TRAINING NEEDS ANALYSIS

The starting point for any training project should be to gauge the impact of your new system implementation. In simple terms, you need to define which roles will be affected and the scale of the change.

Who is affected by the system change?

We perform a gap analysis to understand which business processes are changing and which ones are new. For small implementations, this may be a relatively simple document. For projects affecting hundreds or thousands of users, this document will be much more extensive. Conducting a Training Needs Analysis provides us with the information needed to prepare a practical, personalised training programme for each type of user. 

What new skills are required?

A thorough Training Needs Analysis (TNA) incorporates key topics such as identifying:

• The different audiences for your training
• The skills they need to acquire
• The skills gap they have
• A training approach for meeting those needs within the right timescale
• The resources needed to enable this approach

How complex is the project scope?

We've conducted TNAs for many CRM system rollout projects, including Allergan, Iron Mountain and Serco. Some projects are especially challenging because they affect hundreds of users in different European locations. So you also have to manage the translation and localisation of training materials. Other rollouts don't necessarily affect high numbers of users, but it's the volume of processes being changed in one go that makes them similarly complex.

Whatever the size of your CRM project, it's always worth investing time and resource in a detailed TNA to ensure that your subsequent training programme design meets the real needs of your organisation.