Cookie Consent by Free Privacy Policy website

Constant Training

May 15th, 2013 - Posted by Ben Thomson, Director of Operations

8

 

certificate
image: www.freeimages.co.uk

 

A couple of weeks ago we brought in a company to train our development team for a few days. That might sound very strange to a lot of the people reading this. Surely a team of developers must know their stuff if they have been developing Web to Print software for so long. Well that is actually the problem, when you give your day to day tasks so much attention it is very difficult to stay abreast of all the things that have happened in your development language of choice and the saying ‘you can’t see the wood for the trees’ seems very apt. In the development world this can become a problem that stifles innovation and as a company that prides itself in doing things according to best practice we decided to do something about it.

First we did a quick desktop study of what was new in the development language that we use, then we narrowed it down to a list of key points that we wanted to be covered, elements that would be of use over the coming year or so. There is no point in looking too far ahead, what is new today might be moribund in just a few years time. We created our own training course and sent it out to a few companies who are experts in what we wanted to learn. A standard course would have been fine if it was for new developers, but in our case it had to be bespoke, we had goals that we needed to achieve in the days we had available for training and no off-the-shelf course met our requirements.

Now you might be thinking what this has to do with Web to Print? Well I have a question, how much time have you set aside for your training in Web to Print strategy? Of course when you sign up with a Web to Print solution provider, such as RedTie, there will be some initial training which will mostly cover how to use the software. Is that enough though? Have you allowed for ongoing training or do you need something more bespoke, such as how to sell Web to Print or how to identify the right type of customer? Basically you need to look at your weak points and establish what you need to do to accomplish your plan (do you need training in how to develop a plan?) If you are honest with yourself you will be able to estimate the number of days needed for each person and when they will be needed. The next step is to ask your Web to Print solution provider (or potential provider) for help. If they know their stuff they will be able to fulfill a lot of your training requirements themselves and should definitely be able to suggest other experts if you need something in the areas they do not cover.

RedTie offers a number of training and consultancy services including:

  • Our free online software academy

  • Free Web to Print sales training seminars – Contact us for the next one in your area.

  • Free Web to Print webinars covering a variety of topics – Contact us for updates on the next webinars.

  • Group software refresher course.

  • Technical training days

  • Training sales teams about how to sell Web to Print and solutions selling techniques

  • Multi day consultancy packages cover the whole process from identifying suitable new customers and sectors to getting them to use the system and all the steps in between.

Of course the best thing about all of this in house expertise is that we can do any combination of the above (and more) in our bespoke training days! Feel free to contact us to find out more.

Now I am off to hang up my shiny new certificate for completing the course!