Training beyond the traditional workforce

Sudipta Dev/ Mumbai

Most IT companies take great pride in calling themselves learning organisations, and consider training as a constant process and essential to employee development. The new focus on corporate training initiatives is training being provided to people who do not comprise the traditional workforce, for instance channel partners and customers. The distributors and their teams are the extended workforce of an organisation, the face of the company that interacts directly with clients. Organisations have now realised the impact of their training on business performance. Training a wide and diversified group of people across the country however is a bigger challenge than it appears, and requires planning and sizable resource allocation. The competitive edge that this provides in the marketplace makes it a necessity that cannot be overlooked.

Training in today’s parlance has assumed different implications thanks to technology. The mediums of instruction adopted by most organisations are a mix of instructor-led and Web-based courses and are meticulously planned and created. Satyen Parekh, managing director of Borland, believes that the channel of distributors is in truth the extended organisation, mirror images and replicas of how the parent organisation operates. “Every partner organisation is nothing but a Borland family. The participants of these training sessions should however have equal amount of passion, conviction, and commitment to use it from the next day. Otherwise all effort is wasted.”

The process

At Cisco, almost 100 percent of the sales are done through partners and this makes them a very critical part of the overall Cisco ecosystem. The company has 1,500 reseller partners in 100 cities across India. “Cisco has a special focus on partner reseller training and specialisation in latest networking technologies such as wireless LAN, IP telephony and security among others. This is where ‘Cisco Channel Partner Programme’ comes in. The programme places great emphasis on value-add, technical expertise and customer satisfaction—and not just volume-based, low value-added sales,” says Ranajoy Punja, vice president—marketing, Cisco Systems India and SAARC. A part of this is the Cisco University Programme. Resellers are put through rigorous training programmes and hands-on demos for implementation and specialisation on key Cisco technology solutions.

In 2002, Cisco India also initiated the Cisco Technology Mastermind Quiz (TMQ) for channel partners in India, informs Punja, adding that partners were quizzed on not only the basics of networking but also on applications based on networking. The quiz not only tested theoretical knowledge but also tested the application of the knowledge in a real life scenario. The success of the event in Cisco India led to replication on a bigger canvas by Cisco APAC in 2003 and 2004.

In an organisation like EMC, customers and partners with the same level of depth, same content and many times in the same class as the company’s own employees. “Partners and customers also play a significant role in the courseware planning, review and feedback process. Our focus on training has been recognised by many people and we have consistently been ranked in the ‘Training Top 100’, a ranking by Training Magazine,” says Rajesh Janey, director, channel and alliances, EMC India & SAARC. EMC conducts a role-based, three-tiered training programme for its customers and partners, informs Janey.

The programmes include well-defined learning paths with modular offering. The company also has a Proven Professional programme that trains and certifies EMC customers, partners and resellers in the latest EMC technology, for instance EMC Proven Professional Accreditation for Authorised Partners & Resellers and EMC Proven Professional Certification for Customers and Services Partners. The mediums include e-learning, EMC Live virtual classrooms and instructor-led training.

Xerox Modicorp has launched a pioneering initiative called ‘Digipro’ which aims to train the sales promotion agents (SPAs) and SPA sales executives of the company and developing their technical as well as soft skills for the office products range of the company. “Xerox Modicorp has collaborated with NIIT for furthering this channel initiative. DIGIPRO is an ongoing programme comprising various learning levels,” says Tarun Goswami, marketing manager of Xerox Modicorp. He adds that Xerox Modicorp also conducts regular training for its channel partners across the country for helping them understand the latest products and technologies being introduced in India.

Ambassadors of an organisation

The channel partners are considered ambassadors of the organisation who directly interact with the customer, hence the need for training.

Acer has an indirect support model and offers service through its Authorised Support Partners (ASPs). “This team is in addition to our traditional workforce but is as important as they are the ones facing our customers. ASP (164 organisations) provides on-site service delivery for servers and desktops, and we have 20 authorised service centres known as Acer Care Clinics (ACCs) for carry-in notebook support,” informs Sudipto Ghosh, customer support, Acer India. The company has detailed and elaborate training programmes for them. Hardware and OS training on all the products are offered and a training calendar is available in the beginning of each quarter.

It is mandatory for ASPs, both for accreditation and audit, to have requisite numbers of Acer trained and certified personnel, says Ghosh. The training is followed by a certification and successful participants qualify as ACE (Acer Certified Engineer). The validity of ACE is for one year. The ACEs get a badge, certificate and access to Acer technical website.

