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Training

People, Process, and Technology.  In business, the three legs of this stool are clearly connected.  You have probably heard this concept referred to before.  But to understand it fully one must remember, that whenever you make a change to any one of these components the remaining two must also change, in order for proper balance to be maintained.  In the case of IP Telephony for example, where the technology has been fundamentally altered, it follows that for things to work properly there must also be a change in both the people themselves and the processes they use.  Specifically, a change in the peoples skillsets and knowledge, to enable them to deal with the new technology and create the right processes.  Without this kind of change, you perpetuate what some refer to as the "implementation gap".  A gap that stubbornly prevents the successful "implementation" of any new technology until the knowledge transfer issue has been properly addressed.  The only way to close this gap is with training.  The right training.  And sometimes repeated amounts of it in order to succeed.

This does not mean however, that the delivery of this training need be enormously expensive.  But neither can it be ignored.  For the very simple reason that without the proper training, those who have made this mistake have found, neither the staff or the callers ever end up actually using enough of those time and money-saving features that were already paid for.  The very same ones that were supposed to produce the attractive Return on Investment rate promised in the product brochures.  Fortunately, there have been many improvements in both training approaches and the learning tools available over the last number of years.  These advances have resulted in corresponding reductions in the amount of time and money that were previously required in order to achieve the same training objectives.  More flexible, customized private training on a much smaller scale is also now realistically possible from qualified individual trainers at competitive pricing not typically available from most formal providers.

There is only one problem.  With all the competitive pressure now put on most telecom vendors to cut back to providing only the core products and services in order to survive, often the only internal folks they have left to send out to train the customers are the engineers and technical personnel.  And with sincerest apologies to engineers everywhere, they themselves will most often admit that they generally don't end up making very good trainers in any event.  Most would much rather be doing what they're qualified to do, which is to spend their time working on how to understand the new technologies, not on how to understand people or how a student actually learns.

What you really need are technical trainers who are already trained to be technical trainers.  Folks who are good at it.  Folks who enjoy it.  IPTel Advisors can help.  We can provide training-industry certified levels of instruction utilizing the latest tested and proven interactive adult learning techniques, designed for and delivered to either your staff or your customers.

"Possessing all of the knowledge in the world still will not help you, unless you can first recall, and then apply what it is that you have learned to a relevant real-life situation, in order to make something change"  Anonymous.