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Increasing your SharePoint ROI with End-User Training
1. INCREASING YOUR SHAREPOINT ROI WITH
END-USER TRAINING
Presented by: Jen Dodd of Planet Technologies
Case Studies provided by: OMNI and NREL
2. Welcome
Who am I?
• Director of the Rocky Mountain Region – Planet Technologies
• Senior SharePoint Architect, Composite Solutions Developer
and Trainer
• Co-founder and Leadership Coordinator for the Colorado
Women in SharePoint User Group
• Recent projects – NREL, OMNI, BLM, FWS
3. • Who arePLANET TECHNOLOGIES
we?
– Five Time Microsoft Federal Partner of the Year
– Three Time Microsoft State and Local Partner of
the Year
– Headquarters in Germantown, MD
– Provide Microsoft Consulting Services, Full
Spectrum of Training, Custom Development, User
Experience, Branding and Composite Solutions for
SharePoint 2010
4. GLOBAL 360 SHAREPOINT SURVEY
Top 3 Most Challenging Issues with SharePoint
Implementation?
1. Development time and effort required to
build business applications
2. End-user adoption and training
3. Governance
10. DIRECT COST EXAMPLE
• Tuition rate is about $450 a day depending on
the type of training
• If you need to travel, add $400 for flight
• Add $100 per day for hotel
• Plus $35 for meals per day
11. • The cost of lost productivity during the
INDIRECT COSTS
training course
• An employee who makes $70,000 per year is
getting paid about $280 per day
• Assuming 75% efficiency, they are hopefully
providing a benefit to the company of about
$210 + $280 = $490 per day
12. • Cost of Training + Cost of Lost Productivity
TOTAL COST
• Local Training $450 + $490 =
• Non-Local Training $685 + $490 =
13. BENEFITS OF TRAINING
• Seen as Intangible
• Difficult to Quantify
• How do you know if the class you take will be
worth it?
• Instructors make a huge difference in the
learning process – what if yours sucks?
• Freecell
15. BENEFITS OF TRAINING
Increased
Accuracy
Increased Faster
Employee Task
Motivation Execution
Ability to
Increased
Tackle a
Employee
Wider
Satisfactio
Variety of
n
Tasks
16. THE COST OF TALENT
Recruitment
Incentivizing Employees
Hanging onto talent
Losing Talent
17. RECRUITMENT
• Fee for recruiters 20 – 30% salary
• Cost of advertising
• Cost of Interviewing
• Supply and Demand for SharePoint savvy
workers is not in your favor
22. WHAT DOES WORK
• Feeling of job and task
mastery
• Healthy work environment
Increased
Accuracy
• Work/Life balance
Increased
• Varied and challenging Employee
Motivation
Faster Task
Execution
tasks
• Community and social
aspects Increased
Ability to
Tackle a
• Feeling valued by their
Employee Wider
Satisfaction Variety of
Tasks
employers
25. IN ADDITION TO BETTER UTILIZATION OF SP…
BUSINESS
• Staff Retention BENEFITS
– Training can reduce staff turnover by 70%
– Training can lead to a return on investment of
7,000%
• Improved quality and productivity
– Ongoing training almost always shows a positive
return on investment
Source: training.com.au
26. MORE BUSINESS BENEFITS
• The ‘flow-on’ effect - benefits of training in one area can
flow through to all levels of an organization
– Reduce wasted time and materials
– Reduce recruitment costs through the internal promotion of
skilled staff
– Reduce absenteeism
• Staying competitive
– Increase staff morale and satisfaction
– Increase 'soft skills' such as inter-staff communication and
leadership
– Increase time management
– Increase customer satisfaction
Source: training.com.au
27. • Increased productivity can boost your
Tbusiness reputation OF NEW TECHNOLOGY
AKING ADVANTAGE
• Ability to undertake a greater variety of work
and expand or open up new markets
• Allow you to bid for more specialized, high
value contracts
• Assist you to meet business objectives faster
31. TYPES OF SHAREPOINT TRAINING
• Generalized • Specific
Overview • Deep-dive
Generic Generic
Custom Custom
• Generalized • Specific
• Overview • Deep-dive
Effectiveness, Price, Audience size, Overall Value
32. • Instructor-led
TYPES OF TRAINING
• Online
• One-on-one mentoring
• Team Workshops
• User Groups
• Seminars
• Instructional Newsletters
33. Where to Train?
External Internal
Providers Program
Internal or External, that is the question
34. KEY QUESTIONS
What are we using SharePoint for?
