Storm Evans Consulting offers training at a training facility in Center City Philadelphia, on-site in your offices, and anywhere in the world through the Internet.

Training Options:

Training Center. Training in the facility in Center City Philadelphia is based on a training manual. The training on each of the products that Storm supports could be beginner, intermediate or advanced. The training can either be generic or customized for your firm. There is plenty of time to answer specific questions. Most courses are half-day (3-hour) session and include a training manual

On-Site. Training on-site could be based on a training manual or customized, based on things that you tell me you need to know or that I determine as you work with me.

Internet. Training that we do through the Internet could be based on a manual or customized, based on things you tell me you need to know or that I determine as you work with me.

Why Train:

Success in business means providing quality work and great customer service at a good price. It means keeping up with technology and staying ahead of the competition. To do that, you need skilled staff who are full of ideas, know the job and understand business priorities. That means they need quality training.

A skilled, trained workforce can dramatically improve bottom line performance, adding value to products and services and making it easier to compete internationally. Satisfied and motivated staff members mean higher levels of staff retention, lowering the costs of recruitment.

Who needs to train? Everyone needs to improve their skills - whether it's a young person just starting out or someone with many years' experience.

Training must be ongoing. When someone is introduced to a new procedure or software package, they can only retain a certain amount and can only see how to accomplish the task immediately in front of them. At the next level of training, they can take advantage of features or procedures that will make them even more efficient. Some of the second level of training can be done with good manuals, and the most effective is done with an instructor who knows your business needs, knows the software well, and can listen to the concerns of the student.

Types of Training:

One-on-one training is expensive and time consuming, yet some people learn best under when someone works directly with them. It is important that the person doing one-on-one training understands the software well enough to answer specific questions that the user might have and that the person doing the training understands your business (i.e. law firms).

Formal classroom training works well for most software packages but must well thought out and organized before the training begins. And the training must be flexible enough to handle the needs of the different kinds of people in the class.

Demonstrations in a conference room may be sufficient training for some changes. The differences between Word 2003 and Word 2007 are not sufficiently difficult to understand that you need classroom training, but a well-thought out demonstration and a well-developed handout can help the student adjust to the new software. Another way to train is to do a demonstration for 10 or 12 people and then have the trainer follow them to their desks to see if they can do what they need to do. We usually have a 45 minute to 1 hour presentation on a new document management software package, for example, and then spend the next two hours following people around to see if they know how to use the software for their specific tasks.

Lunch hour seminars or any hour-long seminar can help reinforce topics that might not be remembered from initial training or which might have been determined important after initial training. This is also an excellent way to get feedback from users and to continue to encourage consistency in the office. These seminars can include demonstrations, must always be well organized, and focused, and must leave the user with a handout for further reference.

Just in time training is usually one-on-one and is done at someone's desk when the person first realizes that he must do something that he cannot remember how to do. Example: creating a table of contents. If you cover topics in formal training that you do not expect the users to remember how to do, encourage them to remember that the software can do something for them, and encourage them to call you for assistance the first time that the subject comes up. With live Internet sessions, this option is viable even for the smallest offices.

Percussive learning is where the users pound on the icons and pull down menus looking for the right way to do something. Learning by this fashion is good for people who already have a good grasp of computers and software but is not good for people who have never seen a particular type of software or have some resistance to learning.

Recommendation. Start with an Internet session where you ask me questions and show me through your use of the software. At that point we will know whether you need formalized classroom training or whether you need my consulting help as well as training. In my experience, most companies can benefit from a review of the way you use your software and that I can offer simplification to procedures and help you get more information from the data that is there.

Contact Storm Evans Consulting for Training Costs