Everybody knows good training is essential to the success of enterprise software implementations, right? Well, if that’s true, why do so many companies fail to budget for it sufficiently?
Once a typical ERP project is about to go-live, chances are it’s over budget. Unfortunately, just prior to go-live is also about the time that:
- Senior management and business unit leaders start asking how everyone is going to get trained.
- The project team starts asking where the money for training is going to come from.
To make matters worse, the software vendor’s sales pitch is starting to sound, at best, like an optimistic version of the truth: “Don’t worry, our software is so intuitive you won’t really need to add much for training.”
To help those caught in the trap of shrinking budgets and expanding training needs, here’s a list 10 ways to stretch a training budget.
1. Start early. Request system access for the training team months in advance, not weeks. The last thing you want to do at crunch time is figure out how to access for another half-dozen team members.
2. Insist that your software vendor and integration partner construct a stable training environment so that training developers don’t spend time (and money) debugging untested software.
3. Get virtual private network (VPN) access for training developers and remote employees involved in acceptance testing. This will save thousands on travel and living expenses.
4. Use web-based training (WBT) as much as possible. A solid curriculum of asynchronous WBT modules, and synchronous eLearning (webcasts) can greatly reduce – or even eliminate – the need for in-person classroom training.
5. If you out-source WBT development, provide your vendor with corporate standards for online material and access to your LMS for compatibility testing. Do this early. Don’t consume budget on last-minute hassles with LMS connectivity.
6. Manage all class logistics from enrollment through room setup and materials reproduction internally. This is administrative work – don’t pay external consultants for busy work.
7. Document the job roles of system users and the tasks they will perform in the system. Provide your training developers with flowcharts or use cases that delineate job roles and process boundaries.
8. Assign one or more experts from the development/ configuration team to answer questions about the details of your customizations so that your training team or vendor can quickly document and prepare accurate scenarios. Don’t make them waste their time searching for answers.
9. Provide the training team with realistic training data for use in training classes – don’t make them spend their time searching for data.
10. Develop a team of super users who can attend classes (or stop in at scheduled intervals) to answer process-specific questions that might stump the stand-up trainers.
I know what you might be thinking: many of these items don’t seem like traditional cost-cutting measures. Assigning a member of the development team to training, for example (#8), sounds like a cost increase.
And it’s true, in the short run, some of these items might actually cost money. The trouble is, shortcuts in these areas will end up costing the company thousands – or millions – in lost productivity, errors, and re-work. (The term penny-wise and pound-foolish comes to mind).
In the end, it’s not just about the cost of training – it’s about cost of training’s impact on the organization.
