IVES Training Protects Training Guides with Vitrium Security with Video

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"One thing I've always liked about Vitrium is that they listen to their customers and their needs. They evolve their DRM platform over time to better suit the need of their customers.”
-Ron Shankar, Operation Manager

Company Overview

Founded in 1981, the IVES Training Group is the premier provider of forklift, aerial lift and loader training programs and materials. With programs that meet or exceed all applicable safety requirements, including government regulations and industry standards, they deliver forklift, aerial lift, loader and excavator Train the Trainer Certification as well as Operator Training Programs at their locations across Canada and the USA. Additionally, IVES Training offers on-site training, where they provide the training needed at any specific location.

Key Challenges

The IVES Training Group offers training material for certified trainers that need to train and certify other operators. They provide these certified trainers with valuable educational content in the form of documents as well as instructional videos through which they earn their revenue. Their Digital Training Aides (DTAs) can be sold as individual PDF-based documents or as part of a Training Power Pack. They also offer on-demand streaming video courses for trainers to use when training operators to operate mobile equipment. Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, their video content has become much more needed as a way to enhance remote learning operator theory training for companies.

As the leading provider of forklift, aerial lift, loader and excavator training materials, IVES Training has spent a significant amount of time and resources developing their revenue generating content. Naturally, it is imperative that their DTAs and on-demand video courses are thoroughly protected and delivered solely to those who have paid for the content. This need for protection and control is primarily to prevent revenue loss from unauthorized sharing or downloading but it also prevents potential damages to their reputation and the quality of their content if another firm or individual were to modify it in some way. If a company has, for example, 100 operators, it is necessary that the company purchases the materials they will use to conduct the operator training. As a training organization, the intellectual property of their training courses and materials is the lifeblood of the company. It should be protected.

“Our directors of training have spent over 40 years developing and crafting the IVES Training SystemTM that has been rolled out to thousands of trainers and hundreds of thousands of operators across North America,” states Ron Shankar, Operations Manager at IVES Training Group. “The training courses and materials represent revenue to the company, but it’s more than that to our directors of training. IVES team members all contribute in some way to creating, marketing, selling, distributing or delivering the content, the courses and the certification programs. Why wouldn’t we want to protect this? It does represent revenue to the company but it’s also about valuing the time and energy that’s put into the whole process. This is what led our team to search for the right content protection solution like Vitrium Security, one that could protect our valuable intellectual property but still allow our customers to easily access their content.”

“There’s a whole team now at IVES Training creating, marketing, selling, distributing or delivering the content, the courses and the certification programs. Why wouldn’t we want to protect this?.”
-Ron Shankar, Operation Manager

The Solution - DRM for Documents & Video Content

Since 2014 IVES Training has relied on Vitrium Security to provide ironclad protection for their revenue generating content. Through this long-standing business relationship, they found a solution that at once resolved their need to prevent customers from infringing on their copyright and intellectual property and other companies from stealing their content.

After initially using FileOpen as their document security software, IVES Training realized they needed to go a different route. As opposed to FileOpen, Vitrium Security did not require the download of an external plug-in in order to protect and share their PDF-based Digital Training Aides (DTAs), which provided a better user experience. Also, the security remained with the documents wherever they went, even if they were downloaded to a local hard drive or saved in the cloud. That’s when they made the switch, in 2014, to Vitrium Security for protecting their PDF-based training content.

“Valuing the time and energy that’s put into our process is what led our team to search for the right content protection solution like Vitrium Security.”
-Ron Shankar, Operation Manager

A New way to deliver content securely

“Vitrium’s document and video DRM solution has helped IVES Training reach near a record-breaking 1st quarter in 2020,” says Ron Shankar. “Adding Vitrium’s video DRM capabilities to our repertoire allowed us to protect the new on-demand videos that we introduced back in 2018, well before the COVID-19 pandemic hit and forcing many other training companies to move online or face bankruptcy. This allowed us to achieve our goal of protecting the new revenue sources and continuing to protect our valuable IP.” Today, Vitrium Security Enterprise with Video is the all-in one DRM solution that IVES Training really needs in this business, using it to protect both their documents and video content.

Additionally, utilizing Vitrium Security’s Enterprise Edition has given IVES Training the opportunity to integrate Vitrium’s encryption and Digital Rights Management technology with Microsoft Dynamics, their customer relationship management (CRM) system to allow for single sign-on (SSO) functionality, ensuring that users would experience seamless access to their content. Through Vitrium they can now offer their training materials for download in a protected PDF form without the use of any plug-ins, or through the web viewer, with the certainty that their content will not be copied or shared with unauthorized users.