Thursday 6 December 2007

Technology training? On a need to know basis

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Many pioneers throughout history have been ignored. Their inventions, idealisms or artistic endeavours discounted or under appreciated during their life times. We are sometimes embarrassed to be wrong or stand up and say something that others with stronger opinions disagree with. However, history is a great story teller. It allows time to unfold truths that aren’t always visible to us at our position in time. Training is almost in this camp. Like a warm cup of hot, sweet tea, it sits in the background – often taken for granted. Where ‘intuitive software’ wins its sales war by “cutting down training costs” with ‘ease of use’, many maintain that a little more investment and attention to training is the birth of those eureka moments for techno-phobes “I get it!” can be a building block to help staff work faster and provide hands on help for others. It reduces desktop support, frustration and ultimately moves law firms toward quicker software integrations in future. Arguably by skimping on training, you keep your firm handcuffed to the past.

In technology we mostly talk excitedly of the “next big thing.” Many people are keen to identify the problems of the future and be respected and revered as a trend setter or product spotter.

For others it is refreshing to step away from this industry froth and talk of “maximising purchasing investment” or concentrating on internal mechanisms without the noise of new product salespeople, financiers and the media clouding judgement. The latter group is almost Swiss in its attitude - steady and slowly wins the race.

For those involved with training, change in the technology industry happens as Cathy Wallach of EncoreTech puts it “in incremental shifts.” In essence applications such as Word, Interwoven and OpenText remain much the same but economic and software developments bring improvements and additions.

Specialising in document management Cathy works with her co-founder, Stacy Gittleman, who was the first trainer working with her in her previous entity Perfect Access Speer (sold in 1998). Working across the USA, clients range from firms such as Clifford Chance to big corporates like Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley brought EncoreTech in to learn proprietary systems, write up manuals and then train them.

Surprisingly e-learning has not made much impact on the training business. Its used mainly to give students a quick heads up before EncoreTech hit the classroom. Cathy says these days the emphasis is on quick training or “what do you need to know training” so their emphasis is on being ultra prepared, getting it right and having a one-stop project manager for each client.

Other ongoing clients include Debevoise & Plimpton, McCarter & English and Cadwalader with two to three month training projects usually on the cards and big EncoreTech teams parachuting in, to get the job done.

But training is not all fabulous big contracts, there is a known under investment that pervades the corporate and SME world that mainly centres around smaller firms. Cathy says “the big firms talk to each other so they know they need training. In smaller firms they work so much on their own that they can’t understand the impact of an assistant spending ten rather than four hours on trying to fathom out how different document formatting works. Training increases productivity enormously.”

Getting clients mainly by referral, EncoreTech do the rounds at ILTA and LegalTech but say their plan is to stay at a level of around twenty five trainers to keep the business controlled and high quality. She comments “Stacy and I have both been in the training business for more than twenty years and we know its hard to maintain quality when you stretch to a hundred people.”


http://www.encoretech.com/

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