Your Personal Software Trainer

For some companies, technology training is an expense, not an investment. “When I worked internally for companies, I used to say that training was like the gravy on the potatoes,” says Leah Nordquist, senior sales consultant for Wayzata-based Computer Training International, Inc., a computer and software training company. “The perception was, ‘You don’t really need the gravy. Just be thankful you have the potatoes.’”

Nordquist says that, in her experience, companies commonly consider training to be too costly and time consuming. In fact, when profits recede, training budgets often are among the first to be cut. Yet most people in business recognize that a well-trained employee is a more productive one. So what accounts for the disconnect?

One reason: There’s no real formula for calculating the return on an investment in software training. “Training is sort of the ultimate intangible,” says David Schomaker, CEO of Easel Training, a computer training and e-learning development firm in St. Paul. “It’s a very difficult thing to measure.”

Perhaps more importantly, however, is that traditionally, businesses couldn’t really spend their technology training dollars with adequate precision. Just a decade ago, training was essentially confined to classrooms and delivered in days-long sessions to students with varying skill levels who performed different roles in disparate organizations. “Companies would schedule instructor-led classes three to four months out,” reports Craig Jensen, CEO of Eden Prairie–based AppDev, a technology learning company. If a firm wanted to have a employee trained to use a specific application in a specific way, he explains, “they would send that person to a week-long class, and they’d learn the program from the introductory level all the way to advanced.”

Consequently, employers typically paid for more training than they needed, or for instruction that didn’t translate directly to their operation’s specific workflow. Which isn’t to say that classroom training is obsolete—far from it, in fact. “The classroom is certainly not dead as a training medium,” says Ellen Zissler, president of Computer Training, who notes that foundational courses in programs like Adobe’s Photoshop and Illustrator, for example, are especially appropriate for those who don’t have experience with the applications.

However, if your awareness of training options hasn’t extended outside the classroom, you’re not up to speed with the ever-expanding array of opportunities offered by training providers, who can customize course content and delivery methods to meet the specialized needs of today’s businesses. More than ever, technology-training firms can build programs around the specific parts of an application that an employee uses, and they can weave instruction into a firm’s everyday procedures. What’s more, training can be provided on an as-needed basis.

“Just-in-time training is critical for companies today,” Jensen says. “The biggest benefit out there for companies is that their employees can learn only what they need to learn, and they can do it in their time frame.”