The not so Secret Secrets to a Successful Training Rollout

The time and energy you invest in a good end-user training rollout will have a direct business impact on your company. A technology investment where you have proactive, excited users who use the tool correctly can immediately impact such aspects as:

• Improved customer satisfaction
• Improved customer experience
• Reduction in time to resolve customer support issues
• Increased productivity
• Increased employee satisfaction
• Increased collaboration
• Increased accuracy in reporting

​Second secret. Budget time and money as part of the entire project for training. When you plan and budget from the start, training becomes a part of the whole deployment. Make sure you do not underestimate the resources required. We have done a number of projects, and one thing is clear – it is not a one-person 1, hour effort. There is a model that rings true to me that a good training program should account for about 10 % of the total budget of the project.

Moving on to secret number three. A good training strategy should not be about learning the tool by looking at features and clicking buttons. Whatever you train should go deeper. Look at the way you work in your company. Look at what you were solving when you initially started the project. Those are things to focus on also in training. A good user guideline or an intuitive design of the product will do the rest.

Fourth secret: Management needs to sponsor the training by either requiring everyone to attend, taking a few minutes at the beginning of the training to welcome everyone or just coaching users into using the tool right after training.

And finally, the very last secret is revealed. Invest in a great trainer. When delivering training, all methods should be investigated and used where applicable. A face to face training is not always the way to go, and if you opt for online training, there is a specific way to do that too. The technical architect of the product, while they may be the best expert on all the nuts and bolts of the system, may not always be the best choice to deliver training. Focus on a trainer who has experience with different training methodologies; they have the ability to connect with every audience and have the skills to communicate the message at hand.

And for those of you who made it this far – I have a bonus secret for you. We’ve done everything right, all our sessions are done and dusted, and people return to their jobs and immediately start using their new knowledge. Well – hold back: A successful training program is never completely finished. Return to it. Evaluate the effectiveness and use the results to make decisions when planning future training.
Here’s hoping all your projects are a great success!