1. Increasing Your SharePoint ROI with End-User Training
COSPUG March 17, 2011
Increasing Your SharePoint ROI with End-User Training
Presented by: Jen Dodd and Planet Technologies
Case Study provided by: NREL

2. Planet Technologies Who are we?
Five Time Microsoft Federal Partner of the Year
Two Time Microsoft State and Local Partner of the Year
Headquarters in Germantown, MD
Provide Consulting Services, Full Spectrum of Training, Custom Development, User Experience, Branding and Composite Solutions for SharePoint 2007 and 2010

3. Planet Technologies - CPLS
Upcoming Training
June 6th -  10th – 10174: Configuring and Administering Microsoft SharePoint 2010
June 20th -  24th – 10231: Designing a Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Infrastructure
July 11th – 15th – 10175: Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Application Development
July 25th – 29th – 10232: Designing and Developing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Applications
Location – LeaderQuest in the DTC 6825 S. Galena Street, Suite 100
25% DISCOUNT if you register through Planet (Best bargain in town)

4. Planet Training
Sneak Peek at our new training site

5. If you build it… …they MIGHT come 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.
…they MIGHT come

6. If you train them… …they WILL come
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.
…they WILL come

7. 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!

8. …Why Organizations Don’t
Training…
They look at the hard costs of training and see that it is expensive, very expensive. Let’s take a pessimistic look at what they are seeing…
…Why Organizations Don’t

9. 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

10. Direct Cost Example

11. Indirect Costs
The cost of lost productivity during the 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. $940 Per Day $1175 per day Total Cost
Cost of Training + Cost of Lost Productivity
Local Training $450 + $490 =
$940 Per Day
Non-Local Training $685 + $490 =
$1175 per day
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.

13. Benefits of Training Seen as Intangible Difficult to Quantify
How do you know if they class you take will be worth it?
When Managers look at the benefits of training, this is what they often see…

14. …Why Organizations Should
Training…
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
…Why Organizations Should

15. Benefits of Training Increased Accuracy Faster Task Execution
Ability to Tackle a Wider Variety of Tasks
Increased Employee Satisfaction
Increased Employee Motivation
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.

16. The Cost of SharePoint 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 is not in your favor

19. Incentivizing Employees
PRO: Can be cheaper than hiring a recruiter
CON: Can also lead to larger issues

20. …what doesn’t work Hanging on to talent…
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 cast 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.
…what doesn’t work

21. What Does Work Feeling of job and task mastery
Healthy work environment
Work/Life balance
Varied and challenging tasks
Community and social aspects
Feeling valued by their employers
Increased Accuracy
Faster Task Execution
Ability to Tackle a Wider Variety of Tasks
Increased Employee Satisfaction
Increased Employee Motivation

22. …Hurts your bottom line
Losing talent…
The loss of one competent person can be the equivalent of one year's pay and benefits
…Hurts your bottom line

23. SharePoint Training… …as an Employee Perk
What if we started to look at SharePoint Training as an employee perk?
…as an Employee Perk

24. Building a Case…

25. Business Benefits Staff Retention Improved quality and productivity
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. Taking Advantage of New Technology
Increased productivity can boost your business reputation
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

28. The Business Case
Is the proposed training in line with your business strategy?
Are there specific areas where you can improve through targeted training?
Are your performance goals achievable?
Is the implementation of training the best option?
Are the costs of training worth it?
How do you propose to measure the effectiveness of your training?

29. Calculating ROI - Costs
Source: training.com.au

31. The Pros and Cons
The Pros
The cons
Employers gain from having well-trained, skilled employees
Save time and money when they employ people who can improve processes and finish tasks more quickly
Up-front costs
Employees might take the training and then jump ship for a higher paying job  

32. The Reality All SharePoint professionals need continuous training
It’s one thing to learn the technical aspects of SharePoint, it’s something completely different to keep up to date with emerging best practices, new ideas, hotfix impacts, and so on
You can be the best SharePoint disaster recovery professional at one point, but you'll quickly find yourself lagging far behind if you don't keep your skills fresh.
If you want to maximize your SharePoint ROI, you’re going to have to train your employees

33. Types of Training Instructor-led Online One-on-one mentoring
Team Workshops
User Groups
Seminars
Instructional Newsletters

34. Types of SharePoint Training
Generic
Generalized Overview
Specific
Deep-dive
Custom
Generalized
Overview
Effectiveness, Price, Audience size, Overall Value

35. What Normally Happens…
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

36. 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.
…What Should Happen

37. Training Program Approach
Assessment – analysis of your training needs
The business result you want to achieve
Metrics that will determine success
Initial benchmarks
Method of training
Design
Design considerations addressing the assessment
Who, what, when, where, why
Custom or existing training materials

38. Training Program Approach (cont.)
Development
Instructor-led or self-guided
Facilitation guides for instructors
Schedules – deployment plan
LMS?
Tools to measure effectiveness
Evaluation
Strategy for collecting metrics
Changes as a result of milestone measurements
ROI

39. 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

40. Key Questions Who are my Users? Demographics Location
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

41. First Wave…
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.

42. 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
…Second Wave

43. Stages of SharePoint Training
Get the Spotlight – Communication, Demos, Pilot sites
Present Basic Concepts – What is SharePoint, Lists, Libraries, blogs, wikis
Make it Applicable – Why should they care? How will this benefit them?
Build on it – Build solutions that solve problems
Go Deeper – You will never get to the end of SharePoint, encourage your users to dig deeper and learn more

44. Stretching Your Training Budget…
Train the Trainer
Many 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 benefits
Benefits
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 job
The training is typically better - no one person knows everything
You learn best when you have to teach it
Free SharePoint Training Resources
Listed at the End

45. Jump Start Create a Training Portal on SharePoint
Make the Free SharePoint Training resources available to your employees:
Organized by topic
Video training by sub-topic
Test yourself
Quick Reference Card
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

46. Jump Start Sharepoint-videos.com cbtclips.com nothingbutsharepoint.com
educationonlineforcomputers.com (2 free training courses for SharePoint)
hyperteach.com
Camtasia – make your own custom videos
Planet Technologies Training Site

47. 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.

48. 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

49. Contact Us! For Training: Shannon Bray MCT, MCPD(E), MCSD, MCTS, MCITP
Technical Architect | Training Director

50. Contact Us! For UX Celina Baginski Branding Development Director

51. Contact Us! For Consulting
Clayton Cobb ~ SharePoint (and InfoPath) MVP
Technical Architect – SharePoint | Practice Manager, Midwest Region

52. Contact Us! For SharePoint advice Jen Dodd MCT, MCSE, MCITP
Senior Consultant

53. Thank You and…
Twitter
JenDoddSP
…Good Night