In today's fast-paced world, training often becomes an afterthought on EPM and ERP projects. Everyone is busy preparing for testing and the migration to go-live that we forget about the most important element: people. This can put your organization’s ability to achieve its strategic objectives at risk. All because your user base isn’t aware of how to effectively use your Oracle solution. Training isn't one-size fits all, and to find the right fit you need time to consider both the people involved and the options available to build an effective plan. At Alithya, training is one of the key elements of our change management program.
What are the key elements to a successful training plan for your solution?
Timing
Too often, project teams start planning for training about 2 weeks before go-live. That might not even be enough advance notice to get time on people’s calendars! Don’t underestimate the level of process change involved when moving your process into the cloud. EPM and ERP solutions differ slightly on the ideal time to start your training discussions.
EPM Projects
EPM project teams should craft a training plan for their stakeholders after the design is completed. Typically, EPM projects have a tight timeline, and planning for training can occur concurrently with the solution build. Through taking the time to prepare a training plan for the release of your Oracle EPM solution, you can reduce the risk of users not incorporating the change into their processes.
ERP Projects
ERP project teams should craft their training plan upon completion of SIT (Systems Integration Testing). At this point in the project, the team has had time to internalize the change to their core processes. It will be much easier to consider how the change will impact their stakeholders and begin to consider how to help them prepare for the change.
Know your audience
Learning is a process! Most people don’t learn a new process or internalize how to adapt their existing process after a one-hour training session that they were multitasking during. When crafting the training plan, you need to consider your stakeholders’ needs. Remember that the options you make available to them should help minimize the grief involved with the change. By crafting the training plan to suit your stakeholders’ needs you can minimize support calls and hopefully eliminate the late nights preparing a forecast.
Training options
Traditionally, people tend to think of training as a PowerPoint deck that is used to support a one, maybe two-hour session that walks people through a new process. This approach runs the risk of overwhelming your Center-of-Excellence team with support calls at a time when they are also learning new processes! More modern approaches include content delivered at the point of need. Your training plan could reference Oracle’s free tutorials available on YouTube. Another approach could create a series of custom videos tailored to your process and supplement instructor-led training. Yet another approach to consider includes embedding training directly in the navigation flow of your EPM solution.
Remember that Oracle is continually enhancing the cloud ERP and EPM product suites. This includes from a learning & enablement perspective! A relatively new addition to consider is Oracle Guided Learning. Consider this solution when it would be beneficial to overlay training directly in the browser to walk your users step-by-step through processes in the flow of work.
Communication
Be sure to leverage any available communications resources to share what’s ahead and any actions necessary to prepare the team for the changes in your business process. Give people enough time to prepare for the change and give them confidence that they will be supported throughout the transition.
Alithya is here to help!
Include training solutions on your next EPM or ERP project and our team of experts at Alithya will guide you through the process and assist with content creation. Leverage our experience partnering with clients to find the right mix of training and help your transformation achieve success. We can also assist with full change management! Contact Alithya’s Oracle experts to learn more.
About Alithya’s custom training offering
Alithya’s custom training offering leverages in-house resources to build and deliver meaningful training across the Oracle EPM/ERP suites. Using client organizations’ Oracle environments and uniquely configured business processes, Alithya creates customized training to enable businesses to inform and empower end-users faster as they transition to their Oracle Cloud EPM/ERP application(s). Decrease the time spent building training programming in-house and spend more time enabling your team to develop a deep understanding of your organization’s new business processes within Oracle Cloud EPM/ERP. With our customized offering, you’ll reduce time-to-value on your Oracle Cloud EPM/ERP investment through additional post go-live cloud application training for end-users and enjoy these benefits:
- Accelerate user adoption of Cloud EPM/ERP applications
- Reduce direct and indirect cost of building training yourself
- Leverage Alithya's industry experts' Oracle Cloud application experience to build impactful training
- Fast time-to-training deployment
About Oracle Guided Learning
Oracle Guided Learning (OGL) is an enterprise cloud platform that supports the creation of personalized, guided, and contextual user onboarding visualizations - to simplify and accelerate your adoption of web-based applications. OGL is an information and learning interface embedded in a host application. With OGL, you can create in-application guidance to simplify and accelerate your adoption of any web-based application. OGL offers the following features: process guides, display groups, message guides, smart tips, task lists, launchers, hotspots, analytics, and also supports the creation of product tours, rich media guides, beacons, invisible smart tips, survey guides, and adding images and links to additional training content.