01 August 2006

Cutting the cost of training

According to Gartner, around 40 per cent of the cost of PC ownership is spent on training and support for end-users. Yet some of the nation's largest companies are slashing this figure through e-learning and performance support.

Although e-learning is applicable across all areas of industry and commerce, the most dramatic benefits are likely to be seen by companies with a large number of customer-facing staff, perhaps scattered across the country and working a variety of shifts. Traditional classroom training in such circumstances is both expensive and time consuming, and doesn't necessarily give the best results. A clear comparison of traditional training and e-learning has been made by Endsleigh Insurance, which recently rolled out its new quotation software for motor and household insurance to 1,000 customer facing staff in 130 branches. The new system allows faster response and better presentation, but the training posed a challenge.

"The nature of our business means that software systems need to be changed every five to ten years. When we implemented a new system six years ago, the training was done via a residential course which lasted three days. Clearly, not everyone could attend the course at the same time and the roll-out stretched to six months," explains human resources manger Kevin Ball.

"Last autumn we again implemented a new system. We wanted both to cut the timescale by 75 per cent and, at the same time, improve the quality of training. So, this time, training for the 500 relevant staff was delivered through an e-learning programme built for us by Knowledge Solutions. Training took less then a day and could be done at a time to suit the individual, which meant the roll-out was complete in just six weeks."

A time saving on this scale is remarkable – but not unique. Tour operator Thomas Cook saved 15,000 working days in just three months, with a 15 hour e-learning programme for 7,000 customer-facing staff in 800 outlets. But the immediate bottom-line savings are just part of the issue. Traditionally, systems and processes training has crammed as much knowledge transfer into as little time as possible. The result? More then 80 per cent of the training is likely to be forgotten within four weeks. The beauty of e-learning is that web-based tutorials are instantly available to the user on demand via the internet, intranet or extranet.

The core concepts of the training are delivered as small chunks of learning – usually a few minutes long – and far more of the information is retained. Rather then involving trainers in the repetitive delivery of basic material in a classroom situation, their skills can be used in areas where human interaction is genuinely useful, such as teaching interpersonal skills.

Although Endsleigh Insurance's six week implementation yielded an immediate £150,000 saving, the real improvements in return on investment (ROI) were long-term; better trained staff and improved customer service. "Web-based training uses the technology that you want people to learn, which makes it far more effective," confirms Kevin Ball. "We use the Knowledge Solutions system to train all new sales recruits, in combination with some aspects of residential skills training, which can now concentrate on the technique of talking to customers rather than teaching recruits where to 'point and click'.

"The typical trainee is an insurance adviser, 22 to 25 years old, who will be using the software 10 to 15 times a day when talking to customers on the phone or face-to-face in the office. As sales people, the recruits are always keen to get on with the job and now they can learn at their own pace, taking away the 'ho hum' factor that often dominates a classroom situation.

"In common with the rest of the insurance industry, we also need our e-learning to be easily updateable, for example when there is a change in regulatory controls. We now have a system with that flexibility."

Sharing these twin aims of reducing costs and improving customer services is a company with the most recognised loyalty brand in the UK – Airmiles. ISS Project Director Ian Bell believes that e-learning and on-going support can mean competitive advantage, by giving staff the precise knowledge they need at any given time.

"We know we have a strong knowledge base but the trick is to make this knowledge instantly available to staff, at the point it's needed," he explains. "This is a challenge which faces so many organisations. It's certainly an area where tour operators and travel agents can differentiate themselves from competitors: imparting corporate knowledge to individual employees."

The Airmiles branding provides a currency for the fun things in life, such as discounted flights and packages – or even a trip to Madame Tussauds. The company's new integrated sales system (ISS) is a multi-million pound project to handle the entire customer experience from the point of booking, through documentation, to ticketing.

"Early in the planning we considered how we could best roll out this system to our hundreds of customer-facing staff and we identified Knowledge Solutions as the key company to work with," says Ian Bell. "Their software tool, KShelper, links an application to the source of knowledge needed at the time. Our staff, working in different regions and on various shifts, have a wide range of skills to master. By having access to on-going web-based support, rather then a vast amount of up-front training, staff can perform tasks better and serve customers better."

In addition to the variety of tasks Airmiles staff need to be able to carry out while, perhaps, talking to a customer, there is complex regulatory control over the travel business depending on the type of product being sold. For example, a flight and hotel is deemed a package, which comes under different industry rules from a flight alone. And along with much of the travel industry, Airmiles also sells insurance products, for which the company is required to provide a proper and complete description.

KShelper relieves the complexities facing the Airmiles call centre by linking the screen to, say, the insurance product database and instantly providing flight sales executives with all the knowledge they need – at the moment – for the precise task they're undertaking.

"It's invaluable," continues Bell. "Regulations and business practise are changing all the time, but we don't need to arrange fresh training sessions each time. KShelper ensures that operators are mandatorily informed of changes on screen. Once they have read the change, the user clicks on a tick box to acknowledge the new information. Another important asset for us is that the software interfaces with Amadeus, BA's new international airline booking system.”

By providing staff with on-going Performance Support, Ian Bell and his team are able to reduce the initial training burden faced by Airmiles staff. One reason that a large part of a traditional training course is simply forgotten, is that much of the training – often up to 40 per cent – relates to detailed product knowledge which should be referenced, not learned. In other words, there's a huge amount of 'just in case' training – provided just in case knowledge is required.

By providing 'just in time' access to the corporate knowledge base, the initial training load can be reduced to the 20 per cent of knowledge and skill which is used to perform 80 per cent of the job.

By utilising the benefits of Performance Support in any systems implementation, major change or re-engineering project, organisations can rapidly exploit new systems to their full potential and bring consistency to all areas of the operation. Performance Support enables employees to share corporate knowledge, helping staff to achieve the standards of the best job performers.

This, surely, is the real benefit which e-learning promises for the future: not just immediate cost savings, but a long term investment in employee performance. An ROI, in fact, which offers genuine justification for systems investment.