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…and training your team the right way!
Hermann Ebbinghaus conducted a scientific study to discover how people retain and forget information. Today, the results of his study is known as the Forgetting Curve. Ebbinghaus found that within 24 hours, people forget about 50% of what they have learned. Each day that passes, people forget more and more of the information they learned.
What is the relationship between the Forgetting Curve and Software as a Service (SaaS)?
Software as a Service (SaaS) has vendor-delivered updates at least once a quarter, if not more frequently. So the results of Ebbinghaus’ study spells bad news for traditional training on SaaS. The information taught to team members during training sessions for go-live are quickly forgotten. By the time the application is live, team members will have forgotten at least 50% of the information they learned during the training session.
And when the software vendor delivers updates about three months after go-live, users are even less equipped to use the software.
The Forgetting Curve teaches us that reinforcing information learned and making sure the training content is updated is even more important on SaaS than it has been in the past. We call this mode of training, Training as a Service (TaaS).
Training as a Service is the full training package and includes:
- Go-live training
- Up-to-date training
- Customized training
- Training modes
- Interactivity
- Performance Support
For help with training on any Oracle Cloud application, ask about our ENGAGE Learn platform. ENGAGE Learn is Maverick Solutions’ subscription-based training offering. We can customize the training resources to match your unique configuration of Oracle Cloud applications. And it’s available 24/7/365 for your employees. Speak with one of our training experts today!
Go-live Training
Most companies understand the importance of go-live training, or traditional training. Traditional training involves instructor-led training and binders or manuals of training documentation. Team members have access to a subject matter expert during the training sessions. It gets team members ready to use the software at go-live.
Up-to-date Training
Go-live training is an important element of a new system implementation; however, traditional training on its own is not enough. Training for SaaS has to be different than training for on-premises applications.
Some training providers give you great training for go-live and leave your team to either update hundreds of documents of training every quarter or buy more training after big system updates. A Training as a Service vendor owns the responsibility of updating your training documents and tools so that your trainers don’t have to chase down every new feature and process change.
Outdated training on SaaS negatively affects your employees in the following ways:
- Onboarding new employees a year after go-live and training them using the training documentation made for go-live does not set new team members up for success.
- Your team cannot refer to go-live training documents. Without a repository of updated training documentation, your team will make more mistakes in the application and file more IT support tickets.
- Your employees will need to spend more time troubleshooting than doing their jobs.
Without proper training, the ever-changing software can lead your team to burn out from having to keep up with all the innovations and new features. Software as a Service requires Training as a Service. Your training needs to stay updated to match the changes and updates to your SaaS application.
Customized Training
Your company has likely invested time, money, and resources into customizing your SaaS application for your company’s specific needs. You can’t train your users on the out-of-the-box software and expect them to know the customized system at go live.
Without training documentation that matches your software, your team will get frustrated that the User Interface (UI) looks vastly different from their training resources. Your team is expected to spend days or weeks attending training sessions and looking at handouts of the UI only to see a completely different UI at go-live. Frustrated users will revert to the “old way” of doing things, which negatively affects user adoption on the SaaS application. Customizing your training empowers your users to be more confident in the software.
Perhaps you worked with your system implementer and project team to customize training for go-live. You may be happy with your investment because user adoption is higher than expected, and your team is happy with the move from the legacy system to the new Cloud application. If you invested in customized training specifically for go-live, you are still at risk. Your SaaS application goes through at least four updates every year. This means that the customized training you invested in for go-live will be slightly outdated three months later and practically useless three years later.
Your investment on customized training for go-live loses its value with each update cycle. A Training as a Service provider will keep your customized training updated to ensure your team can go from the training resources to the software seamlessly.
For help with training on any Oracle Cloud application, ask to see our ENGAGE Learn platform. ENGAGE Learn is Maverick Solutions’ subscription-based training offering. We can customize the training resources to match your unique configuration of Oracle Cloud applications. And it’s available 24/7/365 for your employees. Speak with one of our training experts today!
Training Modes
Your company is composed of unique team members; training resources should accommodate for their learning styles. A great Training as a Service offering will have various training assets, such as:
- Traditional documentation for learners who prefer reading and looking at screenshots
- Safe training environments with step-by-step instructions for learners who prefer the hands-on approach
- User guides for learners who prefer the exact step-by-step instructions of business processes
A well-trained team helps to smooth the transition from legacy software to new SaaS application. Great training equips your team with the knowledge to confidently use the software. With quality training, your team will also submit fewer IT support tickets which, in turn, enables your company’s IT team to focus on other initiatives. The faster and better your team learns the new system, the faster you will see the ROI on your company’s new SaaS application.
Interactivity
When it comes to training, most learners want some interactivity. And when it comes to adult learning, adults learn best through practice. Your employees want to have hands-on training that allows them to navigate through the UI and practice processes without the fear of making a mistake, such as incorrectly completing a year end close.
If you empower your team to train and practice in a safe training environment, you take some stress off other team members. With practice, your team will file less unnecessary IT support tickets and make less mistakes in the system because they practiced in a simulated training environment.
Your accounting team, for example, will not have duplicate expense reports to review or input errors to resolve because team members practiced in a training tool that functions the same way your SaaS application does. A training tool that has some elements of interactivity makes your team better, faster.
Performance Support
As your team transitions from the legacy system to your new SaaS application, they are completely relearning the processes and tasks for which they are responsible. As with all jobs, there are tasks that are done daily or weekly, and there are tasks that are done once a month, once a quarter, or even once a year. Your team does not want to have to rifle through dozens of handouts from before go-live just to recall a few steps on a task they rarely do, like enrolling in benefits or promoting an employee.
In-app performance support helps to guide users through these tasks. It points them to the work area they should navigate to and the fields they need to complete all live in the application. Thus, users can quickly and accurately perform business processes they rarely do.
The Forgetting Curve and Training as a Service
The Training as a Service approach addresses the issues the Forgetting Curve highlights. Training using the Training as a Service approach allows for reinforcement of the information learned 24/7/365. Users have access to review training that they may have forgotten, or to practice business processes that were affected by SaaS updates.
At Maverick Solutions, we know the importance of providing a comprehensive training package that helps you and your employees smoothly transition from your legacy system to a SaaS application.
Maverick Solutions’ training offerings give you the full training package.
- ENGAGE Learn has step-by-step walkthroughs of all Oracle Cloud applications. Our walkthroughs guide you and your team through complex business processes such as filing expense reports, submitting timecards, and managing talent, skills, and accomplishments.
- ENGAGE Learn has over 20,000 training documents across all of the Oracle Cloud applications.
- ENGAGE Learn is a subscription-based training offering that is always updated to match Oracle Cloud updates.
- ENGAGE Learn is fully customizable, comprehensive, and available 24/7/365.
- ENGAGE Live a digital adoption solution. We build step-by-step instructions live in the application so your users are guided through business processes.
- ENGAGE Live can also act as a messaging system live in the application so your team can put important messages in front of your employees at the time of relevance.
- We also offer training experts who can lead instructor-led training sessions in person or virtually!
- We have training consultants who will work with your team to build custom learning paths for the various roles in your organization.
If you want to learn how Maverick Solutions can fit into your organization’s current or future Oracle projects, speak with one of our training experts today!
