On Tuesday 15 September, the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre filled up with RTO leaders, training teams, technology partners and the wider aXcelerate community for aXcelerate Day 2026 and Lupo Digital was proud to be back on the exhibition floor.
If you've been to an aXcelerate Day before, you'll know it isn't a room full of sales presentations. It's a genuine working day for the vocational education sector. This year's agenda leaned heavily into AI, automation, compliance and the future of VET reporting the same themes we came ready to talk through at our stand.
Watch the recap
Before we get into the detail, here's a quick way to get the gist of what we shared at the stand and the thinking behind it. If you only have a few minutes, start here.
The challenges we hear most from RTOs
When we talk with RTO leaders, the same handful of challenges come up again and again and they're exactly the ones this year's event was built around:
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Getting more value from CRM and unified student data
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Automating the repetitive work that quietly eats a team's week
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Connecting systems properly, so information stops being re-keyed by hand
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Improving the enquiry-to-enrolment journey
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Working out where AI genuinely helps and how to adopt it safely.
None of these are new problems. What's changed is that the tools to solve them have matured and the cost of leaving them unsolved keeps climbing
What we brought to the Lupo table
We came to aXcelerate Day focused on being practical rather than promotional. A few things anchored our stand:
A live two-way HubSpot ↔ aXcelerate integration - a real, working build we were set up to demo (more on this below).
AI readiness conversations, framed around our Five Pillars: People, Process & Systems, Data, Technology and Governance. Whether an RTO needs one AI solution or a full transformation roadmap, the conversation starts in the same place the problem, not the product.
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Case study: a real two-way HubSpot ↔ aXcelerate integration
One of the awesome builds, the functionality of which we are super-proud of and able to showcase at this years show is the bespoke two-way integration we completed for the Australian Institute of Personal Trainers (AIPT) and Foundation Education.
It connects Contacts, Deals, Courses, Enrolments and Qualifications across both systems, so the student record and the customer journey finally live in one connected view, instead of being re-keyed between platforms.
If your RTO is thinking about integration, or about going beyond a basic connection , this is exactly the kind of build we love to talk through.
The HubSpot & AI Solution Lab
New this year, we introduced a HubSpot & AI Solution Lab 15 seats, first in, best dressed, in the classroom the day before the expo. The idea was simple: bring a real HubSpot or AI problem, and we work through what sits behind them and what the practical next steps are. Start with the problem, not the product.
More often than not, the answer to these problems is a combination some HubSpot, some aXcelerate, some integration, some process, some team capability.
We helped 2 RTO's save over 15 hours of manual work in this workshop.
Now comes the useful bit
Conference ideas have a habit of disappearing the moment everyone gets back to work. So here's the question worth asking now: what are the one or two things from the day your organisation should actually act on?
A simple way to make it stick is to choose three priorities for the next 90 days:
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Growth - where are prospective students dropping out of your journey?
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Efficiency - what should your team no longer be doing manually?
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Capability - what should your organisation get better at across CRM, AI, data or automation?
Then decide, plainly: what do we stop, what do we start, and what do we continue?
Let's work through it
Lupo works with education organisations across exactly this intersection - Growth + HubSpot + aXcelerate + AI + Automation + Data + Customer Experience. If one of your priorities needs outside expertise, let's have a simple conversation that starts with the problem.
Book a chat
There’s nothing to lose from a 10 minute connect-call. Tell us your pain... let’s see if we can help...
Written by Glenn Miller
An exceptionally experienced digital marketer, proactive and future-forward thought leader, I deliver exceptional customer experiences, industry leading digital strategy and superior marketing results.
