decided to renew the partnership with 4wardPRO and Learn365 for the following years as well, because we believe that these two partners add great value to the way we carry out our activities.” 

About 

The Comune di Cervia is a Local Public Administration with more than 250 employees.  Located in the province of Ravenna, it is one of Italy’s most renowned tourist centers, also recognized internationally for its numerous sports, gastronomic and cultural initiatives. 

4wardPRO is born from the combination of 4ward and PROGEL’s multi-year skills and experiences; it’s one of the most awarded Italian Microsoft partners, with over 50 awards, in recognition of the ability to achieve its mission: “Create a better way to live and work by helping & empowering organizations in their Digital Transformation journey.” 

The customer story is created in collaboration with Learn365 partner, 4wardPRO