Content area
Full Text
SG, a systems integrator in Houston, began delivering client/server solutions in 1987. By 1989, it had added a training arm to its client/server team. By then, the company had learned what many client/server integrators are learning: Selling client/server systems without training is like giving customers fast cars without teaching them how to drive.
"We quickly realized that even the greatest client/server systems on earth are useless if folks aren't ready to build and use them," says Joan Reynolds, director of education at BSG. "And people, both IS people and end users, are not ready."
The move to client/server training is as inevitable as the move to client/server. "Every integrator I know has moved to add client/server," says Dan Spiner, managing director of Progressive Strategies, a market research firm in New York. "Not long after that they go to offering training, because the need for it is so obvious."
Systems integrators and VARs have discovered that training contributes as much to customer satisfaction as technical excellence. "The customer who shortchanges himself on training ends up being dissatisfied with the application," says Karl Steinle, president of Concepts Dynamic Inc. (CDI), a VAR in Schaumburg, Ill. "Not getting training is like getting a car without a key."
While making the move into client/server training presents a good opportunity to add value, the challenge is creating a new type of training program and implementing it in a way that is profitable for you and cost-efficient for your clients.
In the mainframe and minicomputer era, vendors provided training. Training by vendors isn't appropriate in client/server, however, because most vendors train only on their products, and client/server systems are amalgams of many vendors' products. This has left a gap to be filled. "There is a serious deficiency of multivendor education," says Steve Douty, general manager of ETI International, a publisher of client/server courseware in Sunnyvale, Calif.
Who better to fill that gap than the systems developer? "The integrator who puts together the customized, multivendor client/server solution and most solutions are customized is the best one to create a customized training solution," says Charles Murray, vice president of marketing/sales at Information Technologists Inc., a Conshohocken, Pa., systems integrator that offers client/server training.
Customizing training could be a profit drain for vendors,...