|
|
|
|
Current methods for Training Users on a Software Application such as Civil 3D involve sending your staff to a training center to receive 3 days (24 hours) of training from an instructor. After three days of training your staff returns to work and spends the next few hours or days getting caught up on emails, phone calls, projects, etc. How much of the knowledge gained in the three days is still retained by the student?
They will refer back to their notes, (if they took any), or a handout or booklet provided to relearn what they lost.
Have you ever really looked at how much material was covered in the three days of training? Would you be shocked to learn it was only about 6 hours?
In a basic course all you get taught are the basics, which everyone needs to know but how many users actually receive training? In a three day course some material may or may not pertain to what you do, but you have to sit through it because someone else in the class wants to know how to do what you already know.
What about all the other information that is good to know about that doesn't get taught in the class, proper procedures, tip and techniques. You may get taught how to build a surface model but not taught how to do it with Lidar Data or a DEM file.
Now lets look at the cost of training just 10 users which it the typical class size.
3 days of training @ $1250 per day (average fees) for an instructor plus his expenses $2000 3 days for your staff @ $100/per hour X 10 employees = $24,000 (add another day or two for them to get caught up. That breaks down to about $2927.50 per employee.
Send these same 10 to a typical Reseller Class at $900 (avg $) per user plus the est down time = $33,000 or $3,300.
At those rates are you really going to send all 10 of your staff to training, probably not. What if you had to train 100 or even 500 users? The cost and time spent would be astronomical. So what do you do? You send 2 or three of your "best" users, and expect them to come back and train your staff. The cost of doing training this way are difficult to calculate. How much knowledge is really get back to the other 7 or 8 users?
Ask a typical firm's employee when they last had formal training and you will more than likely see they either never have or they learned AutoCAD in School 5, 10, 15 years ago. The software changes with every release and I'll bet your users are still doing things they learned 10 years ago.
How many of your current Lisp Routines, Third party applications, processes have been created because someone didn't know how to do something the software already could do or was added to the software over time. Also how much has this cost you in training and upkeep?
So what would it take to train all ten users on the same 3 days of material in 1/4 the time and at a tenth of the cost, and provide 5-10 times the amount of information? Sounds to good to be true.
We have developed a training package for the 21st Century, vTraining, vBooks, vClasses, vSupport.
vTraining - This 3 day essentials class covers the same if not more content than the standard 3 day class provided by most trainers and resellers. However it is only 6 hours in length. How? Its in video format. Not just screen capture video of the picks and clicks but the actual lecture that you would receive in class that covers the why along with the how. You employee can sit at their own desk at anytime during the day and watch the whole 6 our 1 hour at a time. They can also skip the sections they are not interested in or don't do and replay the sections they need to.
vBooks - Each users is provided with the full suite of vBooks that cover the features and other commands that are not covered in class. The vBooks go into greater detail about the features or topic.
vClasses - Live classes about an hours long that focus on a specific topic, such as interchange design. These vClasses are recorded and available as vBooks to they can be watched again.
vSupport - This is technical support on topics that are not covered in the vClasses or vBooks however the answer is captured and placed in the appropriate vBook so it can be easily retrieved
All the above is delivered to each user in what is called the vOffice. This office is completely searchable so answers can be found quickly.
Cost = $250=$300 per user. Cost for downtime or lost production little to nothing since the users can use real projects or data sets provided from within the vBooks. No travel costs associated |
|
Send mail to
mike.carris@apw-cts.com with
questions or comments about this web site.
|