InformationWeek

November 10, 1997

All Aboard For Training

By Charles Waltner

uardian chief financial offi cer Jeff Knight says the biggest challenge in implementing Portable Software's Xpense Management Solution (XMS) was not technical, but human. Some employees, accustomed to paper reports or uncomfortable with computers, resisted the switch.

Tom Hecker, an operations support manager at Guardian's Corsicana, Texas, plant, says his employees' attitudes toward XMS were stratified. "In the manufacturing industry, you're dealing with 20-year-olds to 60-year-olds," Hecker says. "There's an educational difference there."

But Guardian used a one-two punch to ensure everyone made the leap to the new system. First, Guardian "took away the crutch" of the paper system, Hecker says. Management fully backed the adoption of XMS and made clear that it was a permanent change.

Then, to stave off cold sweats by some employees, two members of Guardian's accounting department initiated a series of 90-minute seminars. These seminars educated staff about the advantages of the software and its use, detailing the information the y need to include in their reports. Also, Guardian established "experts" on XMS locally at company sites to assist with questions or to train new users.

The seminars not only served to educate, but also functioned as tools of persuasion to sell employees on the benefits of XMS, says Curt Castillo, manager of the XMS implementation project. "We needed to get through to people who resist change and convince them it wasn't a screw-job," Castillo says. He notes that training was one of the biggest costs of implementing XMS, running near $20,000 for the seminars.

The efforts paid off. Any grumblings about the switch faded as staffers became familiar with XMS, while Guardian and Portable used employee comments to improve the product's functionality. "If we voted today," Hecker says, "I don't think people would want to go back to the old way."

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