As Kostman sees it, the program has changed his entire concept of what a manager's responsibilities should be.
Teach Your Clients Well
For David Johnson, the change brought about by computer-based training has been on a more global level--literally and figuratively.
When Johnson joined the Chattanooga Group, Inc., his mission was to revive the company first, then morph it into a global player. His mandate: to expand the maker of heavy-duty rehabilitation machines into the European and South American markets by mid-1996. But the training that had given Chattanooga its place in the market was beginning to eat it alive. "We wanted to maintain our reputation as the 'education training company' but with fewer people," says Johnson.
Bringing all his multimedia experience to bear, Johnson began by convincing the company to lay out $50,000 for an ambitious technology lab to design CBT programs capable of taking over the training that the more expensive six-person in-house training staff had been doing for years. His logic was compelling: The programs would be portable and would have multilingual capabilities--both of which were necessary to serve overseas distributors. And they would allow Chattanooga to send out a single trainer to make house calls to customers' offices for the first time, which the company could easily charge for.
After reading back issues of multimedia magazines, conversing over the Internet, and testing about 50 programs, Johnson assembled a full-blown video-editing suite to produce custom training videos. The company equipped itself with an impressive arsenal of tools: two Pentium-based PCs; one Sigma Designs MPEG video-capture card and one Targa 2000 video-capture card for capturing full-motion videos and stills; a Yamaha CD cutter for making CDs; a Sony CBD 1000 computer-controlled tape deck for frame-by-frame editing; two tape decks for editing VHS tape; a Microtech 36-bit scanner for turning hard-copy images into digital format; a Sony camera for shooting videos; and Adobe's Premiere ($795; 800-492-3623) and Photoshop ($895), the first for video editing and the second for photodesign and production. The company also bought an authoring program called Authorware and a video-editing program called Director, both from Macromedia (both are included in the Authorware Interactive Studio, $1,999; 800-478-7211, www.macromedia.com).
To train people on the company's revamped Kin-Com machine--a $35,000-to-$55,000 piece of equipment that evaluates, exercises, and rehabilitates every muscle group in the body--Chattanooga put the machine's 200-page manual on disk using Microsoft PowerPoint, a $339 multimedia program (800-426-9400, www.microsoft.com). The training program uses a combination of text and still pictures and can be run directly on the Kin-Com machine, which is equipped with its own Pentium-based computer and 14-inch monitor. The company now sends a trainer to the customer's clinic to walk through the program--and charges $1,500 a day for the service.
By last fall, in line with its expansion plans, Chattanooga had a new network of 30 overseas dealers and their customers to train. So it translated the Kin-Com training program into Japanese, Spanish, and German. It also added interactive touch-screen technology and more digitized pictures. Now all a user has to do is touch the screen and instructions pop into view describing how to set up the equipment to work on injured knees, ankles, and so on.
The company is also using its computer lab to complete a more ambitious project: creating an interactive multimedia training CD. What was once a two-day training session covering basic setup and advanced therapy techniques will soon be run directly on the rehabilitation machines, allowing users to try out the techniques when it's convenient.
Thanks to cost-cutting, overseas expansion, and CBT, the Chattanooga Group has met Johnson's goals: it has reduced its training staff from six to one, and it recently moved into the black. Johnson's sighs are now of relief, given that he no longer has to watch production screech to a halt as manufacturing workers laboriously assemble and disassemble costly demo equipment. "We proved we could put the plan together," he says, "and save money in the bargain."
Different Strokes
Companies can choose from several approaches to CBT software:
Customized. Some companies hire outside consultants to design "courseware" just for their operation. Small businesses tend to shy away from this approach, however, because the cost often starts at about $100,000.
Authoring systems. These programs can be used to develop customized applications. At $3,000 to $5,000, they're a lot cheaper than the completely customized route but still pretty pricey. There's a big learning curve--about 200 hours of development time for every hour of actual training.
Prepackaged. There are perhaps 300 to 400 training programs on the market, some in CD-ROM, others in plain old disk form, costing $100 to $300. They're used for training people in everything from managing employees to better customer service. The good news is that their quality has improved dramatically in recent years; many programs include fancy graphics and sound.
Learn by doing. Also known as just-in-time training, this new breed of off-the-shelf software teaches students how to perform a job while they're doing it. For now, much of what's available involves technical material for programmers, but there's also some less-techie stuff for sale.
Anne Field is a freelance writer based in Pelham, N.Y.
