Places, Everyone!

In less than 18 months, Ernst & Young trained a cast of thousands , 24,000, to be exact , in 110 cities. And that's just the beginning.



Suzanne Kopplin gulped. Not long after class began, the harried computer technician supporting her training session abandoned her. "Here's our pager number," he said. A few moments later, Kopplin's unease deepened. The network crashed.



Her hurried call failed to summon the tech. So did her second page a few minutes later.

Without a network connection, Kopplin couldn't teach. By now, her 20 students were getting antsy. Many were busy tax consultants, with keen senses of time and money. Waiting to reestablish the network connection wasted both.



Kopplin, director of professional and organizational development for the tax services of Ernst & Young LLP, only outwardly kept her cool. This was no routine Lotus Notes class. The $9-billion audit, tax and consulting firm had just embarked on a giant global effort to create an online "knowledge" system that E&Y executives hoped would trounce competitors by better harnessing company smarts. Kopplin and hundreds of other trainers had to make it happen.



The challenge was considerable: Train 80,000 employees worldwide, starting with 24,000 in the United States. Each would need to learn to use new Dell desktops or laptops, Windows 95, Microsoft Office, Lotus Notes 4.0, Folio Views databases, new email, Internet browsers, online search and retrieval and the firm's 500 "knowledge bases." When training is completed later this year, the N.Y.-based firm will have invested an estimated $48 million in the U.S., $160 million worldwide, and 240,000 instruction days.



"Knowledge management" underlies a new business strategy designed to shake off years of lackluster performance. Since the mid-1980s, Ernst & Young had been an underachiever among "Big Six" accounting and professional services firms. Earnings were flat; global computer systems an unplanned patchwork. Meanwhile, Andersen Consulting, Price Waterhouse, EDS and other foes created strong technology infrastructures and grew rapidly.



In 1994, a blue-ribbon panel created by new chief executive Phil Laskawy decided on two tenets that shape E&Y today: First, competitive advantage lies in harnessing the firm's substantial but scattered global know-how. Second, every employee must learn the tools needed to access that knowledge.



Explains Laskawy: "The most important asset of any professional services organization is the collective thought leadership of its professionals. Yet most organizations do not have systematic approaches to collecting, updating, securing, advancing and sharing this knowledge."



Creating a worldwide knowledge management system, he said, would let the firm "leverage our size, make our best problem-solving experience reusable, accelerate the delivery of value to the marketplace, and emphasize the importance of team learning and experience sharing."



The new corporate focus on knowledge suddenly elevated technology training from "ugly step-child to a top priority," says Blaine Pardoe, director of technology education services. With the new directive, "Enabled By Technology, Powered By Knowledge," trainers? lives changed. To trainers fell the crucial job of quickly teaching workers about new Oracle and Lotus Notes systems and the knowledge they contained.



Strategy teams, led by Mike Powers, who heads U.S. professional and organizational development, and chief knowledge officer John Peetz, devised approaches for training workers on the new tools and "knowledge culture." To minimize financial impact, training could take no more than three months per division and two days per individual, and get funded mostly from a $2,000-per-employee annual training allocation.



"There was no way to do a national roll-out all at once," says Sandra Merchant, a professional and organizational development director charged with executing the training companywide. The team decided on a multi-pronged strategy: Roll out training in three waves to auditors, tax specialists, and consultants; combine off-the-shelf training materials with case studies relevant to each business unit; pursue a "train-the-trainer" approach, using executives from each business unit and contractors from Productivity Point International; and give business units leeway to decide the best ways to carry out the mission.



Training would be sequenced into three parts: a base level that would help trainees gain proficiency on key software; a middle level that would teach Lotus Notes and other "knowledge technologies"; and an advanced level focusing on specific knowledge bases and applications relevant to individual business units.



From the start, it was clear that training was too big and complex for any one group to handle alone. Plus, says Powers, Ernst & Young's highly matrixed culture demanded close cooperation between various training and business units, not to mention the 300-member professional development organizations, IT training, knowledge management and corporate IT support services. But it was up to individual trainers and small teams to make new directions come alive , and stick.



No Cookbook

As she waited impatiently for the tech's return, Kopplin mulled over the problem. Early in the effort, she and others discovered that one of the biggest challenges in training so many people so quickly lay in logistics , notably getting people signed up and acquiring the right systems, software and reliable network connections. With so many details, she knew things couldn't go smoothly every moment. Still, as her students became more edgy, so did she. Fortunately, in a few minutes the tech reappeared and brought the network connection back up. Later, Kopplin said, "The whole thing left a bad taste in people's mouths." She made a mental note to guarantee in-class tech support for future sessions. Another learning point.



In fact, Kopplin and others at Ernst & Young say such mega-training provided constant (and sometimes painful) lessons to the trainers themselves. And they say that the multi-pronged strategy gave them an opportunity to share knowledge and build on the inventions of earlier groups. The first wave of the firm-wide training effort, in the 10,000-member audit business, yielded some valuable materials and best practices for the Tax professionals. For example, Kopplin's team found they could adapt many off-the-shelf materials for teaching Windows 95 that Merchant and a dozen instructional developers had already customized for the audit group.



