Do your users still use systems effectiviely? Whilst you may be looking at ways to upgrade and enhance your business systems, it is also vital to recognise the competency of your users, highlighting any skills gaps and knowledge drain.
Are you users' skills as up to date as your technology?
1. Are your users skills as up to date as your
technology?
James Webb
15th May 2012
2. Who we are
13 years 40 staff
Specialist training consultancy
40+ countries 200 clients
50,000 people trained
…bringing people and technology together
3. Objectives
•To identify what considerations
need to be made when upgrading
with regards to your users
•To help you identify and take action
to remedy or prevent skills gaps in
your work force
4. What do we mean by “Users”?
• Using the system every day • System not core to their roles • Rarely touch the system
• Frequently Finance staff, or • Possibly use portals • May think that “this is
procurement teams • Often non-finance staff Finance’s job”
• Wide breadth of functionality • Varying skill level • Disproportionately high
support costs
• Varying engagement level
Core Users Self Service Users Occasional Users
5. What do we mean by “Users”?
• Using the system every day • Financial Accountants
Accountants
• Frequently Finance staff, or • Management Accountants
procurement teams
• Wide breadth of functionality
• Supplier Management
AP
• Pay runs
• Credit Control
AR
Core Users • Creation of invoices
6. What do we mean by “Users”?
Admin Facilities Housing
Credit control Buyers Buyers
Buyers Approvers Approvers
Emergency
Approvers Receipters
buyers
7. Why are users important?
•ROI
•Use of core resources
•Blockers
8. Business need for
Business need for
Blockers purchase
purchase
Create and save
requisition
No Send back to
Approve requisition?
requisitioner
Yes
Purchase Order
generated and sent to
supplier
Goods Receipt
completed
Invoice processed
Invoice processed
10. Finding your starting point
•What are your core team spending their time
on?
•What are your common support calls?
•Getting help from the system and from ABS
•Who are your users?
•When did you last train them?
12. Support from the system
•Business Efficiency Review
•Reports
•Open Items
•Incomplete
13. When did you last train – the forgetting curve
Ebbinghaus’s Forgetting Curve &
Experiement
Within 20 minutes 42% of the memorised
list was lost.
Within 24 hours 67% of what he learned
had vanished.
A month later 79% had been forgotten
with a meagre 21% retention.
Michael Doane, Doane Associates: Without some form of continuous training, end users are
hopelessly out of sync with changes to the business process, functional upgrades, and transfers or
new assignments – all roughly at a 10% annual attrition rate. The result is that user competency
degrades over time.
14. Interpreting the results
•Look at each issue individually.
•Look at each role individually – not just user
types, but by role or by department.
•Map the issues to the roles
•Look for patterns
•Decide in each case – could this be done better?
What is the risk of allowing this to continue?
15. Interpreting the results
•If no, what has been successful for that group?
•If yes, what are you trying to achieve – by group?
What is the issue? How can you sell it to them?
•Is there a system issue, or a people issue?
•Does the risk of continuing low skills warrant an
investment in training?
16. Taking action
Training
Training
Requirements
Analysis
Approaching
managers
Communications User champions
18. Understand TCO of Training
Options: -
• Train internal staff to train
TTT Consultancy Costs
• Train internal HR trainers
Back-fill Staff • Buy in skilled trainers
Training Materials Things to take account of: -
Ineffective Training • Training is a skill
Catch up Training
• Trainers are required when
Inefficient Training
Unhappy Customers resource demands for testing and
Disillusioned Employees go-live prep are at their highest
Loss of best resources • How will you avoid Knowledge
Degradation?
19. The common law of business balance.
“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's also unwise to pay too little.
When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When
you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the
thing you bought was incapable of doing what it was bought to do.
The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and
getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it
is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that
you will have enough to pay for something better.”
John Ruskin – Late 19th Century Poet, Writer and Philosopher.
20. Getting buy-in Role change
Upgrading
New staff
New sites
Audit
Benefits
Refresher
PROJECT
Bespoke
training
materials
Costs
TIME
21. What Optimum can do
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These bespoke materials that we create offer long term benefits to your organisation, far beyond the initial roll out period. Creating a training framework that you can maintain and build on without recourse to external consultants for the life of the system will far outweigh the initial investment required, and can meet your needs in terms of new staff, audit requirements, upgrades etc.Training should be a continuous process, and providing your users with the tools that they need to find answers in the system without recourse to the helpdesk will enable them to build their skills independently over a period of time, making it far easier – and cheaper - to upgrade the system or make changes to process in the coming years.
In terms of next steps, this slide illustrates the sorts of timeframes that we like to work with. There is always an element of flexibility in this and we have to work within your project plan.However, this is the approach the delivers the best results in our experience.Working back from go live, the delivery should happen as close to that point as possible, definitely not before month -1. therefore the development needs to happen in month -2 and the design should be agreed and in place around month -3, with the definition (or TRA) at month -4. [This is when you need to have the dates worked out and either say “Book a TRA now, you’re late!” or suggest a date for it in the future, with a firm plan of when you will get back to them]