Training? Why Bother! What’s the ROI?

By Steve Moody European Training Manager, Cognos, Bracknell, England

An effective training program reduces the time it takes for users to learn and adopt new technology and will lead to greater satisfaction overall. With Cognos Training, you can also accelerate the learning curve and improve user uptake, improve employee performance and productivity, reduce costs, and prevent costly mistakes while lowering dependence on your IT department.

You can see a very big, very fast return on any investment you make on formal Cognos training courses. Would that convince you to look more closely at what Cognos offers in its Training programs? Suppose we can show you that a day spent learning a new skill on a Cognos course will give you an immediate saving of five days of that person’s time. Wouldn’t that make it a worthwhile investment of time and budget?

Consider those technical teams. A study done within IT departments by a major analyst firm showed this:

• it is possible to learn something new from the documentation and by experimenting, but it takes four and a half times as long as learning it through formal training.
• people who have to learn “on-the-job”, demand a lot of time from internal colleagues to help them gain proficiency. Every day spent in formal training will reduce by a quarter of a day this time “stolen” from other people’s productivity.
• learning and gaining proficiency inevitably involves some rework. Each day spent learning the subject through formal training reduces by a day the quantity of rework needed on average.

It’s clear that the time spent on training courses is immediately repaid several times over in productivity gains on the job. By taking the approach of “they’re smart enough to learn it for themselves”, you will waste large amounts of their productive time.

Also on the topic of productivity, a large software company (not Cognos) recently studied the impact of its training courses on its customers’ ability to do their jobs. The study produced some compelling statistics, provided by the customers themselves:

• their average estimate of productivity improvements gained from their training was 20%
• their average estimate of work quality improvements gained from their training was 22%

This kind of productivity gain is like having almost a week’s extra work from each employee every month.

And let’s think about what happens if they do have to learn on the job. One of Cognos’ partner companies recently did an analysis of the relationship between training and support calls. It found that those customers who relied on “learn-on-the-job” approaches made five times as many calls to Support as those whose people received formal training on the same subject.

Now … we know Cognos support specialists are all nice people, and that they give excellent support service, but every one of those calls to Support is costing you both in terms of wasted productivity and project delays. If your employees learn their Cognos skills on a Cognos training course, your project team will be able to work on the project, with the least waste of person-hours and elapsed time.

And finally, a thought about end-users … if they get the right training, there are two big wins for your organization:

• your own support desk will get far fewer calls from them asking things like “can I run this report at country level instead of at branch level?” or “how do I turn these numbers into a bar chart?”. So they can be working on other problems that use their skills better.
• the system that you have developed and rolled out to them will be much better received and more quickly accepted, and is much more likely to be viewed as a success. That itself has big implications for your team, your department, your next project, etc.

Training assists in change management by helping end-users become more comfortable with the new technology and helps identify benefits to them.

So if you can influence it, try to make sure that end-users get the right training, much like the training that IT people typically have. It will save time and costs, and increase the visible success of your department’s projects.

Cognos Training services offer a wide selection of flexible training plans and resources for users at all skill levels and at any stage of your deployment. Choose from classroom training and e-Learning offerings, or let Cognos help you create a customized training plan tailored to your organization.

Classroom Training

Cognos classroom training is available in more than 70 locations worldwide and gives you the benefits of learning in a dynamic, interactive environment with no distractions. For more information, check out the Training catalogs.

e-Learning Offerings

Test-drive our latest interactive, computer-based training by downloading the free CBT demos available online. Whether you are learning for yourself or evaluating for your company, Cognos e-Learning is a cost-effective solution that can be taken anytime, anywhere.

Customized Training Plans

An effective training program reduces the time it takes for users to learn and adopt new technology, and will lead to greater satisfaction overall. Whether you choose to attend public training, deliver your own training, or require customized training that reflects your business, let Cognos Training Services assist you in developing comprehensive and economical training plans to meet these needs.