Still, this was hardly cookbook training, says Kopplin: Training teams needed to dig a level deeper, she says, and match methods to the tax unit's culture and organization. Big questions loomed. How best could they train 4,500 tax workers in 110 U.S. locations? Should there be a standard software "load" for all tax specialties? Were new PCs needed? Unlike many organizations, Ernst & Young's tax executives included trainers when making hardware and software decisions. Each choice had deep implications. New systems meant additional complex, time-consuming and costly training.



In April 1996, the tax technology transition team, nicknamed "4T," held day-long meetings. The group included leaders from the tax practice, professional development, knowledge management, tax technology services and corporate IT support services. To craft a realistic strategy, they realized, they would need to assess the tax group's existing skills.



Professional development manager Katie Weldon took on a tough job: In a two-week span, she led 19 focus groups through which she would identify the training needs of all 4,500 tax workers.



The focus groups helped the team decide on one standard tax system for all employees , and one-and-a-half days of training. In mid year, 4T took recommendations to the knowledge steering committee , a cross-functional group that included a dozen key business and practice partners and area tax directors.



Acceptance and Bonding

From the beginning, Kopplin and her colleagues created customized examples to suit tax situations. Says Kopplin: "Even something as generic as working on an Excel table , we made sure it was a tax document."



By early 1997, all 4,500 tax workers had received "foundational" technology training in the various Microsoft applications. Instructional teams moved on to the next phase: teaching about Lotus Notes and other knowledge tools.



The tax division had started using Lotus Notes six months earlier, without comprehensive training. Tax trainers provided a paper-based self-study refresher (as opposed to CBT). Using print materials made it more likely that trainees would work together, and Sandra Merchant wanted to encourage cooperation: "We allowed them to commiserate and complain. It helped build acceptance and bonding."



One of the most popular training aids turned out to be the simplest, says Kopplin. So-called "road warrior cards" , laminated 8- x 11-inch sheets tucked into notebook computer cases , showed traveling users how to connect remotely and perform other common mobile tasks.



In fall 1996, the first train-the-trainer teams met for two days in Chicago. The 4T team trained tax professionals and PPI instructors on hardware and software. They also created local deployment teams, which would take a lead role in training colleagues back in field offices. After completing the one-and-a-half-day basic training, local teams got another half-day's instruction in how to effectively teach the material when they returned home.



Logistics Key

Local training sessions for tax staffers evolved much like nearly 1,000 others conducted firm-wide in 1996 and 1997. Several weeks before sessions, a senior tax person, a human resources rep and an area technology manager registered attendees, using email to make an unwieldy process more efficient. Meanwhile, the area technology manager and HR person, guided by the 4T team, coordinated facility and equipment logistics. Most classes took place in local conference rooms equipped with network connections.



Mindful of the importance of pre-training logistics, tax workers evolved an assembly line system with which they speedily prepped machines. On Monday evening, students turned their computers over to technicians. All day Tuesday, the local technology services group, aided by contractors, installed and tested new software, databases and network connections. They had little time for mistakes: By Wednesday morning, the new or updated computers had to be back in the classrooms, adorned with students? name tags.

Students got to work learning how to set up their computers, run Windows 95, and connect to the network. Three or four roving coaches supported a stand-up instructor. Says Kopplin: "If you have just one or two people wandering around helping 20 it's no good."

By late September, only about two months after the initial planning sessions, Kopplin and her instructors had trained several hundred tax staffers in Minneapolis and Los Angeles.



More Tests Ahead

Industry analysts say E&Y's systematic methods for harnessing company smarts have helped shoot Ernst & Young's annual revenue growth from zero in the early 1990s to 21 percent in 1996 , a Big Six record. That's nearly double the industry average. There's plenty of work ahead for trainers. Kopplin and other instructors are advising overseas counterparts on an even greater challenge: E&Y plans to train 80,000 international employees by early this year.



In 1998, each business unit is developing yet more training programs for new knowledge and technology projects. In audit, for example, a new electronic workflow and document imaging system is set for completion in April.



Another key focus: assessing training. Kathleen Donohue, account team leader for knowledge and technology, says specialists from professional development, technology training and knowledge groups are evaluating approaches and tools. One metric for assessment is how well professionals know the firm's 18 key problem-solving practices.

On a wider scale, other evaluations may gauge training's impact on key corporate metrics. "These are some ways to see if you are leveraging the intellectual capital from other parts of the firm," says knowledge training director Dianne Taylor.



Powers says it's too early to say what impact this year's planned merger with KMPG Peat Marwick will bring. But Powers, a veteran of the Ernst & Whinney/Arthur Young merger in the 1980s, says it will doubtless mean new global training on an unprecedented company scale.



As if 240,000 days of training across 110 cities hasn't been enough.



Joseph E. Maglitta is an award-winning business technology writer living in Cambridge, Mass.



PLACES, EVERYONE! (sidebar)

E&Y Project Summary



- Goal: Improve global competitiveness by better harnessing scattered company expertise.



- Strategy: Create a worldwide computerized "knowledge network" with which professionals can share best practices and intelligence.



- Training Mission: Teach 24,000 U.S. employees:

1) skills in Office 97, Lotus Notes and other standardized applications;

2) facility in company knowledge sources and retrieval techniques;

3) software applications used by their business unit.



- Training Plan: Train audit, tax and consulting units separately. Cascade responsibility down through business unit. Supplement in-house training staff with 125 contractors.



- Staffing: 12 instructional designers, 250 instructors.



Full Text COPYRIGHT



COPYRIGHT Bill Communications Inc. 1998