• Collaboration
• Team Sites
• Project Sites
• Document Management
• Search
• Content Management
– Intranet
– Extranet
– Internet
• Solutions
– Custom applications
– Form automation
– Workflow
• Insights
– Business Intelligence
– Reports and Dashboards
35. Who are my Users?
• Demographics
KEY QUESTIONS
– Older workers tend to prefer more traditional, instructor-led
courses that are focused and short
– Younger workers tend to prefer more flexible options like on-
demand, video-based courses.
– Executives don't go to training, you train their assistants
• Location
– Centrally located or geographically dispersed
• Innovative - benefit from general training and then let their
imagination run with it, creating site and solutions
• Structured - specific customized training on solutions and
sites that are already built
• Level of Permission
36. STAGES OF SHAREPOINT TRAINING
1. Get the Spotlight – Communication, Demos, Pilot sites
2. Present Basic Concepts – What is SharePoint, Lists, Libraries, blogs, wikis
3. Make it Applicable – Why should they care? How will this benefit them?
4. Build on it – Build solutions that solve problems
5. Go Deeper – You will never get to the end of SharePoint, encourage your
users to dig deeper and learn more
38. • Coaches - If youOF be delegating site “design” capabilities to users
E N -T
XAMPLES will ON RADITIONAL pretty much T
who have limited solution design experience (which RAINING
means every organization), having experienced site design
“coaches” available to help users get started can ensure that you
end up with a solution that actually gets used.
• Drop-ins Welcome - One successful organization implemented
“drop in” office hours where new site owners could come and
spend an hour or two with an experienced solution architect to
ensure that they got appropriate guidance (in addition to formal
training).
• Establish in-house consulting services to help new site owners get
started. Offer the first hour or two of consulting for “free” and
services beyond that require a charge code.
• Internal User Group - sharing best practices and lessons learned in a
Community of Practice team site. Members serve as SharePoint
advocates and change agents.
39. MORE IDEAS
• Company sponsored brown bag lunch-n-
learns. The company provides pizza and
instructors.
• Site design and functionality contests
• Show-n-tell in team meetings
• Training tips and tricks. “Tip of the Day” on
the home page
40. • Create a Training Portal on SharePoint
JUMP START
• Make the Free SharePoint Training resources
available to your employees:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-
server-help/CH010372432.aspx
– Organized by topic
– Video training by sub-topic
– Test yourself
– Quick Reference Card
41. • JUMP S
Sharepoint-videos.com TART
• cbtclips.com
• nothingbutsharepoint.com
• educationonlineforcomputers.com (2 free
training courses for SharePoint)
• hyperteach.com
• Camtasia – make your own custom videos
• Planet Technologies Training Site
42.
43. Props…
SharePoint Magazine, Training.com.au, Michael Sampson-“User Adoption
Strategies: Shifting Second Wave People to New Collaboration Technology”,
Microsoft SharePoint Site, NREL, Planet Technologies and Google Images
Assuming you have:Gathered all the requirements, Designed an infallible architecture, Built a perfect environment, and delivered sites and solutions that save the world, it still doesn’t matter unless your users adopt the system. The most effective way to ensure adoption is through training. You can’t just send a few users to the local training facility to get a crash course on SharePoint. One of the most frequently cited reasons by companies who have had failed SharePoint implementations is because they failed to train their employees on how to use it. SharePoint in a way is a victim of its own success.
Savvy companies are realizing that the benefit of training their end-users goes far beyond the success of a SharePoint implementation. This is best done by creating a professional SharePoint training program, preferably built within SharePoint itself, which allows users to attend training in the way that suits them best. That could be through instructor-led, hands-on labs; self-paced web-based courses; recorded sessions; or simply through articles and videos that touch on specific areas of need. Companies with the highest adoption rate and the greatest success are taking the time to develop a full training program that allows users to learn how to use their unique environment in the quickest and easiest way possible.
