Stretching Your IT Training Budget for Company Employees
With IT budgets growing ever tighter, companies are looking at new, more affordable ways to offer technologies and IT-related services. Options being considered including migrating to Cloud solutions and Software as a Service models for enterprise-wide applications. Migrating an organization to a new enterprise-wide solution is disruptive to the entire business, as it means extensive user training in order to ensure employees adapt to new policies and processes. How can employees become more adaptable to change, all the while harnessing the power and innovation that these new technologies bring? Our project and engagement managers offer the following recommendations for how to stretch your IT training budget while successfully bringing on board the employees across your company:
IT Training Tip #1:
Train the Trainer
Invest in an intensive training program for a handful of team leaders who represent a cross-section of your organization. These team leaders will come away from the sessions with the knowledge they need to train their department staff in using the new system. Be sure to include enough employees who are good at picking up how to use new software, and who understand how your company functions, so that all your bases are covered.
IT Training Tip #2:
Take Advantage of Group-Rate Discounts
By assembling as many of your users together for a one day to one-week long training session, you can often negotiate a lower cost per user. This also ensures that each of your users come away from the training with printed materials and their own hand-written notes that they can refer to later on. Just be sure that the training is held close to when the users will have access to the system. The longer time between training and making use of the new knowledge, the greater the risk that the knowledge will be lost. Find out what options are available to users who think of questions post-session or who need refreshers.
IT Training Tip #3:
Utilize Online Learning
Whether the service you are buying includes regularly scheduled webinars, online webinars ready for viewing, or they plan to host special webinars just for your team, you’ll save a bundle in travel costs by moving your meetings to an online format. This allows your remote team members to participate more easily in the training. Make sure there are options to fielding your own questions with the presenter. Additionally, you can often record the session for reviewing again later on, and obtain the slides that were used during the session. If a portion of your team chooses to, you can gather in a meeting room and then this provides the additional opportunity to debrief after the session. That’s a great time to talk about how specifically you’re going to put to use all the great new knowledge you’ve obtained.
IT Training Tip #4:
Choose Intuitive Applications
As part of your selection process, consider how intuitive the application’s UI is. Do the menus and toolbars remain consistent throughout the application? Does the name of the button appear as you hover on it? When a user lands within a window, is it clear within a moment or two what needs to happen here? Bring in some staff who tend to be technically savvy and ask them to navigate their way around. If your employees who are tech-savvy can figure it out, then they can easily assist their own teams in using the application.
IT Training Tip #5:
Select Applications with Built-In User Tools and Definitions
Be on the lookout for solutions that place step-by-step user instructions right within the application window. This makes it easier for users to figure out more complex processes. Trek Cloud ERP is one such system, with an extensive setup wizard, import wizards, step-by-step user tips and field definitions placed throughout the entire system.
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ERP Implementation: Planning Your First Steps