User Training Offerings from Cognos

by Garry Nelson, Manager, Education Services, Cognos Inc.

Good training contributes significantly to successful Performance Management.

Leaving "learning" to chance exposes companies to the prospect that their investments in the Cognos solution will not realise the expected business benefits. The success of every BI deployment, in the end, depends on achieving effective uptake of the final product by the targeted user community. "Training" is the insurance policy that ensures Performance Management solution developers and administrators become competent and productive users of Cognos technology and that end users understand and make use of the power at their fingertips.

For those reasons, Cognos provides a comprehensive range of Training Services to facilitate the successful deployment of Cognos software by our customers. As part of our ongoing product development program, Cognos invests heavily in continual course design and development, to ensure that our training programs fully reflect the latest software, techniques and best practices in the use of the technology.

Effective end user training is often minimised or neglected in Performance Management implementations – but it is a key component of the strategy required to make every implementation successful. Even the very best implementation projects can fail if users are not encouraged to use the technology and applications delivered to them. Fortunately, Cognos Training provides the capabilities that enable your projects to ensure end users are encouraged to accept and adopt their new information environment.

Let’s take a look at what’s available:

Training Needs Analysis

Cognos Training Services offers a Training Needs Analysis to assist you in building a custom training plan that ensures user uptake of the BI application you are deploying. Our experienced training consultants will analyse the user audience, the objectives of the training and any constraints that might exist, and will provide a plan for the development of relevant training content and effective forms of delivery to the training audience.

Instructor-Led Classroom Training

The most effective learning is achieved by well-designed, instructor-led, classroom training (ILT). The reason is simple – ILT provides you with a highly experienced instructor who can interpret and respond to students’ differing learning styles, and answer their questions and problems immediately. Instructor-led training is usually provided in a physical classroom environment, but can equally be deployed by remote virtual classroom via the web.

All Cognos instructor-led, classroom training is built on a foundation of quality, award-winning training courseware that incorporates extensive scenario-based, hands-on learning activities and includes comprehensive student materials and ready-to-deploy classroom software images.

When it comes to delivering classroom training to the user community, there are choices. Cognos can develop and deliver training for you – a "one stop shop" from beginning to end. Alternatively we can equip and prepare you to deliver your own training.

Our product training courseware, which we constantly maintain to a high standard in terms of its currency and learning support, is available for customers to use as a foundation for the development of targeted end user courses. An Enterprise Learning License for Cognos courseware provides a customer the right to modify, copy and distribute the course to an unlimited number of students in their organisation. With the Enterprise Learning License, we provide the complete source documents for Student and Instructor Guides and the instructor slides.

We also can provide, on request, training advisory services to assist with customization of the courseware, auditing of courseware that a customer might have developed, and "train-the-trainer" assistance to prepare customers’ trainers to deliver their Cognos courses.

Cognos Self Paced Training

Instructor-led training does not suit in all situations. In many situations there is a very large or geographically dispersed audience for whom it is impractical to get to a classroom; and increasingly our customers are asking for a form of "anytime, anywhere" training. Self paced training can provide tremendous benefits in:

• enabling effective use of time through just enough and just in time learning
• enabling more people to learn
• catering to people’s different learning styles
• providing an easy form of reference or refresher training
• reducing travel and time away from the office

Cognos provides a comprehensive range of self paced offerings covering the entire Cognos software platform. The formats include:

Computer Based Training (CBT)

CBT is a medium that delivers effective, interactive courses you can take at your desk to quickly gain the skills and knowledge that lead to greater productivity with Cognos software. Through overviews, interactive exercises and quizzes, CBT provides business users the ability to learn at their own pace and according to their own schedules.

Computer Based Training (CBT) modules can be deployed to your users via a Web server, via your Learning Management System (LMS) or via the new MyLearning tab in the Cognos Connection portal.

CBT’s can be provided as a standard "generic" title or can be customized to incorporate your own data, applications, and branding. Any or all of the CBT’s learning content, demonstrations, workshops and quizzes can tailored to your purposes. The customized approach is recommended for ensuring that the training is well targeted, and that the user learns in a context that is relevant to their job.