Implementing SharePoint can be a shock, and it won't instantly make everything better for everyone. Even after training, not everyone sees the benefit of an awesome system like SharePoint, but watch out for those who do!
They look at the hard costs of training and see that it is expensive, very expensive. Let’s take a pessimisticlook at what they are seeing…
When organizations realize the cost of training , they often end up postponing or even dropping the training. Then, they are surprised when their users don't like or use the new solution and the results are lower than anticipated.
When Managers look at the benefits of training, this is what they often see…
Training should be one of the most important parts of an organization's overall Strategy High employee turnover may be a serious threat to an organization existence
When the cost of training, specifically SharePoint training, is systematically compared to the soft benefits, such as increased accuracy, faster task execution, and ability to tackle more varieties of tasks, increased employee satisfaction and motivation, training begins to make sense.
Extrinsic motivation does not work, it is expensive and often leads to reduced motivation (Gates Christmas Parties and children's gifts)It is expensive to lose well-trained skilled information workers. It costs a company an average of $50k when they lose an employee who takes their job knowledge with them when they walk out the door. More than just day-to-day but, cyclical processes, applications, politics, polices and procedures, relationships.
The loss of one competent person can be the equivalent of one year's pay and benefits
What if we started to look at SharePoint Training as an employee perk?
The IT professional who implements the technology usually becomes the End-User support/Trainer, that is what happened to me. However, many IT professionals avoid end-users at all cost and will feign ignorance so someone else will step up. I encourage SharePoint enthusiasts to step-up into the roll of pseudo-trainer for their group/team/division. It is an extremely marketable skill
Develop custom training in bite-sized pieces that specifically addresses how the organization is using SharePoint. Back to our discussion about value, if you go to a typical, generic SharePoint Training class, you will spend the first 40 minutes and at least an additional 20 each day discussing the differences in Foundation, standard and enterprise licensing. Not to mention entire modules that cover information you will NEVER use in your organization.
Michael Sampson - User Adoption Strategies: Shifting Second Wave People to New Collaboration Technology First wave people - early-adopters , advocates, evangelists - send them first, they will motivate the others (Casey on the Security team) early adopters of anything new, the advocates, the champions, or the enthusiasts. First wavers are more at peace with change, permissive of chaos, unfazed by ambiguity, and actually derive enjoyment from figuring something out.
Second wave people - represent the largest body of people in an organization. They are generally the ones who have to use new technology as it’s given, rather than having any direct input into what it is and how it could be used.Self-training vs formal training - reality, both must take place
Train the TrainerMany organizations will send their internal trainers to training and then task them with training the rest of the organization. This is a great way to save money. However, keep in mind that a product like SharePoint is not something you learn overnight or by going to a series of training classes, it takes time and experience to learn how to do things well.Find your Champions and provide incentive…Tag-team and Peer Training benefitsBenefits It doesn't depend on one person - by spreading the love, it is easier to pick up the slack when someone is on vacation or leaves the jobThe training is typically better - no one person knows everythingYou learn best when you have to teach itFree SharePoint Training ResourcesListed at the End
If users can’t find information, it doesn’t exist!There are tons of free resources on the Internet, you need to go out and find them and aggregate them for the users
NREL requested an all-inclusive, enterprise-wide user training program customized to their specific implementation of SharePoint.It was determined that existing courseware would be too general and too expensive to distribute to all users so custom courseware would need to be developed. The courses needed to be available on-line and on-demand or as an instructor-led class.The SharePoint training program provided the Lab with a jump-start by accelerating user-adoption and increasing the quality of collaboration. Management is able to evaluate at a glance the number of users who have taken advantage of the training with the dashboard on the training site. Most organizations do not provide this level of training and therefore do not receive the expected ROI simply because people do not know how to use SharePoint to its full potential. be available on-line and on-demand or as an instructor-led class.
