Faculty Training Institute (FTI), the leading professional IT training institution in the Western Cape, has opened a Johannesburg training centre to meet growing demand from corporate organisations and individuals in Gauteng for its services.
This follows a recent run of six public Business Analysis and Project Management diploma courses handled for corporate-sponsored candidates or individuals, with more than 250 people drawn from more than 20 large corporate clients graduating in these two important disciplines.
In addition, in the past two years, FTI has been commissioned by major organisations in Johannesburg such as Liberty Life, Discovery and MTN to run in-house Business Analysis Diploma courses comprising weekly lectures spaced through six months. A custom-designed course is also running for Sanlam and Old Mutual in the Western Cape.
FTI managing director Steve Erlank said: "There are a number of regular clients who send several candidates at a time to successive Business Analysis Diploma courses but we are also seeing an increasing flow of individuals who have motivated their firms to fund their training or pay for it themselves as they see our diplomas opening career options."
In addition, for the first time, the BA Diploma course is attracting candidates from medium and small businesses, Erlank said.
Women make up the majority of candidates on the current public BA Diploma courses at the new Sunninghill training centre, and about 40% are previously disadvantaged individuals.
"When it comes to transformation and change, business analysis and project management disciplines are highly suitable in that previously disadvantaged black people and women can readily make an impact in businesses where skills are in short supply."
Erlank said the demand for the course was not surprising. Business Analysis was a function that had emerged very strongly since businesses began to outsource or downsize the IT function, a trend which also impacted on the function of the system analyst, who typically operated in the IT field and who focused on providing solutions from a technical rather than a business perspective.
"Business suddenly found itself with a very real gap in terms of people who could identify business needs and translate them into IT requirements.
"Management itself and the average business person patently are not able to become architects of new IT-driven solutions. This is where the business analysts have an important role. Often, they come from the business side and therefore have a view that embraces the full spectrum of the business: through training they acquire technically focused analytical capabilities and tools to determine and are able to write solid solution specifications that close the gap between business and IT.
Erlank said: "In effect, they take charge of the business issues and business requirements and are equipped to use tools such as UML (Unified Modelling Language) to translate these requirements into specifications to which IT can positively relate.
"Because the communication has a common base, there is a better grasp on both sides as to what will and won`t work. This helps avert future problems that otherwise would have to be re-visited and corrected. In a nutshell, good BAs save time and money.
"We have found that business managers also welcome the fact they have identified people within their organisations ready for growth and upgrading and, once they are trained, have assets they did not have before: people capable of unlocking value that lessens the risk of project failure.
"The spin-off goes beyond that; because the BA Diploma graduates are so proactive, they earn the respect of their IT colleagues and they are also able to mentor and coach colleagues on better ways of making processes work."
Erlank said that finding suitable premises in Johannesburg with adequate parking that were available when FTI needed them for courses taking 20-24 candidates had proved difficult.
"Leasing premises, which we have adapted to conform with our brand of training, solves several problems and is more cost-effective, especially as there is growing demand for our public courses."
In Cape Town more than 30 independent firms hire FTI`s modern facilities for their own training.
"Because the premises in Sunninghill have been adapted to the same standards, it would be no surprise if slack periods are taken up by other firms in Gauteng," Erlank said.
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