InformationWeek

June 8, 1998

Train At The Speed Of Change

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Illustration by John Bleck

Where Crestar is attacking curriculum development in the development lab, Roberts Express is taking direct aim at the front office. By integrating computer-based training systems into the actual fabric of its internally developed core information systems, this unorthodox IT shop hopes to save millions in application reengineering, help desk, and training expenses.

Roberts Express is also looking to dramatically cut the time it takes to impart mastery of its business sys tems to new employees. "It takes nine months for a new employee to master our business and our system," says Greulich of Roberts Express. "That's too long. But if we shortcut their training, we'll get a bad call with a customer, or a bad call with a driver. Considering our transactions are like an emergency call to 911, we can't afford to cut corners."

Roberts Express is one of a handful of transportation companies that specialize in emergency shipments with guaranteed delivery. When an automaker's production line is threatened with shutdown for want of a custom fastener, Roberts Express is called in. The company will pick up and deliver the critical parts within hours--for a hefty fee.

Danger Ahead
The incredibly complex business process Roberts' call-center agents and application software must navigate is fraught with land mines. "You could have three different situations on one screen," Greulich says. "You might be picking a truck to dispatch on a load. You might not have any trucks. What do you do? Or you might have a truck, but it doesn't show any drivers. What do you do? The wrong decision can be a disaster for our customer."

The answer is something Greulich's team calls "just-in-time training," which his IT staff is integrating into a new and novel network computing architecture expected to roll out this month. The system components include 20-inch screen network computers, Java applets developed using IBM's VisualAge, and a Lotus Domino Web server.

With these tools, Roberts Express is taking its most experienced customer-service agents and marrying them with its Web developers; together, they are producing volumes of hyperlinked files that are being integrated into the company's primary information system. "We're cranking out an incredible amount of help text," Greulich says. "And our developers can't write it. You need somebody who's used the system and understands our business processes down to the last detail to do so."

Leveraging the Web's natur al ability to deliver context-sensitive hyperlinked information, when users press F1 or an errant keystroke, logic in the Java applet divines what situation the user is in and transfers that status to the Domino server. In turn, the server sends back a detailed help screen--written by an expert end user, not a developer--that contains cross-referenced instructional text.

"Just-in-time training and production support can be the highest return-on-investment application ever done," Greulich says. "Every call I take on the help desk represents a quality problem, and costs money. When users need help wrestling software to make it meet the business need, that's a training issue. If I can deliver that information just in time on the agent's desk, we can drive down help-desk calls and improve customer-service levels."

Clearly, innovating nontraditional approaches to training, and integrating curriculum development and computer-based training systems into the front, middle, and back ends of the appli cation development and delivery cycles pay dividends across IT organizations. But for certain learning requirements, such as development languages, experts say there's no substitute for the classroom.

Assimilation Takes Time
"Those crash courses in Java or Corba programming, whether they're on CD or video, generally don't work," says the U.S. Navy's Tzerefos. "Developers need keyboard connect time to make mistakes and time to assimilate the information. I don't care how good the programmer is, you can't switch from speaking fluent French to fluent Italian overnight."