Getting in Shape for the Software Training Marathon
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In my previous post “Ensuring Successful Adoption of an Enterprise Fraud Management System,” I left off at the point where I started to address training content and delivery. Anyone who has sat through hours of application training knows how painful this experience can be. And, if the training content is not in alignment with audience expectations, you end up with a roomful of frustrated users who will be reluctant to use the new fraud management system.
As someone who dabbles in athleticism on the weekends, I have found many similarities between designing a physical training program and a software training program. Before one even begins to train, he or she must understand the end goal and design a program with that goal in mind. If you support your software vendor in defining the following content areas, the participants will be more successful at using the new fraud management system and catching the fraud at your organization.
1. Set Training Goals: Make sure the software vendor understands exactly what the users are expected to do and know about the enterprise system and what fraud area they are focused on, so the vendor can build the training appropriately. For example, if there are users primarily concerned with check fraud and alert disposition, and other users interested in internal fraud and forensic research, it may not make sense to invite everyone to the same training session.
Also, when defining training goals, think beyond how users will interact with the system and consider how this new system is going to affect supporting business processes. It may make sense to develop training on new procedures for others within your organization as a result of this new enterprise system being in place. Addressing these new processes sooner rather than later will also help with user adoption.
2. Find a Good Coach: It’s a lot easier to follow a training plan with someone supporting you on the side, so take the time to meet with the software trainer and make sure that person is in alignment with the training goals and understands the audience.
3. Build a Customized Training Plan: Serious athletes don’t follow an off-the-shelf training program, so make sure the software course is customized to your environment. Make sure that it includes the same fraud scenarios and data that users will see when they use the system.
Making the training as real-world as possible will also help ensure the training course is effective for users. Guide your software vendor to build the training around use cases and fraud scenarios so participants can more easily transition to using the new system.
And it almost goes without saying that hands-on training is a must. The balance between presentation-only vs. hands-on content in the application should be about 10% to 90%. Each user should have his/her own computer and access to the system, or it will be a challenging training experience.
4. Make it Fun: Even the best-designed application course can get tedious, so ask your trainer how he or she plans on making the experience engaging and interactive. Even simple training activities like game shows or competitions to find a suspicious alert, etc., can make the training content more engaging and memorable.
5. Continuous Learning: Consider how participants can reinforce the course content and how your organization can ensure they don’t forget what they learned. It’s helpful if the training content is readily available for review, in hard or soft format, and is written in such a way that it can be used as self-paced material.
If possible, it could be useful to record the training session for participants to review the content, or for participants who couldn’t attend the original session. Just make sure there is an appropriate shared location to store and share the training video(s); IT departments usually have their own processes on how to provide access.
Also, sometimes it’s necessary to provide a refresher training course to participants, if user adoption is an issue. Review with the software trainer the specific goals, to help ensure participants get the content they need.
6. Assess the Training Program: Finally, the software vendor should have training evaluations after the course. It is good practice also to ask if they will conduct ongoing evaluations to assess participants learning, behavior and results – following Kirkpatrick’s Model – as one method of ongoing assessment.
Giving your software training plan as much attention as a world-class athlete would give his or her training program will help strengthen your team to win the race against emerging fraud trends.