Business solutions giant, SAP AG, has launched a new approach to training its customers on its solutions - adding online training to its classroom-based training and focusing on roles and business processes rather than on transactions.
Education Director of SAP UK and Ireland, Lisa Clark, in SA during May 2005 to oversee an online introduction of the new SAP e-learning content to more than 60 customers, says SAP has designed its customer and partner education programme not only to avoid the training pitfalls in the field of information technology (IT) but also to equip customers for the move in business towards fusion of business processes.
"As a provider of IT solutions, it makes sense for us to exploit IT's unique ability to automate routine activities as well as integrate information and push it to the people who need it. We therefore believe absolutely in the benefits of online learning - or e-learning - that have been so extensively discussed over the past few years.
"For instance, e-learning significantly reduces lost man-hours and travel and accommodation costs related to classroom training while it increases the pace of individual learning - because it's on demand learning - and enables the training of larger numbers of people in shorter periods of time than is possible with classroom training.
"What e-learning doesn't do, however, is address the people issues related to training and education. One of the most important is the opportunity to ask questions. Our customers, for instance, value the chance to ask SAP instructors and users in other companies how they handle a particular SAP process.
"E-learning is also not particularly effective in dealing with either large chunks or complex types of training. SAP's new NetWeaver technology stack that enables integration of data, systems and people at all levels of an organisation is a case in point. A couple of hours of online training certainly won't enable full exploitation of its extremely rich functionality.
"As a result, we strongly recommend a blended learning approach - exploiting the advantages of both e-learning and classroom-based learning in the way that is most appropriate for a particular type of training."
In addition, most IT e-learning content has been focused on transactions - teaching people how to execute a particular task within a larger business or operational process. While that can get users up and running on technology very quickly, if they don't know what effect their 'transaction' has on other people's roles within the organisation or how it impacts business processes as a whole, they can quite unwittingly create information or process logjams. By contrast, if they do understand their role in the organisation, they can pro-actively use their transactional activities to improve organisational performance.
Which, as Clark points out, optimises an organisation's return on investment in solutions like SAP and is the reason for SAP's focus on roles-based training.
"And then there's the move towards enterprise services architecture, which enables organisations to rapidly reconfigure their business processes in response to market demand - and puts business processes at the heart of an organisation's success. All the more reason, therefore, to make employees expert in them."
SAP's process-based training includes courses on generic business processes such as order to cash - providing trainees with best practice theory and simulations regarding the process and relating it to modules, such as Sales and Distribution, within SAP. The courses include up to eight hours of online training and five days in the classroom, with trainee progress being tracked using SAP's hosted e-learning management. Customers are given detailed progress reports.
"Once delegates are clear about the business process context for which they must create transaction-specific content, they can optimise applications like SAP Tutor - which provides online training that is very specific to a company's transaction details.
"That's what our new training approach is all about - the efficiency and effectiveness benefits of going from the general to the specific."
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SAP is the world's leading provider of business software solutions*. Today, more than 27 000 customers in over 120 countries run more than 91 500 installations of SAP software-from distinct solutions addressing the needs of small and midsize businesses to enterprise-scale suite solutions for global organisations. Powered by the SAP NetWeaver platform to drive innovation and enable business change, mySAP Business Suite solutions are helping enterprises around the world improve customer relationships, enhance partner collaboration and create efficiencies across their supply chains and business operations.
SAP industry solutions support the unique business processes of more than 25 industry segments, including hi-tech, retail, public sector and financial services. With subsidiaries in more than 50 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE under the symbol "SAP". dditional information at http://www.sap.com.
(*) SAP defines business software solutions as comprising enterprise resource planning and related software solutions such as supply chain management, customer relationship management, product lifecycle management and supplier relationship management.
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