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RMIT Online unveils latest ICT courses with Salesforce

Tertiary education provider looks to help reduce Australia's widening ICT skills gap by partnering with CRM giant

RMIT Online has launched a new short course in Salesforce CRM as part of ambitions to close Australia’s technology skills gap.

The new CRM Professional with Salesforce course has been built in partnership with the cloud CRM giant and runs for six weeks. Using the vendor’s gamified online learning platform, Trailhead, the course focuses on building competency around practical applications of Salesforce Administrator skills, app customisation, and knowledge of Salesforce CRM features, as well as several soft skills, such as communication, project management and problem solving.

Those who complete the course will receive both an RMIT credential as well as option to sit the Salesforce Administrator Exam. Those being targeted include marketing, IT and sales professionals.

The course is being offered from March under RMIT’s Future Skills portfolio and is one of a number RMIT Online has been building up with industry. Last year, the tertiary education provider debuted a series of digital marketing courses in partnership with Adobe, and it also runs short courses for iOS development in conjunction with Apple and in data visualisation with Tableau. RMIT Online is the digital learning division of the university.

RMIT Online CEO, Helen Souness, said the latest short-course offering was a step forward in upskilling and reskilling professionals. According to a 2018 Deloitte Access Economics report, Australian universities are producing fewer than 5000 ICT graduates annually.

“The reality is Australia’s technology skills gap is widening and we need to take immediate action if we wish to remain competitive globally in a world that is dominated b7y digitisation – or we risk falling behind,” she said.

With IDC predicting the Salesforce ecosystem could top 79,000 individuals by 2022 locally, Souness said working with Salesforce made sense given the vendor’s market strength and reach.

Salesforce general manager and executive VP for APAC, Mark Inness, said the partnership allows students to gain in-demand Salesforce skills and an ability to work at a wide array of local and global companies using its platform.

“As we continue to see jobs evolve, we look forward to working with organisations like RMIT Online to meet the huge demand for skilling up new workers across Australia,” he commented.

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