Congratulations!
Your organization has
committed to coming into the business modern era with the decision to implement
a cutting edge, enterprise-wide application like SAP S/4HANA or Workday.
Whether Core Financials, HCM, SCM, and/or various procurement and inventory
solutions, the decision was likely due to a number of factors; business growth
and competition, a desire to eliminate error prone manual tasks or inefficient
business processes or maybe executives are tired of the organizational silos
running on early 80’s AS/400 technology.
Whatever the business case,
there are a number of tasks following this very important business
decision. Starting with budget assembly
and contracting an integration partner to internal recruiting for business
leadership and assembly of the project team.
For the Training and Change Management team there are numerous decisions
to be made around the composition of the team and the applications used to
accelerate the deliverables of that team.
This blog attempts to provide useful guidance on providing your team
with the right training application and composition.
With a wide range of products
to choose from in this market, selecting the right one to properly equip your
team can be an overwhelming task. The
risk is procurement of the wrong tool and/or a lack of team adoption, never
realizing a return on the investment. Many
evangelists will touch on products like SAP Productivity Pack (SPP),
Datango/SAP Workforce Performance Builder (WPB), LEO, Assima STT, STT Trainer,
and Epiplex500, but don’t provide much assistance with the decision making
process. I would like to introduce a
helpful question at this point which is:
What should this application
do for your project?
1. Is the goal to output PDF/Word/HTML job aids and operating
procedures?
2. Are realistic simulations that allow end users to “show” and
“try” system tasks required?
3. Will this application be used to document system specs, integration
testing, or UAT?
4. Do you need a robust Learning Content Management System (LCMS)?
5. Are rich eLearning, multimedia, virtual classroom, or screen
casting a consideration?
If you already know what the
application should accomplish for the project and can answer some of these
questions, then you have already made significant progress in your
decision. The next few paragraphs should
be useful in further guiding your expectations.
uPerform, UPK and WPB are
industry standard applications for enterprise documentation and performance
support. All are powerful rapid
development tools that can produce robust content that is consistent in look
and feel, offer multiple output types (training documents, simulations and test
scripts) and contain a feature rich Content Management Systems (CMS). uPerform and WPB are integrated with SAP
and work great for portal applications like SRM, CRM, MSS/ESS with uPerform
having a bit of a stronger edge in the non-SAP space. UPK is integrated with Oracle and can be used
on non-Oracle applications but in my experience is less intuitive for
developers than uPerfom or WPB. Both UPK
and WPB can be sold with prebuilt (generic) content which is a cost savings,
but is purely transactional help. What
about Cloud based solutions? What works
best for Workday ERP or Salesforce for example?
Will the organization use all
of the features of the industry standard powerhouse applications including
multiple training/testing outputs and a CMS?
If not, costs can be minimized by creating well designed, Microsoft Word
templates to develop simple training documents and leveraging existing
infrastructure like SharePoint and web 2.0 to maintain document libraries and
promote collaboration. If the bells and
whistles won’t be used, using existing tools can be much easier and far less
expensive.
Do you need to reach a wide
audience? How interactive should
eLearning and simulations be for your end users? Camtasia is easy to use and great for screen
casting to distant audiences and Adobe Captivate and Articulate Storyline are
not only good screen casting tools but make fantastic interactive simulations
and world class eLearning.
Are you considering live video
for training? If a picture is worth a
thousand words, a video is worth a thousand pictures. Videos are great training manual processes
and are have a high level of end-user engagement. With low-cost equipment and video editing
software, this may be a practical consideration. Adobe Premier Pro and Audition are
outstanding choices for Hollywood grade editing and post production.
With the right tools you’re
halfway there, but how strong is your training team?
Are they technically savvy?
The learning curve on the applications mentioned in this article ranges from
very steep to rapid adoption. For
example, developer use of the industry standard applications; uPerform, WPB,
UPK are fairly simple but complex edits and the administration of templates and
the CMS are not. While Camtasia is
simple to use it has limited features for eLearning and documentation and
Articulate rise is a great rapid development tool but limited with interactions. Captivate and Storyline 360 also require
significant time to competency. To get
the most out of training applications, it is worthwhile to have an experienced Instruction
Developer who can ensure quality in the project setup, maintain the application
and provide guidance to the rest of the team on what features to use and
when. This role can be a tremendously
valuable supplement to the team.
Do they have high degree of
creativity? You may have an outstanding
analyst or a pithy technical writer and neither has an eye for color, contrast
balance or unifying all elements into a quality deliverable. Familiarity with tool features and an eye for
form as well as function can really help to polish output. Keep in mind the organization will be using,
reading, watching, and testing this output for years to come. A good bit of creativity keeps users engaged
and adds longevity to the work. If the
team does not have this element, a creative Lead Developer can help with team
facilitation to get the most from the application.
Are they good tech
writers? What is the difference between
a billing document and an invoice?
Should you PGI or Post Goods Issue?
Are documents going to be controlled for regulatory purposes? Good technical writers develop and enforce
standards. If multiple terms are used
interchangeably, acronyms are commonplace, or every document requires key
controlling information to be present, good technical writers factor these
elements into project setup and can use training application tools to build a
consistent and logical place to house information. It is incredibly time consuming and costly to
retroactively modify existing development due to an oversight in project setup.
Matching the right tools with
good team composition can meet stakeholder expectations on budget and produce
robust, accurate training documentation for any enterprise-wide implementation. Our team can help you with any or all parts
of the decision making and team assembly aspects.