Training Trends

As corporate money managers begin to see the value of training and the cost savings distance learning brings to their businesses, they will allocate larger chunks of their budgets toward online training. The folks at Centra Software Inc., Lexington, Mass., believe the distance learning market is poised for significant growth this year, due to the many benefits that come with replacing traditional classroom training with educational programs that can be brought to a company's site.

Leon Navickas, president of Centra and former general manager of advanced research and development for Lotus Notes at Lotus Development Corp., Cambridge, Mass., is witnessing several trends in the industry as a result of his company's Web-based training application, Symposium. The product is designed to provide sales, marketing and technical updates to vendors' channel partners, particularly small VARs that don't have large training budgets, to gain mind share.

As a result of Symposium, which starts at $200 per user, the company noticed its clients' retention of technical staff has improved. Traditional classroom training is extremely time-consuming. The product frees up technicians' time because they spend less time traveling and more time in the office. It also decreases the burnout rate.

Another trend expected as a result of Symposium is improved customer satisfaction. Small VARs have a hard time staying up-to-date on traditional training initiatives, due to the overwhelming associated costs. That creates uneven service quality across the field, which spawns customer satisfaction issues. As a result, companies that use more Internet-based training programs will see an increase in customer satisfaction. Navickas expects future versions of the product to focus on the needs of small to midsize companies in the latter half of this year.

New product training for worldwide field and channel partners requires astronomical attention and effort and can take months to implement. Companies are finding traditional classroom training to be too late, too infrequent and too expensive. In addition, while many training programs are offered free to VAR partners, they still have to pay for travel and shoulder the costs of lost opportunities.

Symposium provides its clients with the ability to launch worldwide product rollouts with high-capacity, hands-on software product training via the Web. Users can prepare for training initiatives with a product launch readiness program that includes prelaunch planning, training and interaction with product management, field experts, trainers and support personnel. The product's just-in-time modular update training is delivered in short, virtual classes and self-paced training modules for timely, efficient on-demand skills updating partners at their offices or homes. Partners update and recertify through a structured program with self-paced and/or virtual classroom training for formal skills updating, assessment and certification. The product supports remote individual or group software demos with full interactivity over the Internet.

Written entirely in Java, Symposium is a software-only solution for delivering live collaboration to any Web browser. It combines multiway audio, live application sharing, collaborative whiteboard, Web Safari, breakout sessions, computer-based training and threaded discussion forums in an accessible learning environment. Symposium also provides centralized content migration, online registration, automated reporting and links to back-end information databases and enterprise resource planning systems through industry standard APIs.

"We're seeing a reengineering of sales organizations around a virtual water cooler," says Navickas.

Online learning has also found its way into education. In fact, one of Navickas' clients is offering a physicians' MBA program entirely online. Navickas says doctors log on every Saturday morning to participate in the distance learning program. "It's the only way doctors can get a degree in business because they can't get away," he says. "In the future, there will be some kind of blend of distance learning and traditional learning. A lot of professors use this for office hours from home."

For more information on Symposium, call (781) 861-7000, or visit the company's Web site at www.centra.com.

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