NetSuite is one of the leading providers of a number of SaaS solutions intended to solve all kinds of otherwise daunting business obstacles. The SaaS revolution was a special kind of climactic change in technological attitude. Unlike other new open doors in computing, where big companies move in and dominate, SaaS didn’t go that direction. Oh, big companies definitely threw their hats into the ring, but SaaS is dominated mostly by new players. Startups. NetSuite is an example of this. The problem is that this software is so complex and powerful, NetSuite training is a challenge.
This isn’t NetSuite’s fault. Their software’s design is very solid and very learnable, but they have such a vast array of powerful designs with so many features that it does take quite a bit of training to really master this software. The real trouble with this is, NetSuite training, if handled in a traditional manner, is going to be time consuming and costly, because it’s a lot to learn, despite not being difficult to learn.
Well, if you’re a big company and you have the time to do this traditional training and are an adherent to such archaic lines of thought, then absolutely more power to you, but I think you’re better off thinking outside the box like so many companies are for technical training these days.
You see, there’s a new kind of technology that’s fairly recently come around, called onboard software, and it’s completely changing the way we look at self service, training and analytics capture among other things.
What is this? Well, the leading design in this field, WalkMe, was created with training in mind originally. Basically, it’s a framework that can integrate with other web designs and systems (such as SaaS, websites and the like). Being web-powered itself, it basically just becomes part of the overall structure. From here, it can see the state of form elements, and interact with all of this.
Now, using some very easy-to-use point and click logic, it can be instructed, based on a number of conditions it gets from perceiving user activity and its environment via the web design in which it lives, to respond and prompt the user. It can set the focus of controls, lock them, auto-fill fields, or pop up messages to the user with contextual instructions.
The idea behind this is basically like having an expert in something like NetSuite sitting next to the user, talking them through every step, pointing out each form element at a time and going “now go here, and enter this information” etc. Having an actual human being doing that would be expensive and impractical, but with something like WalkMe, which is smart enough to fill the shoes of one on one walkthroughs like this, it’s now a practical training method.
When it comes to something like NetSuite training, this is a big deal, because not only does it save a lot of money on training and eliminate the tedium of traditional training, but it enhances productivity. Learning by doing, which is what WalkMe is all about enabling, means that while the users are learning to use NetSuite, they’re performing real work within NetSuite as well.