July 12, 1999

Collaborative Training Gains

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Companies implementing enterprise apps turn virtual training into real savings

By Tom Stein

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or Canada's Department of Agriculture, rolling out SAP's suite of sales, distribution, and financial software could have been a logistical nightmare. The department had to train 800 users scattered across the country. Sending out a fleet of SAP trainers to each location was out of the question. But shipping hundreds of employees to a central training site would have been equally time-consuming and expensive.

The department solved the problem by setting up a virtual classroom using an application called Symposium from Centra Software Inc. By loading the software onto their computers and logging on to the Internet, students in far-flung locations can communicate directly with an instructor, whose live voice or video image is beamed directly onto their computer screens.

Students watch as the instructor pulls up an SAP screen and demonstrates how to complete a given business transaction. Students can also work on the SAP screen along with the instructor. And by pressing a handlike icon, a student can "raise" his hand to ask a question. The instructor, who controls all conversation, can then activate the microphone at that student's computer. "It's a slick product," says Gerard Therien, SAP project leader with the Canadian Department of Agriculture.

Collaborative training--whether via instructional software on a PC or over the Internet--is slowly gaining momentum among companies implementing enterprise applications across broad geographical areas. The market is still very young; its size has never been measured. But industry experts agree that it's only a matter of time before these applications go mainstream, since they can offer tremendous value and savings. Sensing the opportunity, a number of vendors are jumping in: Collaboration heavyweight Lotus Development Corp. is beginning to promote its LearningSpace Live technology to users of applications such as enterprise resource planning, supply-chain, and customer-relationship management. Other players stepping to the plate include iLink, Netpodium, and Sterling Resources. In addition, there are reports that Microsoft is working on a Web training product, although the company won't comment.

Continual Learning
Therien says a key motivation for selecting Centra is that it lets training be a continual process rather than a one-shot deal. "With Centra, we can easily provide refresher courses every three months," he says. "It will also help us get new employees up and running on SAP very quickly." Therien won't say what his agency paid for the software, which can cost $100,000 or more. But he says Centra has already helped the company save $500,000 in travel expenses. The Department of Agriculture held trial training sessions with a small group of users before formally launching the Centra product across the company. User reaction was very positive, says Therien--and because people enjoyed the experience, they learned more.

The U.S. Navy also is experimenting with computer-based enterprise application training methods. The Navy is rolling out a payroll and personnel system from PeopleSoft Inc. to nearly 6,000 active-duty personnel and 650 reserves at 800 sites worldwide. Cmdr. Mary Murray says it would have cost millions of dollars in travel to train all those employees in classrooms. Instead, the Navy chose a package from Sterling Resources called Coachware that sits on top of the PeopleSoft application and walks users through the system.

Coachware is loaded onto the user's computer along with the PeopleSoft application. If a Navy officer is being reassigned overseas, for example, Coachware shows the human-resources employee handling the transfer which PeopleSoft screen to open and into which areas to enter data to complete the transaction. The Navy will use PeopleSoft for 36 HR processes, all of which are outlined and explained in Coachware.

"Training is crucial to the success of any implementation," Murray says. "A new system can paralyze your whole operations if users aren't properly trained. You work hard to implement a new system; you don't want the whole thing to be a disaster just because the training is bad."

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