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Knowing the rules Companies who try to price the real value of training get at least one common result: It's valuable. For Peter Matteoni, IT training and managing a data warehouse go together. The IT senior project lead specialist for 3M Corp.'s Teradata-based Global Enterprise Data Warehouse believes that staying on top of technology development and deepening the skill level of his extract, transform and load (ETL) staff are essential. "If data is king, then training within the data warehouse environment is the key that will unleash the power to bring a competitive advantage in a global market," he says.
The difficulty in proving ROI doesn't mean companies won't pay for training, though. That's because corporate leaders such as Matteoni look at it as critical need, especially with the changing role of IT. "I don't think pure technical skills are enough to survive in this very competitive industry," Matteoni says. "The very best IT resources will be those who have a strong understanding of the business along with a strong understanding of the technology and can lead, drive and deliver solutions." Like many data warehousing managers, Matteoni knows that a college degree doesn't mean much if companies and employees aren't committed to ongoing training, whether in formal classes and certification programs or as part of a less formal "skills-based" instruction that matches students and mentors in real-world situations. No matter what the form, successful BI and data warehousing activities have training at their core. "I know that the training that my staff has taken has ensured that the (data warehouse) environment is being managed effectively and efficiently and has solved many of the most complex business questions," Matteoni, a Teradata Certified Master, explains. "This training has also made these people more valuable to 3M because they can apply what they learn to other challenges and problems faced every day in IT and the business. The problem I face is putting a quantifiable measurement on the investment." Going the distance Part of the problem of measuring ROI is that the hoped-for benefits of training—increased efficiency and enhanced innovation—are themselves hard to measure. Nevertheless, corporate America and the training industry have a wealth of related statistics and metrics that empirically show the important role training provides. According to Framingham, Mass.-based market researcher IDC, training will shake off the doldrums of the recent past and show strong growth over the next three years. For example, the U.S. corporate e-learning market could hit $10.6 billion by 2007, riding on the strength of new and improved Web-based technologies, according to Michael Brennan, program manager for corporate learning and performance research. Among the hottest training topics, data modeling and enhancing SQL programming skills top the list, according to Teradata Education Network Program Manager Elise Zob. An expansion of IT jobs over the next 12 months will partially fuel the push to learn about these and other topics. Robert Half Technology, the Menlo Park, Calif.-based search firm, surveyed CIOs who report that they expect a net hiring gain of 9% in the second quarter of this year, the largest increase since 2002. The company identifies database management as one of the biggest IT growth areas as large corporations seek to leverage customer data for competitive gain and open up new markets. The most-requested job titles include database developer, administrator and data warehouse manager, according to the recruiting firm. Accordingly, employers are using significant salaries to attract these people. Key business intelligence (BI) positions, such as data architects and data warehouse managers, top out at about $105,000 a year, making them some of the most lucrative IT industry jobs. A recent Certification Magazine survey shows similar salary strength for graduates of IT certification programs. The magazine concluded that certification could boost salaries by an average of 15% for IT professionals. Average certificate training and testing costs total about $2,700, the magazine reports. Half of all certification graduates paid their own certification expenses. Employers reimbursed the other half of graduates. Among the certification graduates who received promotions, two-thirds credited their new certificate for playing a major role in their step forward. Employees may be more skilled and attractive to employers, thanks to training, but how does a company know whether it will be rewarded for training an existing employee compared with hiring someone from the outside? Trying to answer this question in the late 1990s, Lockheed Martin compared the costs of significant IT worker retraining with the expense of hiring a new person who has the desired skills. Although retraining costs ran as high as $12,000, recruitment expenses were even more significant, ranging from as low as $10,000 to as much as $50,000. Clearly, giving the right employees an opportunity to grow can be more economical than starting from scratch. Nevertheless, training can still be a hard sell if financial managers view it as a difficult-to-quantify expense. William Vanderbilt, director of the technology learning group for the IT trade association CompTIA in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., offers its members a calculation tool that helps them evaluate the financial benefits of training based on the association's studies. "The tool offers a battery of questions that walks companies through (considerations) to show them what results they might expect," Vanderbilt says. When making these calculations, Vanderbilt advises companies to look at training not as an isolated event, but as an ongoing process that shouldn't rely exclusively on bottom-line accounting to measure training ROI. Instead, employers should look at better-trained workers' overall impact. Important factors include increased sales, decreased expenses and higher employee loyalty. "When organizations help fund the training of employees, those employees become very loyal. More often than not, they don't leave the organization. Instead, they may change positions and go to a higher level where they can contribute more strategically," Vanderbilt says. By contrast, people who pay their way for advanced training typically have already decided to change jobs. Ruling the (real) world How can employers make sure they're sending their staff to the right training programs? "It's beneficial to understand who's teaching," says Heather Burnley, senior consultant with Knightsbridge Solutions, Inc., an IT consulting firm headquartered in Chicago. "Look for data warehousing courses taught by leaders in the industry. That brings a lot of hands-on experience about projects they've worked on into the discussion. When the class takes a break, you can walk up to the instructor and talk about a specific problem you're having." 3M's Matteoni also warns that emphasizing pure technology instruction can be a danger when it comes to BI. "Data warehousing is more about the business than it is about the technology," he believes. "It's about using technology to capture data and turn data into useful information that helps enable the business to make better-informed decisions." Matteoni calls technology training the easiest to acquire, in part because it's so readily available from outlets such as the Teradata Education Network (see "Hang TEN," left). "The technical training is the key to ensuring the data warehouse is being managed effectively and efficiently for capacity and performance," he explains. "Technical training is knowing how to exploit the technology that helps enable business growth in the cheapest, fastest and best way possible. I think it is important to have a good handle on as much of the technology as possible. For example, knowing and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the tools the client uses to access the data warehouse will only give the designers more input into developing a solution that will bring the greatest value to the business." But knowledge should be balanced with a thorough understanding of the employer's business, which at 3M is complicated by the fact that it operates in more than 60 countries and sells thousands of different products. "Learning the business takes time and experience. It involves working side-by-side with the business (managers) to understand what they need before you formulate an IT solution," Matteoni says. BI specialists at 3M have tapped Web-based and classroom training from Teradata, as well as from outside firms and internal peer training programs. Matteoni has also brought in representatives from the business community to teach his team about specific business processes and functions. "Data warehousing needs to be about the business. The more the technical people know about the business the better the technical solution," he reasons. 3M's Matteoni has some advice for data warehousing managers and their staff when they evaluate training programs. "If the focus is on training and not the value that it can bring to the business, the training will be very expensive and very time- consuming and not bring any direct or indirect value," he believes. "I, like other leaders at one time or another, will face the question of whether training will help 3M grow and remain competitive. When I compare the cost of training that is available against the value the data warehouse brings to the business, it's a no-brainer—invest in training." T
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