Center for Professional Training

It is clear that your corporate training programs can play a critical role in difficult times from an economic perspective. You need the most effective business plan to convince management of the need to suspend, divert or create such programs to alleviate the potentially painful cuts and reorganizations. These five tips and the understanding of the value chain of corporate training will indicate the path.

Chain of added value to corporate training

1. Determine the immediate needs of your business

The customers of SumTotal, which have built successful businesses plans for their training initiatives usually begin by clearly defining their business goals and then try to understand what these objectives mean. Similarly, you can evaluate the annual reports to identify specific problems that can be addressed through training. After you isolate these problems and determine their areas of focus, interview key people in these areas. Dig deep to find their strategic objectives and difficulties. How do they define success and how critical parameters are monitored, what will follow for those functional areas or people, if your training initiatives fail?

2. Identify high-impact initiatives

Then, see your strategic corporate objectives such as: growth in turnover, reduction of customer dissatisfaction or improvements in productivity and identify learning initiatives which will contribute directly and most effectively to achieve those goals.

3. Link business goals with current trouble spots

Identify current problems within the organization and show how they reflect the current inability to achieve strategic business objectives.

4. Identify measurable benefits which you expect your training initiatives will bring

Following the discovery of the broader challenges that you face, you must also identify specific, acute problems, whose solution might help training. Then outline clearly how the proposed training initiatives will bring measurable benefits that are directly relevant to these specific issues and will help the company achieve its business objectives.

5. Demonstrate tangible business results and return on investment

These are numbers that make a real impact in building your business plan. Eliminate abstract phrases about benefits such as “significant cost reductions”, but instead provide specific figures for cost reductions, growth in turnover and reduction in the level of dissatisfaction. Calculate solid, clear figures on expected results of your training programs - such as 100,000 Euro savings expected costs of training initiatives related to compliance. And make sure that the cost of the project, its timeline and the resource requirements are consistent with the expectations of business.