At the annual company and sales kick-off meetings employees will learn about leadership’s vision for change.  Everyone will be informed about new products, new solutions, new service offerings, enhanced productivity, all of which targeted at improving their bottom line.  Who is accountable for producing?  People.

Organizations are then met with the challenge of executing business strategy at warp speed.  The whirlwind takes over all the while leaders need to determine if the right players are at the right place at the right time.  If they are not READY then how can they produce at levels preached at the kickoff event?

This is where strategic workforce planning plays critical role in supporting change.  Mollie Lombardi and Justin Bourke define workforce planning as “the systematic approach of aligning business strategy, human capital strategy, and budgets in order to ensure that talent with the right skills and competencies are in place to support anticipated and unanticipated future business scenarios…” (Strategic Workforce Planning – Winning Scenarios for Uncertain Times, Aberdeen).

In our world at WrightRobbins, we scale this process to fit specific change initiatives.  For example, we have one client that is launching major software products that will have a profound impact in the market.  Our client has high expectations for getting these products adopted quickly.  One of WrightRobbins’s roles is to help our client understand current capacity and capability to execute their sales strategy.   First step is to determine readiness through the following workforce planning process:

• Analyze current sales & delivery capacity
• Derive workforce demand
• Identify capability gaps
• Develop prescriptive readiness plans
• Measure progress & performance

Clients often struggle with capturing current capacity and forecasting demand based on business objectives such as revenue attainment.  Over the years we developed a method for forecasting skill supply & demand for specific job roles including sales, technical pre-sales, implementers, and developers.  All of which are typical job functions in technology and professional service organizations.

The resulting skill gap analysis provides valuable business intelligence as to organizational readiness.  Leadership is enabled to maximize investment when they understand build, buy or acquisition needs.   The end result is to ensure key sales & delivery teams are READY to execute.   Prescriptive readiness plans help get the right people with the right skills at the right time.   Without it, leadership’s vision will not become a reality.

For information on how WrightRobbins can make sure your sales and delivery channels are ready for the cloud and how we can keep your team ever-ready (just like the cloud), give us a call or send us an email.

1. On-demand Self-service: Instead of emailing a request to IT, we can self-serve information and computing resources.
2. Broad Network Access: Instead of accessing information via our laptop alone, we can use our phones, tablets, workstation: any device from any location.
3. Resource Pooling: Instead of dedicated computer resources, people across divisions and silos can share the bandwidth, servers and information.
4. Rapid Elasticity: Instead of fixed resources, resources can grow—and shrink–dynamically as needs shift.
5. Measured Service: Instead of guessing what people are working on, you can measure their time, and resource usage.

We call these the five pillars of cloud computing and when it comes to developing your technology learning strategy, they’re a big deal. Because the cloud is a disruptive technology, it has caused disruption to organizations’ workforces and how they adapt to it. Compounding this is the fact that for the first time in US history, we now have four different generations in the workplace with vastly different learning styles—each with different world views, expectations, and comfort levels with technology.

So while cloud computing can indeed be beneficial, it also carries ramifications that will impact your learning and readiness strategies:

1. Accessibility: Your learning program must be accessible from all kinds of devices, without barriers such as log-ins or sacrificing security. Younger employees are used to accessing information from anywhere, anytime, without hassle.
2. Flexibility: Your learning program must be flexible. Employees of all generations want appropriate training, delivered in the right way, at the right time for their needs. Sometimes a virtual instructor is what’s needed; other times it’s self-paced webinars; and even good old in-class face-to-face training has its place. Millennials and GenXers both have shorter attention spans, and are used to looking up exactly what they need to know, just when they need it making just-in-time training strategies a must.
3. Variety: Your learning strategy has to provide access to all kinds of information—role-based or siloed information is so last century! Learners want two-way dialog and discussion, in addition to content.
4. Collaborative: Your learning strategy has to be collaborative. GenXers and Millennials want and expect collaboration, teamwork and feedback, through such varied channels as texting, discussion forums, and live chat. Yet the Boomers in your organization are less enamored of technology and prefer face-to-face collaboration.
5. Measureable: Your learning strategy has to measure results—both of your training program and of your individuals. Cloud systems can meter and report when, what and for how long a person is using a computer resource, which can help you determine if they have learned the material and if the material is compelling.

Bottom line, your learning program must demonstrate ROI. If you apply your training resources appropriately to the new Cloud environment, and across generational expectations, how much more will you sell, how much more productive will your people be, how much can you shrink training costs?

