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Have you been tempted to cut costs by cutting training? Are you hoping your employees will learn new software ‘on the job’? Like you, in an effort to save money, many companies are reducing their training budgets. Here we explore why scrimping on training creates a ticking time bomb…
Reports show 62 per cent of employees don’t receive pre-deployment training which in turn affects productivity and ultimately revenue.
So you’ve selected your software, you’ve received proposals in from your shortlisted providers, but the cost exceeds your budget. What do you do? Faced with tight budgets you probably consider cutting training costs. However, by neglecting training with a ‘how hard can it be’ approach, you will jeopardise your project success, here we explain why…
The success of your project will hinge on the adoption of the new software and processes by your staff. If users are not shown the ‘right’ way, they will use the software as they see fit. Or worse, not at all, and you will not get the expected return on investment, something we touched on in our blog about why CRM software implementations fail.
Inadequate training can lead to mistakes, impacting data quality and processes. The time and money it takes to correct those mistakes can affect your business performance, taking up valuable resources.
If your employees don’t know how to use a new system they may fall back into old ways of doing things or create processes that bypass it, which will slow them down, significantly reducing productivity.
Your customers will feel the effects too. Insufficient training can result in slow response times and inaccurate information provided, which impacts service levels and customer experience.
Whilst you are looking at numbers on a page, it is easy to see software training as a cost, rather than an investment. According to IBM, successful organisations have seen 22 per cent reduction in implementation delivery time when introducing an effective training programme. Other benefits include:
According to research, there is a clear correlation between providing your employees with the training they need to become more productive and an increase in the company’s overall profitability.
Increased productivity and higher quality results in a greater level of customer satisfaction.
According to the National Centre on the Educational Quality of the Workforce, a 10 per cent increase in workforce education level can lead to an 8.6 per cent gain in total productivity.
Providing training is essential to ensuring user adoption and can be the difference between a successful deployment and failure. Below we share our top tips for ensuring you get the most from your training investment:
According to research, employees only retain approximately 40 per cent of the information learned during the initial training session. Therefore, it is vital to provide refresher training to reinforce acquired knowledge and skills.
Training is the most effective when it is tailored to the recipients – think of your business, the different teams, individual roles and skill levels. This will ensure the sessions are engaging and relevant, bringing faster ROI.
Encourage feedback from users to see if there are questions or concerns. Provide follow up training if there are elements that are challenging to learn.
To make sure your new software delivers you need to monitor usage. By reviewing how the system is being used you can identify who is following processes correctly and identify areas which need to be more clearly defined or reinforced.
User adoption is often the reason software projects fail. Therefore if you are on the lookout for an experienced training provider, check out our customer success stories here.