Dynamics 365 Business Central Training Trends in 2021

Microsoft Dynamics Training in 2021

The Pandemic has radically changed the types of ERP software businesses buy, ending the domination of on-premise ERP in favor of the cloud. This has really helped the Microsoft Dynamics product line.  It's also had a profound impact on how companies buy Dynamics 365 Business Central training services from providers.

Remote Business Central Training is Far Better

Way before COVID-19 and the changes in 2020, there was a growing movement towards conducting training remotely.  At Sabre Limited we had begun the move towards remote training via Zoom as early as 2017.  Our experiences at first resulted in some push back by customers, but after refining the process we've seen massive benefits to this approach.  We have now decided that except in some extreme cases, we're going to conduct all projects remotely.

Here are some major benefits.

Recording The Training Has Been A Game Changer

Being able to record our training (really only available when we use remote training) has helped incredibly.

When we conducted Dynamics Business Central training in the past (or Dynamics NAV training) it was almost always done in a boardroom with a "consultant" leading a group of "client staff" through the use of the software.  Sometimes it was one on one at someone's desk.  We would document an agenda, and get initials of the attendees confirming that we went over all the material.  It is impractical and almost impossible to record this kind of training. People are moving around too much, and setting up a video camera and microphones is just too difficult.

Inevitably (usually several times during the project) those staff members would claim that we had skipped or missed an area of training.

When we switched to training via Zoom meetings (and later Microsoft Teams) we immediately started to record the videos of the training and post them to a Sharepoint site for the customers.

We still had people claim that we'd missed a topic.  Our staff would review the video, find the time-stamp of the topic, and email the customer.

Those complaints immediately stopped. We started to find that customers would re-watch the training and this made a big difference.  The customer staff are not always able to be 100% focused on what we train. Being able to re-watch (even slowing down or rewinding parts) made a huge difference for everyone.

Keeping Business Central Training Sessions Short

People can lose focus during training classes very easily. This is especially true if the class is very long. Switching to remote training has really helped with this.

Once you remove the travel time and the inevitable setup and settle in time of on-site visits, it becomes practical to have a 1 hour or 2 hour session.  When you are physically on-site this makes no sense.  The travel time is "setup time" - so you don't want your "run time" of training to be really short. You want to get as much out of that travel time as you can.  This leads to long and often very boring sessions.

By keeping the sessions shorter, we can have them more often.  We can also fit in sessions at the last minute with a lot less hassle.  You can't make a 2 hour return trip to a customer for a 30 minute meeting without a lot of planning and pain.  It's very easy to have a 30 minute touch base when done with Teams or Zoom.

The customer and our trainers benefit from this - they can level load their work and reduce the huge interruptions in their day to day.

After all, you need to do your day job while you learn your ERP.

Keep The Team Small

When we used to do on-site Business Central training (ie: NAV training) there was a tendency of the customer to feel that as many people as possible should sit in on the training.

Once you switch to remote training, that tends to drop a bit.  Since the training is recorded, you can have just the most important staff attend - and the others can watch the video if they need to.  Having smaller teams being trained has one big advantage: Fewer arguments.

You will probably nod when I say this, but the most disruptive part of training a big group are the discussions and disagreements among the customer's own team during the sessions. Very often customers will argue among themselves about the usefulness of one feature or another.

Having short sessions with small numbers of team members (2 or 3 maximum) really makes the sessions go more smoothly and easily.

Conclusion

There is a knee jerk reaction a lot of businesses have to hearing your Business Central training will be done remotely. Do not be concerned about this. The goal of the training of your team is really to setup the system for day to day use, and then run scenarios through ensuring that it handles your needs.  This is much better done in small bites rather than huge time investments.

We have been successfully implementing Business Central for over 4 years now by following this model. We have the Business Central customer review videos to prove that it works very well.  Any manufacturing company looking to implement Business Central, and receive manufacturing training in the system should consider doing the project this way.

If you are interested in learning more about the Sabre Training model, contact us today by emailing info@sabrelimited.com or visit our website at www.sabrelimited.com.

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