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Though
CIOs in India may have tightened their purse strings, it has failed
to undermine the importance of IT training among the non-IT corporate
houses. Instead, there is an increased awareness relating to the
need for constant technology upgradation of the IT staff. What is
more significant is the thrust towards bringing the staff from functional
areas like purchase, marketing and distribution, into the fold of
IT training. But the constant pressure on judicious spending of
IT budgets is definitely changing the face of in-house IT training.
There is a certain shift happening from generic to specific and
focused training approach. As a result, there is a lot more planning
and analysis going into evolving an IT training strategy for the
in-house staff by the CIOs today.
The
budgetary allocations for IT training generally range between 1
percent to 3 percent of the total IT budgets of organisations. Though
a very small proportion in their overall IT scheme, companies are
increasingly becoming aware of the necessity of training to make
their IT initiatives work. According to Ajay Kumar Sharma, the president
of New Horizons India, an IT training company (primarily focusing
on corporate training which contributes almost 80 percent of its
revenues), one of the biggest flaws has been that training is not
being taken as a necessity.
 “IT
training within the organisation, both among the IT and non-IT staff,
is capable of delivering increased RoI on IT investments,”
he adds. In fact, experts feel that one of the reasons for failure
of IT to deliver on the expected results and RoI, is due to the
lack of adequate training efforts to orient the staff towards optimal
utilisation of the IT resources. CIOs are increasingly realising
that this hypothesis is not only restricted to ERP but every functional
IT initiative, big or small. “The corporates are feeling the
urge for a more exposed, aware and responsive IT user and hence
the internal training programmes from IT staff to functional users
are gaining momentum,” explains Hilal Khan, manager of IT at
Honda Siel.
Though
this is unlikely to yield more moolah towards IT training programmes
in the near future, yet it is gradually paving the way for a change
in the mindset towards IT training of in-house staff. According
to Pradyumna Poddar, the general manager of Usha International,
it is a fact that in every good organisation training would play
a very important and key role in the overall growth. “And have
an IT department with a dedicated team of trainers, whose functionality
would only be imparting training,” he explains.
The
change in mindset coupled with the constraints on IT spending, is
also leading organisations to evolve a more focused IT training
strategy. Both SR Balasubramanian, the vice president of information
systems at Hero Honda Motors and Arindam Bose, the head of IT at
LG Electronics India, agree that there is a definite shift happening
towards a more focused IT training approach among the corporates.
Earlier during the period of IT boom, there was no well-defined
agenda for IT training. Companies were training the IT teams on
almost all the latest technologies and applications. The IT slowdown
has caused CIOs to focus on areas that are most beneficial to the
enterprise. The idea is to invest in things that can help them save
costs and increase efficiency.
With
rationalisation creeping in, CIOs are putting in their training
agenda those technologies which the organisation is likely to use
in the future rather than on all the new upcoming technologies.
As a result, the training programmes are now targeted towards a
need-based approach. From Honda Siel’s perspective, Khan adds
that the company tries to cover latest IT trends and platform relevant
to its business requirements.
Most
corporate houses have already outlined the specific areas they are
going to focus on for training, at least for the short-term. For
instance, Samsung proposes to conduct future training programmes
on latest networking trends, CRM and .Net technologies for its IT
team. While the training programmes for the Samsung IT team will
have a capsule with more of technical contents, the training programmes
for functional people are related to business processes, best industry
practices and contents matching the job profiles of the individuals.
Honda
Siel, whose current training programmes for IT staff are divided
into two areas, i.e. training on software (GUI and AS/400 mainframe-based)
and system administration (networking, communication, security,
store, consolidation, etc), is planning to emphasise more on system
administration area this year. LG’s focus for second half of
2003 is going to be on biz intelligence and data warehousing. Hero
Honda, on the other hand, is concentrating on supply chain management
(B2B side of its business), Web-based technologies and emerging
technologies, in areas like convergence. “Once an organisation
has decided to implement a particular technology appropriate for
its operations, training investment should be done in that particular
area,” adds Rajesh Chopra, deputy general manager, Information
Systems, Samsung India Electronics.
A
more focused approach also means more planning and a structured
training programme. “From today’s industry outlook the
flat trend is likely to continue for some more time. As a result,
the CEO is extremely conscious of what the exact needs are. In such
a scenario it is very important to get the planning right, which
requires a strong IT training strategy,” explains Ajay Sharma.
For
instance in case of LG at the beginning and middle of the year the
company asks the members of the IT team to identify the areas they
would like to be trained on. Then a need-based analysis is carried
out. Finally, a mix and match is done to create an optimum training
programme for the employees. Organisations are also increasingly
looking at identifying specific people within the IT team to be
trained and specialised in certain areas like network management,
Web services, etc. Honda Siel is planning training for two people
(out of eight eligible personnel) on knowledge sharing concept.
LG too conducts a similar exercise. While bringing in a focused
approach, it also helps in cutting down training budgets drastically.
This
is likely to give impetus to outsourcing of IT training requirements.
IT training houses are answering their call. New Horizons, for instance,
offers a complete mapping of the IT training requirements of any
organisation. It does need analysis of people, their aptitude, work
processes and the productivity levels expected from each of them.
This finally leads to an exact mapping of how much training is required
for the specific set of people. It further designs the training
methodology, does an analysis of what are the requirements and whether
the training strategy evolved will meet the corporate objectives
or not. In fact, the company claims that many corporates have come
to them for just the mapping and analysis services.
This
might herald some relief for IT training companies targeting the
corporate segment. The reprieve for them will however depend upon
how fast it will take for the trend to catch up on a large scale.
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