Having converted the stakeholders and managers, we now need to convince the end-user community of the benefits of the training programme and the system in general. Often the communications strategy will be defined by corporate communications teams or a separate team contracted for the project. It is essential that the training approach and strategy is fed into this stream as early as possible. It is also essential to check that comms are being disseminated effectively, right down to the training audience.

All too often this critical part of the process is left for senior managers to cascade down, which does not always reach the desired audience.

Having a training team involved in the communications strategy and execution is highly beneficial, not only to keep the message consistent but also to contextualise and clarify where needed throughout the training delivery. In the diagram below we have identified what we believe are the key communications elements.

The second part of engaging users is making the training offering attractive. What this means in real terms will very much depend upon the audience for a particular strand of the training. For example, Finance teams with existing ERP experience may well require a lighter touch than, say, staff who have not used an ERP system before. Presenting either of these groups with a training programme that doesn’t match their expectations or meet their perceived requirements will make engagement harder to achieve, which will, in turn, affect the effectiveness of the programme. In previous sections, we looked at “Kerb Appeal” and the bell curve distributions of training needs. Both of these factors feed into this area of activity.

Not only do we have to engage the system’s users, but we also need to provide layers of training that support personal confidence.