A critical issue that we have observed over the years has been the chasm between the skills of SA workers and the competencies that they need to use complex enterprise business applications to their full potential.

Many enterprise software packages – for example, CRM and ERP suites – are designed to match the skills of predominantly university-educated workers in Europe and the US. Yet many local companies introduce these business packages to their organisations without catering for the way their employees’ skills profiles differ from the profiles of the people the software was originally designed for.

How do we bridge this gap?

We believe that the adoption of innovative and flexible user training and adoption programmes will most effectively address this challenge. Such solutions cannot be academic, but must equip people with a hands-on understanding of how to use the technology to do their jobs efficiently and effectively.

An interesting and encouraging trend that we have picked up on, predicts that training firms and user organisations are going to adopt more dynamic approaches to training that blend classroom instruction, online learning, on the job performance support and mentoring to deliver value to their end users.

All in all, with the pace of business accelerating, we can expect to see training departments become more agile and innovative in an effort to keep up.