Claudia DeFilippo
St. John's University
Charles Wankel
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ExPrep is a self-paced interactive learning application for Microsoft Excel that gives users real-time feedback on their progress. The training program notifies users when they make mistakes and guidance on how to improve performance.
With many students and professionals relying on Excel, ExPrep has the potential to have a major beneficial impact on education and the economy. In the words of CEO Brandon Eng, "ExPrep is heading the future of learning."
Learning on your own can be a challenge for many people. They either don't know where to start or lack the discipline to set aside the time to commit to teaching themselves.
The innovation is ExPrep's easy-to-use, interactive training platform. Users learn Excel at their own pace with preset tasks and problems. Real-time feedback tells them when they've made a mistake, how to correct it, and use the software more efficiently.
The idea is that real-time feedback makes the learning process more engaging and thus more effective. Research shows 90 percent of people learn by what they see and do.
Brandon Eng was a sophomore at Syracuse University when he conceived the idea for ExPrep. Like many new students, Eng says he struggled to learn Excel the hard way when he was suddenly thrown into using the complex program for school assignments. "What should have taken a half hour to do took hours," he said, "figuring out the software just to get the work done." I knew all too well what Brandon meant.
While there are other options to learn Excel on your own, Eng explained the problem is that most include in-class training and video based tutorials. "One thing that I found was that Excel is a very dry software, It’s not a very exciting application. Watching a video tutorial...it's tough to remain engaged and learn using something like that, so we developed ExPrep as more of a hands-on application where you learn by doing.”
Exprep has the potential to dramatically impact education and on-the-job training, increasing productivity. This is Eng's ultimate goal.
Many people must be trained, at least to some extent, to use Excel. Increasing proficiency also reduces the cost of training staff and improves overall technical skills.
Exprep currently only teaches Excel, but Eng says he plans to create more learning software to increase proficiency in other business applications.
The business model, according to Eng, is very lean. With little need for equipment and few people operating the company, overhead costs are minimal. And because all employees work remotely, there is no rent to pay or other facility expenses. With such low operational costs, ExPrep can be priced reasonably and still sustain healthy margins.
ExPrep's benefit to society and the economy is clear. Improving educational tools that help people learn new skills improves productivity. ExPrep's motto is "Excel in your career." The company's goal is to help anyone looking to do just that.
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Brandon Eng, Co-founder and CEO
