While there are astounding number of online course videos which let you learn various product skills through tutorials, they hardly help in actually increasing your overall productivity. To fix up that productivity gap, Bangalore-based Anakage Tech has come up with a quirky little software package called iAssist.
iAssist provides world’s first of a kind “In Application” training and evaluation capabilities for desktop and web applications. No more jumping back and forth between videos, text guides and the core application. Application learners get “on job” help in live application with step by step guidance in application at field and view level.
Anakage platform enables self-service capabilities on Desktops eliminating Service Desk calls while increasing user productivity all this without any coding and/or access to source application’s code. It is a one-of-a-kind engagement layer on desktop and web applications enabling training, user engagement and product certification
Not only this, iAssist offers learning curves for almost every other service based product out there. Targeted specifically towards product-based companies, iAssist helps their employees in becoming familiar with even the slightest of detail within a particular product. I tried using the product with Microsoft’s Office suite and the experience was seamless.
What is more intriguing about iAssist is the fact that the entire platform gets embedded within the MS Office suite. Once you download the software, it automatically implants itself into the Office suite and no separate pop-up or video platform is required. While its services are similar to what Microsoft’s now-obsolete clippy offered, iAssist takes the learning process to a whole new level with its interactive, real-time step-by-step guide rooted into the Office suite. To take it further, iAssist works on almost all major applications be it on desktop or cloud.
So How does iAssist work ? Once you install the software package, it opens up a simple pop-up window asking you to select as to which MS Office software you wish to start learning. Since I’m from an engineering background, Excel hasn’t really been the most friendliest of tools for me. Hence, I selected Excel and started the learning process.
Once I select Excel, what I see is not a simple video tutorial opening up. iAssist instead opens up the actual Excel application and starts showing you a step-by-step guide to the entire Excel package. If you think that you are good enough with the first tutorial which has come up, you can any time go back to the search option, and look in for something you are less proficient with.
You can also start Practice Tests wherein iAssist gives you specific tasks to complete. In fact, iAssist also gives you the option to either work on a sample data which is pre-fed into it or give in your data for the entire tour.
iAssist has been developed by Bangalore-based Anakage Technologies, which has been founded by Prosenjit Ghosh and Rajeev Kumar. Both have over a decade of experience in top executive positions at Accenture and Adobe respectively, and are a part of that rare but growing breed of individuals (specially in India) who are willing to leave their hefty-paying jobs for developing such powerful software packages.
Though Prosenjit tells me that he aims to keep iAssist focused towards Office applications as of now, but once it expands to other services such as programming languages, it will quite rightly bring a revolutionary change in our out-dated learning scenario.
Let’s say I intend to learn Python. While there is an enormously massive collection of video courses available to download, I get easily irritated when I have to switch between the video tutorial being played and Python’s IDLE window. iAssist seamlessly solves that problem. It embeds itself into my Python software and acts as a real-time, step-by-step guide without having to require a continuous, pain-staking switch between any windows.
Apart from its current authored MS Office offering, the company is also providing similar on-demand solutions for its enterprise customers in fields as diverse as ITSM, Private Cloud, Analytics etc besides business software like MSO, SAP etc
As for the progress, iAssist is already a buzz in India’s Silicon Valley. Prosenjit tells me that he has sold some 200 licenses within a span of just three months. iAssist has paying customers in various segments including schools, corporates and vocational trainers and is now gearing for scaling up it’s product portfolio, marketing and sales.
