Getting Business Value from Software Training

Learning to use new software can have a big impact on software productivity. Your goal in getting new software is to make your employees more productive. That may not always be obvious, because you may be using the software so that you don't need as many staff, but you still are getting more productivity. You get more work done with fewer people.

Most organizations don't think of that when they buy new software. Training is considered to be a necessary expenditure, but not critical to success of the project.

On the contrary, it may be the most critical element. If you are looking for a productivity boost of 25%, but actually get a reduction during imple,mentation and for 6 months after, you are losing a lot of the benefit that you expected, even if you gain that 25% later on.

Part of that may be due to resistance to change, peak workload issues, and new staff, but I believe that most of it is due to poor training methodology.

Most software training follows the firehose approach. It's like drinking from a firehose! You get a crash course on the software features and functions, but very little context. By context, I mean the standard WIIFM (what in it for me?). Unless I understand how I will use a function, I am not likely to remember much about it. Many trainers may try to put context around it, by showing how it would be used, but that context may not apply to your organization.

When you buy new software, you typically are buying a new way of doing business (you don't want to do it the old way or you wouldn't have bought it!). This new way is a change in your business process. If the context that the trainer is providing is based on the new process and your people don't understand it, the context will be meaningless.

The solution is to start with the business process, understand how the software will help to improve the business process, then to provide training with this new context in mind. You employees will have less confusion, you will get less resistance to the change and your employees will become productive much more quickly.