In the second part of our Better User Adoption series, we look at training. Mark talks specifically about how to improve staff training to increase uptake and enjoyment of a new system.
I want to talk to you about user training in your business systems.
We cannot underestimate the importance of training to make sure that our systems are working productively as possible and our users are happy with how they’re using the system. What does this have to do with tyres? A lot, so if your tyre on your car isn’t performing as it should be, perhaps it’s a little bit flat then that actually reduces the performance of your car overall. It doesn’t matter that the other three tyres are performing at the top rate, if one of them isn’t, you don’t wanna be going at the same speed on the motorway – it’s not safe. The level of the performance of your business is brought down to the level of training of the lowest person in your business. If that’s lower than you want it to be, your data and your reports aren’t going to be as good as they shouldn’t be.
Training should be tailored to the individual to make sure that we cater for the needs of the person’s role. Sales people should be on sales training, they shouldn’t be on admin or finance training. Your finance administrator should be on some finance training about how to deal with invoices, for example. So really make sure that you assess the needs of your users and tailor the training courses appropriately – you wouldn’t stick a huge wheel like this on a little Mini Metro would you? It’s just not the right fit! So tailor the courses accordingly.
Try and break things down into bite-sized sessions, because if you do too much at one time people forget it, you need to do things regularly and reinforce with consistent communication, so people are always on top of what the latest practices are. That should come directly from you or your training team. Your training team are important because they could be actually qualified, or people who’ve done training previously, but also could actually be subject matter experts. So whether they’re power users of the system or really tech savvy people or just someone who can actually really take people on a journey when they’re learning how to use a system, take advantage of those advocates in your business and have them provide training for your users. The more you do that the better the response will be and then people can have that kind of support and training on tap whenever they need it. Finally show them the bigger picture so when you’re training them on why they are using the system, really focus on that “why”, what’s it doing for the business, what’s it doing for them, make it relevant, help them understand that by inputting this data you’re going to produce this report which makes us more profitable or more successful in terms of customer service as a business