Cognos 8 Education Bundles

The Cognos 8 Education Bundles are new Enterprise offerings from Cognos Training that package multiple Cognos self paced training courses along with an Advisory Service and My Learning CD. Each bundle includes all the necessary self paced training courses to ensure users are successfully trained on the corresponding Cognos product solution.

You benefit from a cost saving by purchasing the Enterprise CBTs as a bundle rather than each course as an individual Enterprise Learning License. The Advisory Services provide you with a Cognos expert who will work closely with your training team and all representatives from key user areas to ensure the training program meets their needs and results in enhanced productivity and satisfaction for the user.

Course Recordings

Recorded courses are an effective way for Cognos to provide customers with new product updates in a timely manner. Based on recordings of instructor-led presentations and product demonstrations, these courses can be quickly and easily deployed via a LAN, Web server or Learning Management System.

Custom Multimedia Kit

The Multimedia Kit is a learning package targeted directly towards the user experience of the performance management solution being deployed. As a totally customized offering, the kit is a targeted and inexpensive way to educate large numbers of users. The kit includes recorded presentations and demonstrations, a student guide with practice exercises, and a quick reference card – all customized with your corporate branding and data.

My Learning

My Learning is a free addition to the Cognos Connection portal that provides you with easy access to Cognos computer-based training (CBTs) and other learning materials directly within your Cognos environment. This ensures end users have the knowledge at their fingertips to effectively use and adopt new Cognos applications.

The My Learning package includes:

• An administrator guide for setting up the My Learning tab
• Scripts for deploying the tab throughout the customer's organization,
• The Cognos 8 BI Consumer CBT demos in English, French and German to set up a test environment and sample our CBT courses.

Change Management and Adoption Services

In the deployment of new Performance Management initiatives, it is often the case that training, in itself, is not enough. We need to recognize that such an initiative will often mean major change for its users – new systems to get to know, new technology to have to feel comfortable with, new processes to in-grain, and new information to use in making decisions.

Persuading people to use a new system within their job usually requires more than just imparting functional skills and knowledge. An effective change program for a new PM application will require as a minimum:

• A program of activities to align users with the objectives of the new application and the expectations of how they should interact with new information
• Providing a solid understanding of the underlying data environment and the planning, reporting or analytical capabilities that they will be expected to use
• A program of skill-developing activities in using the functionality of the new application in the context of user’s job roles
• Helping people understand how to act on the information in a way that leads to good business decision-making

To assist our customers through the change process, Cognos provides user adoption and change management advisory services that help to engage stakeholders, developers and end users, prepare them for their training, and follow through, post-training, to ensure the adoption program has been effective and that the customer gains the intended value from their Performance Management application.

It is often the case that customers will not know the extent to which change management is needed in conjunction with a new application or project. So Cognos can help to define this via an Adoption Readiness Assessment. This five-day program provides an assessment of the scope of the customer’s solution deployment in terms of its impact on the work processes of the targeted user community. This assessment is conducted by an experienced organisational change consultant who will evaluate the need for change management and identify the scope and design of a suitable program.

In Summary:

Irrespective of the training medium used, in order to provide effective learning, a custom training program for a new Performance Management application should include content designed to:

• Align users with the objectives of the new application and your expectations of how they should interact with the information
• Provide a solid understanding of the data environment and the reporting/analytic capabilities that they will be able to use
• Develop skills in using the functionality of the new application

Cognos understands user training; Cognos can help our customers to deliver it.

In delivering Performance Management solutions, when it comes to training, it is unlikely that anybody would dispute its importance. But when determining the most cost-effective, and learning-effective, program, there are a host of options. The right learning solution will depend on many parameters, not least of which include the nature of the user audience, the prevailing organisational culture, and the degree of change the users will experience. Suffice to say that Cognos can provide experienced people to assist in the design of a program for each and every customer. Your Regional Education Manager will be only too happy to discuss our Training options with you.

More information Contact your local Cognos Training representative Visit http://support.cognos.com/training