To learn more about how a Cloud-appropriate training strategy can help your company drive more revenue, we’re offering a free one-hour consultation with a WrightRobbins learning architect. During that session, we’ll talk about how to transform your training strategy to align with your cloud environment and/or the overall makeup of your workforce. Contact us to get started.

So, what is Cloud Computing? Cloud computing is based on a set of technologies and infrastructure that provides computing, data access, software and storage services to computers and other devices on a utility basis over a network, most typically the internet. Cloud computing allows IT an easy way to add capabilities, services, and capacity “on the fly” without investing in new infrastructure and traditional on-premises software licensing. This might explain why there is so much interest in the Cloud of late…

Cloud computing can be broken down into three tiers, including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). The three tiers can be segmented as follows:

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides the infrastructure as a fully outsourced service. IaaS providers manage the physical servers, disk storage, networking, and they provision virtualized instances to the cloud consumer. The cloud consumer in turn owns, and can configure, the virtual image as they see fit. IaaS providers allow business to purchase capacity on a “pay as you go” model allowing them to defer costly capital expenses.
• Platform as a Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a cloud-based computing platform. Consumers can design, build, and deploy cloud applications with the tools supported by the provider without having to manage the underlying infrastructure (OS, Servers, Storage, Network). PaaS also provides application infrastructure services, including computation, structured data persistence, and connectivity as part of the overall platform.
• Software as a Service (SaaS) is a model by which software applications, hosted by a vendor, are delivered over the internet to a consumer’s desktop or a variety of other devices. The customer doesn’t have to manage any of the underlying cloud infrastructure, they just attend to the application configuration settings.

Which flavor you choose depends on the specifics of your business case, but for building and scaling cloud-based applications, the right choice is PaaS. Microsoft’s PaaS offering, the Windows Azure platform, provides developers with tools to build and deploy applications on a pay-per-use basis. The platform can be used to build new cloud based applications or enhance existing applications with cloud based components, and it is relevant across a variety of scenarios. The platform is supported at its core by geographically distributed datacenters, hardware nodes, and the azure fabric.

Next up, Windows Azure and the competition….

These highly skilled team members not only support the overall success of an organization, but they can also have an infectious impact on accelerating the success of their hiring managers, supervisors, team leads, project managers and other colleagues. This can lead to positive, yet sometimes unexpected, improvements in overall team dynamics within the workplace.

Ironically, in contrast to the high values placed on human capital, companies don’t often plan to grow this valuable asset. Over the course of my 20-year career as a CTO and architect in the field of adult technical learning, I’ve often found it odd that so many organizations treat the ongoing development of their team members as an afterthought. They default to the same old tired training approaches, including fire hose blasts of “just-in-time” training courses and risky “sink-or-swim” on-the-job experiences. It doesn’t occur to these business leaders to make a proactive investment in the career development strategy for their employees.

Of course, with the uncertain economic times of today, some organizations may argue that they cannot support the perceived time and costs involved in delivering a proactive employee skills development program. However, I’d counter this notion; without such a program in place, it’s been my experience that employees lose motivation to achieve excellence in their work, and they sink to a level of mediocre or, in some cases, inferior performance. This has a direct cost on the bottom line.

Truly, some of the largest “hidden” cost pockets in many organizations are the time and expense involved with hiring new employees and terminating underperformers. A program that coaches employees through career development milestones in a positive way is typically very small in comparison to the true costs of hiring, firing, and turnover. In many cases, the cost for an effective training and development program can be less, or at least on-par with, an organization’s existing budget for less-effective, more traditional training methods. In addition, when an organization conducts a thorough investigation of these true employment costs, and links a career development program to the reduction of these costs and the benefits of improved, measurable performance, they can realize a positive return within a very short timeframe to easily justify this investment in their employees.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll provide guidance on what we at WrightRobbins have experienced as the “required” components for an effective career development program. I’ll also expand on how you can leverage those components as part of a purposeful program to motivate and empower employees. I will also show you how to wisely invest in gaining a positive return on one of the strongest growth assets within your organization: your skilled human capital. Through this guidance, which we at WR call Disruptive Learning, you’ll learn tips and techniques that you can apply to your own organization, ideas that can safely and systematically challenge your team to attain achievable excellence in their work, and disrupt a less desirable path on which your employees may already be heading.

1.  Transitioning from traditional delivery models

2.  Re-skilling workforce to move up the stack

3.  Overcoming current cloud concerns (i.e. security, availability and loss of control)

4.  Overcoming perceived vendor lock-in

Challenge number one– transitioning from traditional delivery models—is of primary concern to System Integrators and has the potential to change the entire eco-system in which they currently live.

