Why Does End-User Training Often Fail in Transformation Projects and How to Succeed?
End-user training in transformation projects is a challenge — regardless of budgets and time spent in training rooms, when systems go live, the results are often unsatisfactory.
For the sake of this post, transformation projects are defined as large IT projects changing key functional areas of the business such as quoting, billing, order processing, customer support and other areas of Quote-to-Cash (QTC).
From the user training perspective, it does not matter if these are custom developments or deployments of off-the-shelf packages such as Nextian — all that matters is that they constitute a substantial change for the end-user community (typically organization employees, less often outside parties such as partners, agents or even customers).
This post shares lessons learned and Nextian recommendations regarding training in transformation projects.
The problem
Vendors usually sell “train the trainer” approach: they prepare training materials, train customers’ subject matter experts (SMEs) and the SMEs are supposed to train the other users.
Typically, “train-the-trainer” approach does not cut it due to:
- Lack of end-user focus time: training is the lowest priority for the end-users, who are (usually) expected to do their daily jobs while learning.
- Lack of end-user attention: end-users typically do not engage until the very last moment before the go-live.
- Disconnect and lack of internal communication between the end-users and the personnel driving the project (the latter typically consist of internal and vendor staff, making communication even more convoluted).
These issues are difficult to resolve (especially for an external vendor who has no control over customer’s personnel time), making “train the trainer” a popular approach shifting responsibility for training to customers.
Recommendations
To circumnavigate “train-the-trainer” limitations, we recommend enhancing the training process with the following best-practices:
- Shift the budget towards post-go-live user-support rather than pre-go-live training — having support personnel help the users to solve the problems on the job is by far the most effective method of training. Additional user shadowing can also be employed to find most common problems, process bottlenecks and collect user feedback.
- Make training relatively short and conduct it just before going live — unused knowledge and unpracticed skills are quickly forgotten.
- Do not invest into producing very detailed training material, focus on the basics instead — detailed documentation most likely will not be read.
- Document concepts and basics first — it is easy to learn details once the basic ideas have been grasped, but it does not work the other way around; add detail on an as-needed basis.
- Break the documentation up into topics following typical user actions (e.g., close an opportunity) and make individual pieces short — users usually look to solve specific problems, use a few bullet points or 1-2 minute video.
- Identify the SMEs and engage them in preparing the documentation, first line support and developing test cases — this helps to distribute the load, keeps SMEs engaged and enables them to learn.
- Prepare for the long haul — training is not a one-time activity and will have to be repeated a few times. It is also a good opportunity to gather requirements and user feedback.
- Gradually build knowledge base using Confluence, SharePoint or similar tool.
If possible, a staged project rollout is recommended. Staged rollouts can be either vertical or horizontal. Vertical rollouts are by department, for example: sales start using new systems first, followed by the orders team, then support, etc. Horizontal rollouts affect small part of organization across all departments, for example: select customers are transitioned to new customer support, or new QTC is used for just one product, etc. In that case training should be also staged for best results. |
Conclusions
End-user training in transformation projects can be challenging and deliver subpar outcomes. The results can be improved by setting the right expectations, engaging the SMEs and shifting the budget towards post-go-live user-support rather than pre-go-live training.
Nextian is a vendor of Quote-to-Cash (QTC) software for cloud and communications helping providers accelerate growth and increase customer lifetime value.
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