End User Training and Training Material: Enterprise Systems

As shared in the last Enterprise Systems blog post on SOPs, Work Instructions, and User Guides, you’ve spent significant resouces on your system selection and implementation, configured it for your business, and now you need your users to use it as it was designed and tested. This means that the users need to be trained.

This ensures consistency of use, data integrity, and increases the reliability of the system and associated data.

For controlled systems (SOX, GxP validated), this is a requirement for establishing and maintaining control, and ensuring data integrity and reliability.

Training can be handled in multiple ways depending on the number and location of users, their technical sophistication, and your company’s training tools. I guarantee that some of these users (including executives) may balk at getting trained, assuming they can ‘figure it out’ or they don’t have time. These are the ones that end up creating the most issues both politically and within the system. If they don’t have time to get trained, they certainly won’t have time to use the system correctly.

In the last few years, most training has moved online with either live sessions or recorded material. This will depend on your company’s training tech tools and corporate culture. I’ve found that doing live sessions works best for the initial Go Live and then, after several months of system use, when the processes are fully worked out, some training can move to recorded sessions with hands-on exercises.

Regardless of whether it’s live or recorded, users should be required to execute the transactions or queries in the system (in a Test environment that is a copy of the Production environment) with prepared data so that there are expected results. These should mimic as closely as possible what they will be doing once they are in Production and follow the previously prepared and customized procedures and work instructions. Making the processes as repeatable as possible will reduce the prep work required for training sessions.

Who creates the training material: the training material can be created by the business analyst or by the project team leads with the most knowledge of the system and the business processes. Note: implementation partners of vendors may say they have training material but it will be generic and won’t be tailored to your configuration and business processes. This will not be helpful and will create confusion for your end users.

Who provides the training: this will depend on who is best suited to provide the training for it to be the most successful. This can be the internal business analyst or it can be the internal functional super users, assuming they are comfortabl presenting and teaching. Note: it is generally not a best practice to have the implementation partner generate the training material and provide the training to end users. Once the implementation partner has left, it will be up to the customer to provide further training, and the internal resources need to be the ones with the experience and knowledge to be self sufficient.

When: training should be provided as close to Go Live as possible, or as close to when the end users will be using the system. Sometimes this is right before Go Live, but for some users, this may be after Go Live depending on what their role is. Training should always be provided prior to granting a user access to the system.

What’s Included

When introducing a new system to end users, it’s important to provide a general overview of the system and the basic functions and build from there.

As with the SOPs and work instructions, providing the purpose, scope, and who is responsible for what and when is important for overall context.

Train the users on the specific system functions and processes in alignment with the work instructions.

Once you’ve walked the users through the transactions or processes, they should have the opportunity to execute in the system to reenforce what they’ve just learned and address any further questions they might have.

Make sure the end users know where to go for help and where to access the documentation (procedures, work instructions, process flows, etc.). If there’s going to be special Go Live support, they should know where to get the help and what will happen after this period ends.

Other Things to Note

I prefer to provide the users with context for the system, both as it relates to the user’s specific functions, and also the broader business processes. My hope is that if they understand why something is important not just to them, but to the business as a whole, that perhaps they may take their role more seriously and feel like they are part of something bigger. Sometimes it works. Sometimes people complain about doing something different or possible more than what they’d done with a previous system or process.

For controlled systems (SOX, GxP), training should be documented to provide evidence if requested during management review or an audit.

How long are the training sessions? This really depends but the sessions should be broken out logically by user group or system function. Managers should be trained on their employees’ user functions to make sure they understand what their team is doing in the system. Sessions shouldn’t last longer than two hours to be effective.

Why Share This Now?

Back when I was an accountant, working for my dad’s accounting firm, we had a lot of small businesses as clients. The owners of the small businesses struggled with basic bookkeeping and accounting which meant that we couldn’t add value to them and their businesses because we were so focused on the fundamentals. We created a few accounting classes for them in the form of Accounting 101, 102, 201, and 202 so we could do more with them.

I’m applying the same principles here. If I can help my clients (prospective or current) help themselves with projects and project deliverables, then I get to elevate my role beyond the day-to-day and into a strategic and advisory role which, frankly, is a lot more fun!

Check out my blog post Project Deliverables: Enterprise Systems for the complete list of deliverables with links other blog posts.

Have Questions or Require Assistance?

Feel free to reach out to Terri with any questions you might have via email at terri.mead@solutions2projects.com or through the company website SolutionsProjects, LLC.

About the Author

Terri Hanson Mead, MBA, PMP, is a technology and compliance strategist for biotech, pharma, medical device, diagnostic, and digital health companies. Through her company, Solutions2Projects, she helps life sciences companies align technology roadmaps with corporate objectives and meet IT compliance requirements in a complex and regulated industry. As an expert witness, Terri provides pre-litigation consulting and expert witness services for failed technology projects, including enterprise systems.