Importance of Custom Training on Software as a Service

Software as a Service (SaaS) applications are becoming the industry standard. And it makes sense. Cloud Software has countless more benefits than on-premises software. Some of the benefits of SaaS include the following:

Lowered capital expenditure
Reduced operational expenditure in maintenance
Decreased system downtime due to updates
Decreased IT support tickets which free up IT to focus on key business initiatives
Improved scalability

Your team likely considered the benefits of Software as a Service before switching from your legacy system to a Cloud software. It takes some work to make sure the software investment (and all of its benefits) are protected. Without custom training on Software as a Service applications, your company won’t be able to enjoy the benefits of SaaS.

Software as a Service applications pose an especially unique challenge when it comes to training. Why? Because the software keeps changing.

Training has to behave in the same way the software does. When the software updates, the training has to be updated (this is called Training as a Service). When your team reconfigures the software to reflect a change in a business process, the training should be updated to reflect those changes (this is called custom training).

We’ll discuss the importance of custom training on Software as a Service and how custom training can help to protect your software investment.

And if you want to learn more about Training as a Service, take a look at one of our other articles that define Training as a Service, or TaaS, and why you should care about TaaS.

For help with custom training on Software as a Service applications such as Oracle Cloud, ask about Maverick’s ENGAGE Learn and ENGAGE Live platforms. ENGAGE Learn is Maverick Solutions’ subscription-based training offering on all Oracle Cloud applications. ENGAGE Live is Maverick Solutions’ in-application support with custom step-by-step walkthroughs. Speak with one of our training experts today to learn how your team can benefit from customized Training as a Service!

What is custom training?

Simply put, custom training is any training that is customized to match your company’s unique business processes, company brand, and (most importantly) your company’s configuration of the application.

There are 3 types of training:

Manuals
Interactive tutorials
In-application guidance and walkthroughs

We are going to focus on interactive tutorials and in-application guidance.

Custom Interactive Tutorials

Interactive tutorials are similar to a sandbox environment where your teams can practice complex business processes without harming your production server. However, interactive tutorials differ from a sandbox environment because interactive tutorials require little to no maintenance.

If, for example, a team member wants to practice submitting a contract in a sandbox environment, your IT team will need to go into the sandbox environment and clean it before the team member could practice submitting another contract. Additionally, your IT team will need to input and configure the sandbox environment.

An interactive tutorial functions like a sandbox environment because it looks and acts exactly like your live, production server. However, anything done in the interactive tutorial does not affect the production server. Additionally, the interactive tutorial does not have to be reset by another team member because it lives with your training software.

It’s important that your company’s most complex or most important business processes have custom interactive tutorials. This ensures the tutorials actually teach your team members how to complete the task when they are in the production server.

Custom Training on Software as a Service

The following list details some of the most common customized tutorials:

Adding a Personal Payment Method
Submitting a Payroll Flow
Creating a Purchase Order
Creating a Standard Receipt
Creating a journal and journal entries

Customized In-application Guidance

In-application guidance is support that lives on top of your software. With in-application guidance, your team can access step-by-step guidance through complex business processes that guide them through a process from start to finish. And because the guidance and walkthroughs appear in the live environment, it must be customized to match your software.

These walkthroughs help to decrease the number of support tickets filed, and it helps to ensure the data in your software stays clean. For example, Sally wants to file an expense report. Without a walkthrough that guides her through the process, she files her first expense report and realizes she made a mistake. She starts over and resubmits the expense report two more times before getting everything right. Now there are three of the same expense reports in your system, and your IT team has to devote time to checking over the data and deleting the duplicates.

With a walkthrough, Sally follows the step-by-step instructions that appear in the live environment to submit just one expense report.

The following list details some of the most common in-application walkthroughs:

Creating an Amendment to a Negotiation
Updating Personal Information
Managing Employment Information
Creating a Requisition
Creating a Talent Pool

Why is custom training on Software as a Service so important?

Generic training that matches out-of-the-box software can increase your ROI and software adoption, but only to a point. Your company will likely invest time, money, and resources into customizing your software for your company’s specific needs. If your training content is on the out-of-the-box software, there will be a training gap.

For example, if your go-live training is not customized to match your company’s configuration of the software, your team will have to retrain themselves after go-live. Your team members will need to take what they learned during the instructor-led training, or go-live training, and figure out how the standard processes taught during the training translates to the software that might look and function a little differently.

Custom training helps to improve user confidence. The more seamless the transition from a training session or a practice tutorial to the live production environment, the better your team members will feel about the software. Improved user confidence leads to increased user adoption. This helps to protect your software investment.

Additionally, generic training increases the likelihood your team will file more IT support tickets. If the training documentation and the training session does not match the software the users will be using, your IT team can become overwhelmed with a lot of IT support tickets. This prevents your IT team from being able to focus on important business initiatives.

A great training partner will work with your team to customize your training content with your company’s specific system implementation. Custom training helps your team train right the first time (and every time they need to retrain due to a system update). Training that matches your software configuration can help your company see maximum ROI and software adoption.

Custom Training and Success

A well-trained team helps to smooth the transition from the legacy software to the new Cloud software. With quality training, your team will also submit fewer IT support tickets which enable your company’s IT staff to focus on other initiatives. The faster and better your team learns, the faster you will see the ROI on your company’s new system.

Standard training can only help your team so much. Your company is dynamic. Your business processes will change. Your company’s brand colors might even change. Your software is equipped to handle those changes, but if your training documentation and training software cannot be dynamic, then you risk leaving your team members unprepared to handle those changes.

Still have more questions? You can access detailed tutorials of any Oracle Cloud application with a subscription to ENGAGE Learn. For example, we have step-by-step, interactive tutorials that can guide you and your team through creating an expense report in Oracle ERP Cloud, building a project in Oracle PPM Cloud, or creating a job succession plan in Oracle HCM Cloud. We have over 20,000 training resources that cover all of the Oracle Cloud applications.

ENGAGE Learn is Maverick Solutions’ subscription-based training offering on all Oracle Cloud applications. It is fully customizable, comprehensive, and available 24/7/365. We also have customizable, interactive tutorials that guide your team through complex business processes.

ENGAGE Live is Maverick Solutions’ performance support offering on most Software as a Service or Cloud software. It is fully customizable and available live in your application 24/7/365. We work with your team to build step-by-step walkthroughs, embed messages and other resources, and build task lists in the live software.

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!