Book a flight, pack your suitcase, spend a week in Germany
This is what Bosch Rexroth's Key User Week used to look like, where around 80 participants from 33 countries were trained. The content was about a special sales planning software, Strategic Prognoses Planning (SPP), which the key users deal with and which they support decentrally in the national companies.
In 2012, there was a change from traditional classroom training to virtual classroom (VC) training. This was a big challenge for everyone involved, as the same topics still had to be taught. The training is indispensable because the key users, as multipliers, pass on what they have learned to their colleagues at the respective locations.
At the beginning, the participants were sceptical whether the same results could be achieved online as in face-to-face training - after all, it used to be possible to concentrate completely on the innovations of the software and applications for a week away from the daily business. "Of course, it was not practical to hold continuous training sessions on the phone and in VC for a whole week," explains Susanne Thiele, Training Consultant at tts, a full service provider in the field of learning.
But it was precisely this that turned out to be a great advantage: "The participants were able to put what they had learned into practice promptly and in their daily work." Questions that only arose in the application could thus be clarified in the next session.