As the business environment reaches new levels of complexity and competitiveness due to social and demographic factors, economic changes, and emerging technologies becoming more prominent, organizations must future-proof their operations to create profitable revenue growth. To achieve it, they have to attract new customers, improve customer retention, expand their product/services portfolio, and most importantly, engage with their data in a smarter way to analyze, plan, and forecast at optimal efficiency.
Traditionally, supporting this type of growth meant spending a myriad number of hours on manual data entry in disparate systems and spending ample time on data processing, approvals, and analysis, driving up overhead expenses. To outpace the competition, more organizations are turning to smarter software within the SAP portfolio including SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC), a single cloud solution that combines Business Intelligence (BI), augmented and predictive analytics, and planning capabilities to turn data into instant, actionable insights.
But implementation of these solutions is just the first step. Many organizations fail to realize the importance that training plays in a successful deployment. When organizations provide their end-users, administrators, and developers with ongoing training, they realize several benefits:
Improved performance with organizations with heavier end-user training experienced an average improvement in their key business performance of more than 51% compared to the average of 24%.
Shorter deployment time when teams are provided with ample initial implementation training, ideally more than 50 hours, saving almost a month of deployment time.
Increased satisfaction resulting from properly trained users. The study proved that well-trained users were 72% more likely to be highly satisfied with their deployment.
According to a recent International Data Corporation (IDC) study conducted by SAP on the Transformative Impact of Training, organizations that provided 10% more ongoing training, doubled the improvement in their key business value drivers. In this post, we will discuss the impact of training on the implementation and software adoption of SAP Analytics Cloud.
Direct correlation between training and maximized business value of software
Improved performance
Providing initial training, both to implementation teams and administrators and end-users before the deployment of the project is crucial for a smooth deployment. But it must carry through beyond launch; Ongoing training enables users to continually improve their capabilities, utilize more of the solution's functionalities, and get the maximum value from their SAP investment, ultimately delivering on business outcomes and improving key performance measures.
IDC’s whitepaper, “The Transformative Impact of Training,” cites that for every 10% more ongoing training provided, organizations gained about twice the improvement in their key value drivers. More specifically, after installing SAP Analytics Cloud, leaders gained about 50% improvement across KPIs while providing end-users about 49 hours of training compared with an average gain across the sample of about 22% with only about 38 hours of training.
"Organizations providing more end-user training saw 8–17 times more improvement in key performance measures." - IDC
When it comes to deployment of SAP Analytics Cloud, leaders gained about 50% improvement across KPIs while providing end-users about 49 hours of training compared with an average gain across the sample of about 22% with only about 38 hours of training.
Shorter deployment time
Implementation of enterprise-wide solutions can be a daunting task, typically involving several outside contributing factors like organization size, geographic location, the configuration of infrastructure, and existing data structure and location. This is why implementation teams must be sufficiently trained to be able to meet changing requirements and anticipate and overcome obstacles with confidence - all while reducing deployment time. In fact, according to IDC, in more than2,600 deployment projects, leaders had about 50 hours of initial training and those implementations took 15% less time to deploy than implementations conducted by laggards that had less than 20 hours of training.
Increased satisfaction with SAP software
It comes as no surprise that training has a direct impact on users' comfort level using the product. Training also impacts the organization's users' satisfaction with their SAP deployments. In fact, organizations with well-trained end users are 55% more likely to be highly satisfied, those with well-trained administrators are 83% more likely to be highly satisfied, and those with well-trained implementation teams are 84% more likely to be highly satisfied. Moreover, when users are well-trained and feel highly satisfied with the solution, they feel more comfortable and inclined to rapidly expand their use of other SAP solutions.
"When employees were well trained, organizations were 72% more likely to be satisfied with their SAP solutions."- IDC
Best Practice for Success
As organizations adopt SAP solutions to meet their digital transformation goals, achieve profitable growth, and drive customer success, they must focus on providing adequate training to their users on the right topics to get the maximum benefits out of their solution. This means training often, training all users, and monitoring performance regularly.
It may seem like a daunting task to most organizations, as SAP solutions like SAP Analytics Cloud are always changing. Many don't have the resources, knowledge, or bandwidth to ensure their teams are armed with the right knowledge.
To meet customers' evolving needs and requirements, Analysis Prime developed a comprehensive learning program, Analysis Prime University, to deliver persona-based, hands-on content to organizations of all sizes. Administrators, developers, and end-users alike can benefit from the latest content curated specifically for their role and delivered by product experts. Organizations may also extend their team without committing to a full-time resource by leveraging Experts-as-a-Service, a subscription-based support option that pairs organizations with a dedicated Expert. Via this partnership, the assigned Expert helps organizations stay up to date on the latest SAC updates and best practices, proactively resolve issues before escalation, and steer the team towards achieving optimal efficiency with confidence.
If you’re ready to maximize your SAP investment, it may be time to consider a future-proof training strategy that empowers all of your users to act with confidence from implementation and beyond.
Want to learn more about how your organization can benefit from training? Download this SAP-sponsored IDC whitepaper on the Transformative Impact of Training on Business Value of Software.
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