Bring the classroom to the student with on-site training

By FRANK FEDOROVICH

Have a lot of people who need to be brought up to speed quickly? Teach them all at once with a tailored program.

Problem: Fifty network engineers need to learn how to design and install fiber-optic networks fast. Their employer has just landed a big contract that demands these skills. Training classes are available, but only in a city halfway across the country. Travel and expenses will double the total cost of this training and take employees from their work and homes.

Solution: Why not bring the classroom to them instead?

Custom on-site training eliminates travel and expenses. It yields better instruction because it`s targeted at a company`s specific needs. It also keeps important employees close to home where they can respond to a network emergency in minutes. With on-site training, you get what you don`t pay for--savings on unnecessary overhead expenses--as well as training tailored to your company, not to a generic "public."

On-site training isn`t always preferable to standard, public training classes, but it can be effective and economical when a company has a lot of people to train--the critical mass is typically a dozen--and wants them all to gain the same skills. Here`s how on-site training can work to a company`s advantage:

Pricing and cost--Custom on-site training typically costs less than public training. Customers aren`t absorbing any of the trainer`s overhead since they`re already paying a light bill, providing a facility, and brewing coffee--details that can cost as much as $4000 a week for a public class held in a rented room.

Another reason on-site training costs less than public training is that the training company is guaranteed a full classroom, protecting it from taking a loss on a program. A full classroom also saves the trainer the cost of advertising, direct mail, and other marketing efforts--savings that are passed on to the customer. On-site training also cuts administrative costs--registration, invoicing, etc.--and there is only one bill for the whole class instead of one per student.

The hidden costs of travel--Travel to public courses and expenses can equal the tuition, meaning another $1400 or so per person for a three-day class. These costs include plane tickets, meals, taxis, hotels, and long-distance calls to family. On-site training courses eliminate most or all of this.

On-site training also eliminates the hidden cost of having the company`s best and brightest experts thousands of miles from the networks they`re paid to build, manage, optimize, and overhaul. When the network crashes while the senior network expert is away at training, the training gets more and more expensive every minute the network is down. It doesn`t take long to reach the point of diminishing returns.

With on-site training, the networking experts are always close by the network. What`s more, the instructors can actually join them in bringing a crashed network back up. Then instructor and students can go back to the classroom and use the incident to spark discussion and supplement learning.

Customization--By their very nature, on-site courses are customized. Prior to starting a class, instructors learn all they can about the experience and abilities of their students. They also research the platforms and applications. If there are no Apple computers in the customer`s network, for instance, instructors won`t take a half-hour to discuss routing AppleTalk. If there aren`t any "newbies" in the class, they won`t stop to review OSI layers. Instead, instructors will take the time to delve more deeply into the challenges students will assuredly face, then let them go to work. If the customer wants Cisco routing with ospf, then the instructor will tailor the course that way.

Public courses, by their very nature, are generic. Instructors must teach for a hypothetical information technology (IT) environment that encompasses a broad range of technology possibilities, then teach to a class with varying abilities and experience. In on-site courses, customers can make a class as homogenous as they wish.

Synergies--Most organizations want their employees to get one definitive set of content. They don`t want their employees getting 10 variations of each subject from 10 different instructors. On-site training minimizes or eliminates this problem by putting all the employees in the same class or group of classes.

This consolidation yields a related benefit: better classroom dynamics. When a network pro asks a question, his or her colleagues hear the answer. Everyone benefits from the discussion, which pertains directly to the student`s environment. If these same employees were taking different public classes, questions and answers about a company network are lost on the ears of strangers.

Timing--Sometimes a company needs to teach a lot of people a new set of skills quickly. Large systems integrators, for instance, often land a major job, then recruit and train people with the necessary skills. There isn`t time to wait for public class schedules. On-site trainers can quickly deliver training customized to a contract`s specific demands.

Know your needs

Despite all the benefits of on-site training, there are instances when public training is the better choice. A lot depends on how many people you have and in which locations. If employees are scattered around the country, perhaps working in virtual offices, then you probably won`t save travel costs by flying them all to a single location. Also, if a company has just a handful of employees with similar needs, it`s probably better to send them to off-site training programs.

On the other hand, a company that needs to teach many employees the same skills at the same time will benefit by bringing the classroom to the students instead of sending the students to the classroom. And every dollar the company saves will be more than matched by the hidden savings of keeping valuable employees close to their work and homes. q

Frank Fedorovich is vice president of sales for Global Knowledge Network (Burlington, MA). He can be reached at [email protected].