Cloud Computing, by nature, threatens the very fabric of the mid-large System Integrator delivery model. Traditionally, every 3-5 years enterprise customers have invested in:

• The latest versions of Servers
• Hypervisors and Management Technologies
• New infrastructure (storage, etc.).

But after implementing a Private Cloud, how does a System Integrator continue to generate revenue?

One of the primary goals with a Private Cloud is an abstraction of the underlying hardware. This requires that the customer have a standardized platform for compute and storage. But, how can you take a customer from 0 to Cloud in one cycle?

Moving from a standard data center to the cloud is a process, not a project. This requires a commitment from both the System Integrator and the Enterprise Customer and could take anywhere from 6 months to 3 years depending on the sophistication of the customer’s IT infrastructure and skillset.

In this process, System Integrators must be very diligent and thorough in the assessment of the environment, cataloging not only the physical infrastructure and application workloads, but also the variables of industry, management, administration and control of the workloads. Implementing a Private Cloud has a high CapEx upfront and needs a good plan to show the ROI through OpEx reductions.

A clear understanding of goals around cost, agility, security and compliance and compatibility of LOB applications becomes critical. Not to mention the use of Public Clouds, Software as a Service, Platform as a Service, and how they are to be integrated.  And in my experience, outside of the Global SI companies, very few System Integrators have the ability to deliver all these aspects of the Private Cloud.

The challenge posed is one of resource development and readiness, causing System Integrators to ask themselves:

• Do I have partners in Storage and Compute that have ‘Cloud Ready’ Hardware?
• Do I have the ability to bring in resources on remediating application compatibility?
• Does my organization have the expertise in IT Governance as it relates to Cloud Computing?
• Do I need to create alliances with other strategic partners so that I can deliver the results that the Private Cloud offers?”

System Integrators need to be thinking more critically about how they address the transition from traditional delivery models and build their new eco-system to grow their readiness, their skills and ultimately, their revenue.  Next up, challenge #2: Re-skilling workforce to move up the stack.

Customers of SIs are evaluating if it makes sense to port data and applications up to the cloud and looking at cost, security, and compliance considerations. With Windows Azure in an incubation phase, it’s unlikely that small, mid, and enterprise level organizations have the internal capacity to fully prepare for such a move. Those organizations are looking to SI partners to help plan and evaluate the various cloud offerings.

Much like the early days of virtualization when organizations were looking to utilize those technologies in a sandbox or on a small scale, PaaS is at a similar juncture. To be on the front-side of this opportunity, Systems Integrators require a highly trained staff of Practice Managers, Solutions Architects, Developers and Implementers to assist customers in planning and deploying cloud technologies.

Microsoft understands the huge need to provide readiness and enablement to cloud system integrators in the form of live events and online learning to help prepare consultants to succeed in the PaaS arena. The Microsoft Enterprise & Partner Group turned to WrightRobbins, to help Sogeti USA develop and carry out a comprehensive readiness plan which combined both free partner resources and fee-based training, which Sogeti chose to supplement with a Microsoft E-Learning subscription.

Six months into the 18-month readiness plan, 475 of Sogeti USA’s Microsoft consultants received training, and have expressed strong satisfaction with the readiness program. Sogeti was able to:

• Save on training costs
• Protect billable hours
• Gain strategic insight into workforce capacity
• Empower employees with the right skills

WrightRobbins is not just an IT Technology consultancy company, we are an IT Technology consultant group that helps provide relevant, individualized, and targeted IT learning programs designed to empower thought leadership and innovation for the world’s largest technology providers.  Learn more about WrightRobbins and Sogetti USA (case study).

Regardless of a technology’s relative simplicity or complexity, the management of technology and content seem to take markedly different paths over time (fig 1). 

Often, ramp-up for the technology tends to be very steep in the beginning but slowly levels off over time as the system matures and stabilizes. Whereas the content produced in the collaborative system starts out very simple, but becomes much more complex to manage over time.

In contrast, when deciding to implement a platform such as SharePoint, intense scrutiny often goes into the identification, recruitment and management of the team bringing the technology on-line. Unfortunately, relatively little thought or resources are given to the team required to plan and manage the resulting content.

So in these staffing trade-offs, businesses must ask themselves:

• What skills does our SharePoint team need?
• How can they gain these skills during a time where our technologies are rapidly changing?
• What does short term SharePoint technology success look like?
• What does long term success in a collaborative environment look like?

Check back for future blogs where we tackle solutions to these real and growing IT challenges.

