Technology Case Studies - Training

Computer Company

A computer company created its own computer-based training (CBT), specific to their needs, rather than send staff on outside training courses. Creating the CBT did not come cheap - it took 1000 person-hours to create an hour's worth of training materials - but it was still cheaper than buying outside training. The other advantages with CBT are that staff can train themselves or brush up their skills at any time and they can take training in small chunks with can be retained more easily. The training is accessible from their normal desktop computer so they do not have to travel, saving time and money, and can train in natural breaks.

Small Businesses

For smaller enterprises, the cost of creating their own custom training materials can often be prohibitive except in very specialist areas or where the cost of development can be shared with other companies. But training remains an important issue, particularly when you introduce new technologies or ways of doing things. Here are a couple of examples of how small to medium sized enterprises manage to make training a successful part of introducing new ways of working.

Brewer

A regional brewer was losing sales because it was too slow in arranging for service engineers to go out and repair broken bar-top equipment in pubs and clubs. The technology solution was to put in place a scheduling system that the service engineers could access and add to by using mobile communications whenever they were out of the office working. The successful training solution pivoted on putting the best and most highly regarded service engineer in charge of designing and implementing the training programme. This ensured two main benefits; the training was relevant to the people who did the work, and the other service engineers were keen to learn the new system because the training was provide by 'one of them'.

E-mail

E-mail was the technology solution for an organisation that needed to ensure that important messages were received quickly by key money-earners. The training problem arose because the very people the e-mail was targeted at felt they were too busy to spare the time for training and were wary of learning something new. The answer was simple and effective - leave for holidays could only be booked by e-mail. This gave staff the impetus and incentive to learn the new system - and see how easy and useful e-mail could be. People were eager for training and the system is now in widespread use.

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