Training Industry Magazine - July/August 2018 - 31

creation of a comprehensive long-term
training plan based on these forecasted
volumes. Lastly, transferring this forecast
into your provisional budget will allow
you to create a budget truly in line
with your learning and development
(L&D) strategy.
Prioritize training investments: This
entails consolidating complete training
costs, including both variable costs
such as catering and flights and fixed
costs such as venues and instructor
fees. A clear picture of costs will allow
you to identify the highest return on
investments and select only the most
strategic training sessions. Lastly,
simulating different budget scenarios
will help you in making an optimal
investment decision.

BEST PRACTICES FOR EFFICIENT ILT MANAGEMENT
* Create a training plan and monitor progress: Use precise forecasts of
training volume and costs to plan long-term and track KPI improvement.
* Maximize resources: Have a clear repository of all resources and keep track of
occupancy rates to optimize session efficiency.
* Rationalize logistics: Plan steps that must happen before, during and after
each training session, assign responsibilities and track task completion.
* Track costs: Consolidate accurate data for budget optimization by tracking
investments across different business units, countries and currencies.
* Improve collaboration and data-sharing: Centralize data and encourage
collaborative tools to ensure that logistics, scheduling and financial processes
integrate seamlessly.

2. OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE
After having decided on an optimal
training plan and budget in line with
your L&D strategy, the next step is
operational excellence, which means
managing ILT in the most efficient and
flexible way to reduce costs (see Sidebar
2 for practical tips).
Streamline logistics and administration: Two distinct capabilities are
needed to improve efficiency. First,
logistics capabilities such as instructor
and resources curation, flexible course
and resource scheduling, as well
as occupancy rate monitoring and
optimization. This can be done for
example through enterprise resource
planning
systems.
Secondly,
an
administrative capability that includes,
for example, automated registrations
and waitlists, electronic document
management, and internal and external
communication tools.
Optimize budgets: Tracking and
reducing training costs in real-time is
probably one of the most difficult hurdles
in classroom training management. It
can entail anything from precise cost-

computations, including amortization
of fixed assets, invoice management and
currency-consolidation. Tracking costs in
real-time then feeds into a higher-level

BUDGET OPTIMIZATION
IS THE #1 CHALLENGE
WHEN MANAGING ILT.

monitoring of the remaining budget,
which can be benchmarked against
your initial plan. This should ideally be
done with custom indicators reflecting
your priorities.

key performance indicators (KPIs) and
reports, enabled by the consolidation
created through operational excellence.
Second, identify weaknesses and
opportunities by benchmarking actual
versus planned metrics. And lastly, make
clear-sighted decisions based on your
initial strategy and track improvements.
For years, we've been driving innovation
in learner experience. This makes sense
in online learning, whose main strengths
are cost and scalability but suffers from
inferior engagement. Innovations in the
classroom have been timid and mostly
focused on learner experience. But this
is not the most pressing fix. It's time to
address the classroom's true Achille's
heel, reduce costs, improve back-office
efficiency, and bring it into the future.

3. MONITORING
Frequent reporting is key to make
sure that your teams can remain lean
in responding to falling performance,
sudden change in training volumes,
rising costs, or other unexpected
challenges. This is a three-step process.
First, access real-time shared data,

Stephan Pineau is CEO at Training Orchestra,
a leader in training resource management
system that provides an integrated, full web
solution dedicated to the entire training
ecosystem. Email Stephan.

T R A I N I N G I N DUSTR Y MA GAZ INE - TRAINING TOOLBOX 20 18 I WWW. T RAI NINGINDU S T RY . C OM/ MAGAZ I NE

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Training Industry Magazine - July/August 2018