Picking the delivery platform

Over a decade ago, the most used and perhaps the only form of training used to be traditional live in-person classroom trainings. In fact, in many parts of the world this is the only form of training available even to this day. In this method of training, the instructor and the students have to be physically present in the class while the training is delivered. Even though classroom training is still the most predominant form of training today, time and resource constraints always restrict the scope of training. The planning and scheduling involved just makes this so much more cumbersome. 

The last decade has seen an explosion of a variety of other delivery mechanisms. With the advent of the internet era and recent technological advances, it is now possible to deliver training using a wide range of delivery mechanisms. One of the most obvious developments is the boom of virtual online training technologies. In this type of training, the Instructor and students are remotely located and the training is delivered live through the internet. These sessions can even be recorded and can be used for future references or delivered to a wider audience. It is far easier and cheaper to do this than professionally record a training session delivered in a live classroom.

Another common trend with the coming of the Internet is the creation and delivery of self paced courses. These are courses created using desktop tools like power point slides with audio and may contain animations, quizzes etc. Dedicated course authoring tools are also used to create self paced courses. Once these courses are created, they are hosted online and the end users visit the site and sign up for these courses. Self paced courses may contain a high level of user interaction like filling out forms, attending quizzes etc.Self paced trainings have the added advantage that the learner can control the pace of the training which helps in better understanding of the course material.

With increasing bandwidths and faster networks, videos have become a popular medium for delivering training. Video recordings are made available online through Youtube and other video streaming services. Videos can be a recorded training, lecture, webinar etc. Pod casts are also used for delivering training.

Lets take a look at some specific applications of online training based on our personal experience of working with customers. Consider a training manager at a restaurant chain.

Identifying your target audience

The training process within an organization begins with determining the purpose of training (which we covered in an earlier post). Just as important is determining the target audience. To maximize the results of the training program, it is essential to identify the target audience and tailor the training delivery accordingly. When it comes to the target audience there are three key aspects that need to be considered namely: the type or classification of the target audience, the expertise level of the audience and lastly the complexity of the subject matter that the target audience needs to be trained on.

First, let us consider the type or classification of the audience. For example, employees, customers and partners could be a possible classification of the target audience. Employees and partners might need different kinds of training even if the subject matter was the same. Similarly, the training material developed for partners may not be suitable for customers.  

Determining the purpose of training

Like in the case of any other business, the training business within an organization begins with determining the very purpose of offering training. This might seem obvious but I find very often that Training Managers in the business haven’t exactly asked themselves or their management these fundamental questions. Why are we offering training? A clear answer to this question is often the starting point for the Training Manager to think through, plan, prioritize and most importantly seek the required funding from upper management. 

Most CEOs pay plenty of lip-service to training but don’t back up their training managers with the required resources. The Training managers for their part often fail to ask the right questions of their upper management when it comes to making the case for the required resources and funds to build a training business how so ever small it might be. If I got a few pennies each time I heard a training manager say “I don’t have those kinds of funds” I will be writing this piece from my permanent beach house in a far away exotic island. In this article I hope to provide some ammunition or at least some food for thought for Training managers especially those who think that they don’t have the funds but still entertain great dreams of building a successful training offering.

At a high-level, training offered by organizations can be for direct, easily measurable benefits for the organization. For example, it can be for the purpose of generating revenue. i.e., it is a profit-motive. In such cases, it’s often a case of calculating the ROI. How much does it cost to deliver training both in terms of costs for technology, the time of the course developers, instructors etc. How much revenue can I generate? If the case for an acceptable ROI can be made, then the next question boils down to how quickly can I scale this business? Are my costs going to increase significantly in order to scale the business or does my business scale with incremental cost increases?