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Focus on Finance: Financial Fundamentals
September 06, 2007
With increased consolidation in the financial sector, companies are banking on training and technology to get employees up to speed on business processes, corporate culture and compliance.
By Margery Weinstein adn Lorri Freifeld
Training needs at financial institutions are there right from the start—of the employee's first day, or the first day of a newly merged company. The increasing consolidation of the industry, through a surge of acquisitions over the last decade, means even previously trained employees sometimes need to be treated as new. "There is a tremendous need to suddenly get a number of people up to speed, licensed, or trained," says Kent Devereaux, head of product development for Kaplan Financial, a provider of training to the finance sector. "In some of the mergers we've seen, it may be reorienting an entire financial services firm staff around a completely different set of business processes."
Instructing employees from the acquired company on the new technologies they are expected to use is particularly important in the banking industry, says Christine Duckworth, president of training consultancy Intrac Design, Inc., and a member of Clarity Consultants, a provider of learning and development consultants to Fortune 1000 companies nationwide.
"As companies merge, the first thing their customers want to know is 'Will my money be safe with you?'" she explains, "so, the systems need to work properly so all those electronic transactions are happening seamlessly."
Outsourcing training needs in the wake of a merger often makes more sense than ramping up learning department resources for the relatively short span of time between the announcement of an acquisition and the closing of the deal. "There is a short-term—maybe it's six months, 12 months, 18 months—need for outside help to produce and deliver all of the training," says Duckworth. "It's usually a very defined time frame, from the time the announcement is made until the legal close, so it's an event-driven training rollout."
Even companies with no M&A activity on the horizon often look outside for training solutions. "We partner with our clients where we'll handle a lot of the fulfillment activities," says Devereaux of Kaplan's delivery of the learning program. "Plus, we've developed a customized learning management system (LMS) that is integrated into a compliance tracking system. It allows us to track state-specific regulatory requirements, as well as national SEC [Security and Exchange Commission] requirements."
A vendor-based solution can be particularly helpful when multiple departments (i.e., compliance and HR) would like to use the same LMS. Software vendor Cornerstone OnDemand's system, for example, now allows multiple training agendas to run on the single application, according to Steven Seymour, Cornerstone vice president, strategic accounts. Cost for compliance- oriented LMSs depends on the user population and the type of deal (enterprise-wide versus individual users), he adds. Cornerstone charges $10 per user, plus one-time fees for set-up, integration, and historic data migration. Contracts typically run three to five years.
Going forward, Seymour believes more and more financial companies will turn to a human capital management system that interlinks succession management and compensation modules instead of having separate systems for both. And while he says financial companies tend to invest in technology, Seymour believes "a thousand years from now, a blackboard will still be in use, while people won't have heard of an iPod."
Sidebar: Quick Tips
Trying to figure out what system or software would work best for your company? Here, Steven Seymour, vice president, strategic accounts, Cornerstone OnDemand, a software services vendor with a financial focus, offers some things to keep in mind.
• Think integration. Determine where your data resides, in how many systems, the quality of data, and data cleansing, and then come up with a strategy on the best learning management system (LMS) to use overall.
• Decide whether the system will be centralized or decentralized and how it will be managed.
• Decide on cultural settings (including the formats for dates and time stamps and the language).
• Spend the day going through the software and spend time with the vendor's professional services team. You have to envision working with these people every day for months.
• Make sure the infrastructure is in place in the other places you want to roll out the system.
• Make sure support people are available during the different time zones when you're trying to implement the system.
Sidebar: Training Drivers
What are the biggest trends affecting the learning financial/insurance companies deliver to their employees today?
• Changing technology (i.e., wikis, podcasting, Webinars, simulations)
• Changing employee demographics (engaging and retaining boomers, Gens X and Y who have different work/life expectations)
• Just-in-time, distance, and blended learning
• Shorter lead times for developing training
• Regulatory and compliance issues
• Mergers/acquisitions (require culture and integration training)
• Cost control efforts
• Globalization
• Outsourcing
• Customers with more financial knowledge and choices
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