While WrightRobbins’ core competency has always focused on learning, our journey to our disruptive learning approach is worth sharing. The seeds were planted in the 1990’s, when we started to see a huge and growing demand for technology professionals. To address this need, WrightRobbins started designing strategies our clients could use to assess employees’ applicable skills for IT jobs, and then engage and train these employees effectively through the right learning resources.

Through our work on these projects, we found our secret recipe, our unique techniques that enable us to use this approach to disrupt the “same old way” of doing training and readiness. Instead, our approach helps our clients:

• Quickly respond to rapid and major changes in the market
• Align training with business goals
• Target training at individual needs, learning styles, and schedules
• Drive rapid technology adoption and promote innovation
• Measure results and refine training programs to maximize their training dollars

Our approach to readiness has helped the world’s leading technology companies reach product launch goals by using the right learning solutions to create product awareness and deep target customer engagement strategies. In recent years, we’ve also seen global technology firms and enterprise organizations face increasing pressure to focus on ROI around their learning spend, whether they are building global technology practice teams or deploying the latest technology solutions available. These are the types of challenges that traditional training solutions are not readily equipped to solve, but WrightRobbins disruptive approach can address with success.

The fastest way to get your workforce—or your channel—up to speed is through the use of learning plans that are targeted, individualized, engaging, and focused on driving toward business goals. See how 24 Microsoft Enterprise Technology Partners saved up to 75% over traditional instructor-led training deliveries, and they were able to bring new solutions to market more quickly over an 18 month period.

Microsoft has identified  six advanced workloads that, along with their associated business drivers, results in the following new skills that may be needed in an IT team supporting SharePoint:

• Insights (or business intelligence).  Skills in data management, report design and data analysis or Content  (also known as ECM) require a deep knowledge of records management processes, along with an appreciation of regulatory requirements.
• Sites workload (using SharePoint as an externally facing web site) skills like advanced html design (if the site is a consumer facing information site), or Line of Business user authentication skills (if SharePoint is being used as a supply chain management extranet site).
• Communities (building online communities within SharePoint) skills. There are some gaps in the toolset delivered by SharePoint that can lead to the need for 3rd party tools.  For instance, the lack of a micro-blogging (e.g. Twitter) capability in SharePoint  which, if needed for business, requires the integration of tools from 3rd party vendors like Newsgator or Neudesic.  Integration of these tools calls for advanced developer skills

WrightRobbins has helped IT leaders such as Microsoft, Intel, HP, Dell and Accenture accelerate and grow their organizations knowledge on the latest technologies. Our methodology helps organizations restructure their learning strategies to drive technology adoption, expand sales opportunities and innovate. In one hour, we can show you how to get more from your IT training spend & maximize your existing team capabilities. Click here.

Who am I you might ask? I am Heath Madison, a Learning Architect for Wright Robbins, and I have been working through these communication transitions since 1993. I have extended the usefulness of Executone, Avaya, Nortel, or Panasonic PBX’s with unified communications (UC) solutions from Cisco and Microsoft for clients ranging from large enterprises to small businesses. I’ve also deployed Microsoft UC solutions in a “greenfield” for companies who wanted a clean break from their legacy environments. More often than not, the solutions I architected and implemented were somewhere in between the two.

Transitioning traditional voice capabilities to a software-based solution can be a big change. Obviously, with every change, there is an important need to train our workforce on the usage of these new tools and processes. In a change like this, the scope of this training reaches across not only the people who plan, design, implement, and manage these systems, but the other 95% of the people impacted by these systems — the end-users.

As one who worked as a voice administrator in a past life, I can personally attest to the complete shift in the way a voice admin performs the tasks associated with their job. The days of green screen management of users, extensions, voicemail, and so on are over. No longer does a voice administrator have to touch multiple interfaces to provision a user across internal systems. A change to a user’s computer login can also impact their login for their “phone”. A change in their email address can also affect the way a user receives a phone call. This in itself can cause a level of apprehension with an administrator. But with proper preparation, these new tools can simplify daily tasks while empowering our users to be more productive.

Speaking of users, what does this change mean for them? Well, this level of integration across information systems can greatly simplify the way they work. As the name implies, software-powered voice is a software-based solution for performing voice related tasks. Not only does it allow for the same functionality we all know and love, like the ability to pick up the phone and call someone, the newfound flexibility allows for seamless integration with desktop productivity applications. The days of having to look at an email while finding a phone number while dialing a phone are over. A phone call is now a simple click away.

Whether an administrator or an end-user, these changes will require a bit of training to work as designed. Much like learning to drive a car with an automatic transmission when you learned to drive on a stick shift, the fundamentals haven’t changed, just the way you shift the gears.