Training delivered by professional instructors can be a huge benefit when implementing software systems. Employee satisfaction, return on investment, and reduction of calls to help desks can all be significantly affected by appropriate application training.
Here are a couple of quotes concerning the value of education:
“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.” – Benjamin Franklin
“What’s worse than training your workers and losing them? Not training them and keeping them.” – Zig Ziglar
The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) conducted a study of 540 corporations in the United States. One group of companies averaged spending less than $300 per year per person for employee training, while the other group averaged $900 per year per person. The $900 group averaged 57% higher sales per employee and 37% higher gross profit per employee.
The list of benefits from training is endless. Here are some of the highlights:
- Proper training teaches employees to adhere to best practices. Workers learning on their own or from colleagues may learn a method of performing a task. With software, there are often 2 or 3 ways of accomplishing the same task. IBM training materials are written specifically to adhere to best practices. These practices are the most efficient and avoid problems in the future that might be caused by performing a task improperly.
- Training increases worker productivity. For example, employees who can write their own reports after appropriate training rather than submitting a request to IT can get their reports completed much sooner, and report modifications can be completed much faster. This allows staff to be more efficient when analyzing data and making business decisions based on that data.
- Training reduces employee turnover. Many studies have found that employees are much happier in their jobs when they are empowered to use creativity and complete tasks without assistance. Training helps workers to understand software applications and be much more confident in interacting with software systems and data.
- Training can ease the burden on help desk and IT staff. Many requests and calls for help from employees are preventable with appropriate training. With a better understanding of applications, staff can avoid opening help desk tickets and resolve issues on their own. With many help desks being swamped with calls, response times are often measured in days instead of minutes or hours. Trained employees who can resolve their own issues or work together to fix problems will be much happier and more efficient. Help desk staff will also be thankful for the reduction in calls and tickets.
- Good training presents many “business cases”, or scenarios where product knowledge can be put to practical use. This goes above and beyond simply “learning to use the product”. Good business cases during a training class can open the eyes of students to not only resolve their current business needs, but give ideas on how to use software applications to address business needs in the future.
Perficient offers delivery of classroom and online training for a wide variety of IBM software products, taught by certified instructors. If you’re interested in specific training options, check out our education portal.