The company believes that a well-trained and certified personnel is a key factor for customer satisfaction. They are the real ambassadors of the organisation since they are in direct co-ntact with customers and solve customers’ problems. Adds Gh-osh, “Customer-centric appr-oach is also mandatory for such customer facing employees.”

Agrees Hitesh Prajapati—corporate champion—Uptime Solutions (Channel), Emerson Network Power (India), “The channel entities in Emerson are crucial links in our mission to become ‘customer evangelists’ for Uptime Solutions. They are the ones who actually ‘deliver’ the concept and value to customers in their various interactions. Hence focus clearly is on building ‘competencies’ as well as complete understanding of ‘The Emerson way’ of doing business.” The company believes that along with competence, confidence and commitment matter a lot. Consequently, the purpose behind each training invariably is to create more ‘empowered’ individuals / companies who can deliver the Emerson Network Power ‘value’ just as traditional workforce can do or even better.

Affecting business performance

Most organisations realise how training the extended workforce directly impacts business performance. “It is an essential part of business development and enhancement, looking at it in isolation is a blunder,” insists Satyen Parekh of Borland

A well-trained and certified staff provides efficient after sales support and consequently high level of customer satisfaction. “This has helped us in retaining key customers which is an important target for the support department. Level of service is presently an important parameter for any purchase decision,” points out Ghosh of Acer.

Furthermore, sales cycles reduce; solutions are well explained to customers; diagnosis and trouble shooting is done accurately by service teams. “The main difference comes when you increase ‘volume’ based on ‘value’ selling. That way all the entities remain profitable and customer satisfaction is also high,” adds Prajapati.

The impact varies according to individual market dynamics. SAS India undertakes a structured training programme for its customers and alliance partners to help them understand the SAS Business Intelligence solutions and their applications. “The BI market in India is witnessing an exponential growth and customers today are seeking partners who not only bring with them the technology and domain expertise but also give them a competitive edge to lead the market-place. SAS is the leader in the BI market in India, and thrives to achieve and retain its market leadership. With our structured training programmes, our customers get valuable insights into their business, which certainly gives them distinctive competitive advantage,” states Dinkar Sathe, senior principal consultant, SAS India.

Similarly, Hafeez Khawaja, regional director for emerging markets, Western Digital, says: “For the hard drive industry a good training programme with a focus on product handing directly reduces the return rate. This is beneficial for both the customer and the manufacturer.” The company conducts sales training workshops for the staff of our major distributors across metros such as Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad, Calcutta, etc. This includes product seminars for customers i.e. dealers and system integrators.

The challenges

Training a diversified group of people is a challenge that most companies have to deal with. Training needs should be flexible and address real time needs. Trend Micro which trains as many as 2,500 to 3,000 people annually across the country has realised this. Niraj Kaushik, country manager of Trend Micro (India), lists some of the common problems: “Getting the people to commit their time for training; retaining their attention span during training sessions; and ensuring that the message is remembered long after the training is done.” The company has certification-level technical training, general purpose technical training, sales training on trend products. These training sessions are held in specialised classrooms as well as conducted onsite at the channel partner premises.

The challenge lies in making a programme which is good not only from the point of view of content, but is flexible enough to be made appealing depending on the audience profile, feels Prajapati. He asserts that the most challenging part is to ensure enough interest in a training programme through customer situations, role plays and simulations. A technical training can get drab unless handled well especially for an audience that is not conversant with the industry. It is a tough time for partners to face customers who are knowledgeable, demanding and want the latest and best from preferably a ‘solutions specialist’. The challenge of training lies in providing the right content and dynamism to instill confidence.

P K Gupta, director strategic development—Asia Pacific, Japan and Korea, Legato Software, agrees that it is extremely difficult to train a diversified group of people. “One has to understand the partner and customer level of product and technology understanding and train them at that level and then increase their level of understanding in thoughtful way to raise the bar. We do training and certifications at beginner and advance levels.” Most of Legato’s training focuses on product technicals, proposal making and selling, competitive landscape, pre-sells and post sales training and best practices for customers, etc.

Gupta acknowledges that training has made significant difference for the company. Partners are much more knowledgeable and positive about the company’s product range, features and benefits, total solutions, certifications etc, and this helps in making customers more confident in the partners’ capabilities to support them. In the end, business is after all about customer confidence.

sudipta@expresscomputeronline.com