Assemble AND Properly Equip Your Project Training Team

• 07 November, 2021 22:39 PM

Congratulations!

Your organization has committed to coming into the business modern era with the decision to implement a cutting edge, enterprise-wide application like SAP S/4HANA or Workday. Whether Core Financials, HCM, SCM, and/or various procurement and inventory solutions, the decision was likely due to a number of factors; business growth and competition, a desire to eliminate error prone manual tasks or inefficient business processes or maybe executives are tired of the organizational silos running on early 80’s AS/400 technology.

Whatever the business case, there are a number of tasks following this very important business decision.  Starting with budget assembly and contracting an integration partner to internal recruiting for business leadership and assembly of the project team.  For the Training and Change Management team there are numerous decisions to be made around the composition of the team and the applications used to accelerate the deliverables of that team.  This blog attempts to provide useful guidance on providing your team with the right training application and composition.

With a wide range of products to choose from in this market, selecting the right one to properly equip your team can be an overwhelming task.  The risk is procurement of the wrong tool and/or a lack of team adoption, never realizing a return on the investment.  Many evangelists will touch on products like SAP Productivity Pack (SPP), Datango/SAP Workforce Performance Builder (WPB), LEO, Assima STT, STT Trainer, and Epiplex500, but don’t provide much assistance with the decision making process.  I would like to introduce a helpful question at this point which is:

What should this application do for your project? 

1.         Is the goal to output PDF/Word/HTML job aids and operating procedures?

2.         Are realistic simulations that allow end users to “show” and “try” system tasks required?

3.         Will this application be used to document system specs, integration testing, or UAT?

4.         Do you need a robust Learning Content Management System (LCMS)?

5.         Are rich eLearning, multimedia, virtual classroom, or screen casting a consideration?

If you already know what the application should accomplish for the project and can answer some of these questions, then you have already made significant progress in your decision.  The next few paragraphs should be useful in further guiding your expectations.  

uPerform, UPK and WPB are industry standard applications for enterprise documentation and performance support.  All are powerful rapid development tools that can produce robust content that is consistent in look and feel, offer multiple output types (training documents, simulations and test scripts) and contain a feature rich Content Management Systems (CMS).    uPerform and WPB are integrated with SAP and work great for portal applications like SRM, CRM, MSS/ESS with uPerform having a bit of a stronger edge in the non-SAP space.  UPK is integrated with Oracle and can be used on non-Oracle applications but in my experience is less intuitive for developers than uPerfom or WPB.  Both UPK and WPB can be sold with prebuilt (generic) content which is a cost savings, but is purely transactional help.  What about Cloud based solutions?  What works best for Workday ERP or Salesforce for example?

Will the organization use all of the features of the industry standard powerhouse applications including multiple training/testing outputs and a CMS?  If not, costs can be minimized by creating well designed, Microsoft Word templates to develop simple training documents and leveraging existing infrastructure like SharePoint and web 2.0 to maintain document libraries and promote collaboration.  If the bells and whistles won’t be used, using existing tools can be much easier and far less expensive. 

Do you need to reach a wide audience?  How interactive should eLearning and simulations be for your end users?  Camtasia is easy to use and great for screen casting to distant audiences and Adobe Captivate and Articulate Storyline are not only good screen casting tools but make fantastic interactive simulations and world class eLearning. 

Are you considering live video for training?  If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a thousand pictures.  Videos are great training manual processes and are have a high level of end-user engagement.  With low-cost equipment and video editing software, this may be a practical consideration.  Adobe Premier Pro and Audition are outstanding choices for Hollywood grade editing and post production. 

With the right tools you’re halfway there, but how strong is your training team?

Are they technically savvy? The learning curve on the applications mentioned in this article ranges from very steep to rapid adoption.  For example, developer use of the industry standard applications; uPerform, WPB, UPK are fairly simple but complex edits and the administration of templates and the CMS are not.  While Camtasia is simple to use it has limited features for eLearning and documentation and Articulate rise is a great rapid development tool but limited with interactions.  Captivate and Storyline 360 also require significant time to competency.  To get the most out of training applications, it is worthwhile to have an experienced Instruction Developer who can ensure quality in the project setup, maintain the application and provide guidance to the rest of the team on what features to use and when.  This role can be a tremendously valuable supplement to the team. 

Do they have high degree of creativity?  You may have an outstanding analyst or a pithy technical writer and neither has an eye for color, contrast balance or unifying all elements into a quality deliverable.  Familiarity with tool features and an eye for form as well as function can really help to polish output.  Keep in mind the organization will be using, reading, watching, and testing this output for years to come.  A good bit of creativity keeps users engaged and adds longevity to the work.  If the team does not have this element, a creative Lead Developer can help with team facilitation to get the most from the application.

Are they good tech writers?  What is the difference between a billing document and an invoice?  Should you PGI or Post Goods Issue?  Are documents going to be controlled for regulatory purposes?  Good technical writers develop and enforce standards.  If multiple terms are used interchangeably, acronyms are commonplace, or every document requires key controlling information to be present, good technical writers factor these elements into project setup and can use training application tools to build a consistent and logical place to house information.  It is incredibly time consuming and costly to retroactively modify existing development due to an oversight in project setup. 

Matching the right tools with good team composition can meet stakeholder expectations on budget and produce robust, accurate training documentation for any enterprise-wide implementation.  Our team can help you with any or all parts of the decision making and team assembly aspects. 

Content Development, Workday, Oracle, SAP, MySQL