Article written by Jo Harrington 12/06/2001

COMPANIES SEARCH FOR COMPETITIVE EDGE

Many of the world’s most successful businesses, large and small, have, for the last few years, been creating for themselves what Kenichi Ohmae, the Japanese management strategist, calls an “invisible continent”. Much mystique surrounds this territory as nobody has yet plumbed its limitations or possibilities.

Both companies and their managers are baffled by this new cyber-economy, despite the access and increasing information. Since many high profile companies failed when the dot.com bubble burst, there remains a pre-requisite for companies to prepare properly for e-commerce before jumping on the virtual bandwagon for a ride to the ‘invisible continent’. Their motivation for joining this world is the sense that a massive opportunity is to be found in new technology and that someone else will grasp the advantage if they do not act.

Nevertheless the potential swings in gains and losses make the invisible continent unstable and the easy flow of capital and information makes the competition fiercer and the stakes higher. Even though the risks are apparent, these must be weighed against the potential losses to be made through standing on the sidelines.

Revenue generation becomes a game of exponentials and will ultimately allow the companies that build strong commercial infrastructures to make a financial killing. And so as companies, large and small, all around the world prepare to compete in earnest in the new economy, business processes previously considered non-strategic to core activities are becoming central to long term strategies and goals. In a marketplace accentuated by hyper-competition, a shortage of skilled workers and the need to constantly re-skill employees, an urgent requirement has emerged to leverage technology in order to develop new and faster ways to train and educate workers.

Today’s CEOs understand that a company’s greatest asset is intellectual capital. Faced with the high cost of hiring from outside, some of the more competitive companies are choosing to invest in improving the skills of their own employees. The investment in this intellectual capital can, in return, foster greater productivity and increase employee retention. As a result, many companies are turning to a variety of training techniques in a move that is a growing market.

Despite this growth, there is much more than a small degree of confusion surrounding training and its various delivery methods including blended learning, e-learning, technology based training and desktop consultancy. Few can blame those who can’t distinguish between fact and hype. Training is a strategic tool, not a panacea for a company’s productivity and retention ills. Similar to school itself, the only way a pupil succeeds is by applying himself or herself to what the course requests and so a company must understand what it’s employees should learn in order for them to deliver what the business ultimately needs in the new economy.

As many companies are discovering in operational areas where it is possible to outsource, managed training solution providers offer major benefits. Samantha Kinstrey, Managing Director of NCR e-cademy, the company spearheading a managed training solution to an accelerating customer base, is steadfast in her belief that outsourcing areas of businesses to experts to totally manage is the way forward and directly influences a company’s bottom line profitability.

The NCR e-cademy Managed Training Solution approach includes five phases of management. It has been designed to meet a number of key criteria often sought as the main qualifiers in selection of training solutions by customers: broad technical coverage, realisation of improved service methods, product-specific expertise, lower service costs, appropriate geographic coverage and appropriate hours and days of coverage.

The five phases of the Managed Training Solution as defined by NCR e-cademy are Consultancy to fully assess the business needs of the customer and the customer’s skills requirements, assisting them in achieving their competitive advantage. The second stage, Content Development, provides the most effective education programme to meet the customer’s needs. The third stage, Delivery, provides a ‘blended learning’ solution to ensure it supports the customer’s strategic goals. Measurement, the fourth stage, ensures the training solution is both effective, successful and achieving a return on investment and the fifth and final stage is Project Management providing flexible and modular solutions designed to manage the customers business objectives. For instance, initial consultancy with one Managed Training Solution provider who ultimately has knowledge of and access to every training course available, provides companies with opportunities to make informed decisions or respond to short term market conditions with appropriate training.

In today’s world of complex IT solutions, intense competition, and global expansion, many organisations have come to realise that they can’t do everything. The need to focus capital, resources and management attention on a company’s technological and product marketing expertise has accelerated the outsourcing of new strategic operational development to specialist business partners.

The reasons for outsourcing will vary enormously from business to business. For example, some companies become networking service customers to better focus on core competencies and strategic planning.

Their daily network operations are time-consuming and not viewed as mission-critical. Other companies want to outsource to reduce operating costs. They have limitations in personnel, time, and money.

Other companies have trouble recruiting and retaining specialists with technical expertise who have the flair to understand a company’s overall strategic development and marry this with the right training and development requirements of employees with differing skill sets, career aspirations and different learning speeds. 

And finally, some companies are increasing their focus on customer service and want dependable services that can quickly respond to the changing business environment. Training must therefore be accurate and relevant and the environment in which employees must learn new systems quickly must be right first time in order to deploy their skills immediately to maintain their company’s competitive edge.

Unsurpassed knowledge of employee skill sets and corporate strategy gained through NCR e-cademy’s consultancy phase of their managed training solution service is combined with instant access to training programmes and expert advice on training delivery methodology. On-going consultancy and content design phases allow decisions to be taken that maintain and protect a company’s short and long term strategy. The solution also offers the ability to control where the training takes place and cuts down on the total cost of learning because it eliminates the need to fly employees around the country to congregate in one spot. It also completely removes a company’s previous inordinate amount of logistics traditionally employed to update sales forces or whole organisations with new skills.

A managed training solution helps companies pick and choose how they will educate their employees and how this education will be mapped to their goals. The increased speed of training delivery means that a company’s employees can maintain their current level of productivity while learning on the job.

Samantha Kinstrey said: “Any company contemplating a Managed Training Solution needs a strategy. In addition, the serious company needs to develop a pilot program to determine what courses need to be developed and implemented. However, the most important element of any training is whether it’s customised and firmly embedded in an organisations long-term strategy.

If you’re an off-the-shelf company with an off-the-shelf problem, then it makes sense to buy an off-the-shelf solution. But most companies have specific business needs that can only be addressed by a custom solution. These companies look for a services-and-solution company because they need a company that can address strategy, technology, and content and ultimately an end-to-end solution.

Our solution delivers training consultancy planning and design services, content creation capabilities, technologies, and delivery capabilities. We believe our approach is the way forward and offers our customers a mass of benefits including improved cash flow. One supplier as the single point of expertise creates one invoice, one payment and leaves our clients the time they need to do what they do best – remain competitive”.

ENDS