When introducing a new large scale ICT system it is important all those that will use the new system are identified, and that staff learn different functionality of the system to match their job and role requirements.
The first group of people that can be identified working at the Travel Agents are the operational staff such as the people who interact with the customers and take the bookings for the holidays. They would probably be the people within the organisation who will use the system the most. Many training methods will be unsuitable. External courses will be unsuitable as they will cover requirements not specific to this travel agent, it will be expensive to send all 30 members of staff from the travel agent and the travel agent will not be able to accommodate allocating days out of work for all 30 members of staff at once.
Face to face or instructor led training would be more suitable, as the trainer would be able to ask the employees at the travel agent questions to provide immediate help and feedback, and can be given by a specialist instructor at the travel agent. This method of training could be mixed with on the job training. As instructor based training can be expensive this would make the training more cost effective as it involves learning whilst at work. Trainees could spend time observing how to make a holiday booking and then have a go themselves. The training would be provided in a realistic setting, which is what the travel agents need. They need to know how to make a holiday booking.
On the job training which is carried out with a face to face training is task based training. This is suitable as the new system has been introduced for the travel agent to perform their job and do a task, therefore they need to learn how to make a holiday booking. The training is therefore more likely to take place in house, and the skills are very specific.
A second group that may need to be trained to use this new system is a tactical member of staff such as the Sales Manager. They may need to use the system to find out all the bookings in the last three months. They therefore do not need face-face, task based on the job training as they will not be taking customer bookings. A more suitable method to find out how to use the system to see all the bookings in the last three months might be one-one training. This is suitable because the amount of training is small, they do not need to know how to use the whole system, just need showing how to use a particular part of it. There is only one person who needs to be shown this so it doesn’t matter that only one person is being trained at a time. The manager will already have some skill level, so they can just stop and ask the person training them what to do, when they need to, so working at their own pace.
Finally, a Director, a Strategic member of staff, might want to extract a report on all the holidays to Spain. Again, the amount of training is small, he will already have some skills base, therefore a course, or face-face training is not needed. It would be not very cost effective and waste someone’s time. A suitable method would be to use a training manual which he could use to study only the parts necessary, which in this case is how to produce a report. He would quickly be able to refer to the appropriate section in his own time without disturbing somebody else.
Once the new ICT system has been introduced to the travel agents in order for them to take bookings a number of support options need to be in place.
As the organisation only has 30 employees, many of which won’t work at the same time, onsite support will not be needed. A cheaper alternative would be call out support. Support is needed as without the system the business can’t function and take holiday bookings. A call out support will make a technician available to go on site to the travel agent to provide support.