PRUPIM wanted to upgrade its standard software from Office XP to Office 2010, and had identified three tiers at which training was required:

• Heavy users including office managers and administrators, who required a broad understanding of the new system, as they are often the first point of contact for other users in need of support
• Regular users across all departments who required a more basic understanding of the new features, specific to their roles, and could spare limited time away from their roles (this category represents the majority of users at PRUPIM)
• Board members with busy schedules and a less detailed requirement

With these varying levels of training required by users across all levels of the organisation, PRUPIM needed a flexible training solution that could be adapted to the diverse needs of its users, whilst ensuring minimal disruption to its business.

QA's approach was to tailor our training based on the specific needs of each of the three training tiers.

For heavy users, QA's standard one-day course, Experience the 2010 Microsoft Office System, was felt to be an ideal fit, giving this group a broad understanding of the features of the new system to support them, and their colleagues, in their roles.

Regular users required a scaled back approach, both in content and time. Consequently, QA tailored a half-day variant of the course in close communication with PRUPIM.

The half-day course provided a general introduction to the new features of Word, Excel and Outlook, focusing in particular on the tools heavily used by workers at PRUPIM, as well as areas of potential difficulty. Although the same syllabus was applied across these sessions, time was allocated for questions, enabling the sessions to focus on specific areas of need for each group. To ensure that the users received the necessary support, a maximum of 10 delegates were enrolled on each course.

For board members, short one-to-one sessions were arranged to fit around their busy schedules. These one or one and a half hour sessions were tailored to the specific needs of these individuals, with a particular emphasis on Outlook.

The above courses were supplemented by floor-walking to support the implementation of the new system in the workplace. Throughout the month following training, experts were available to answer questions and check that users were confident using the new system in their day-to-day roles.

Coupled with the above, users were shown how to find help independently using Microsoft online guides, which were available to download from PRUPIM's SharePoint.

PRUPIM experienced a smooth transition to Office 2010 from the legacy system, facilitated by:

• half-day courses for 150 regular users
• one-day courses for 26 heavy users
• one-to-one sessions for four board members

PRUPIM observed the following benefits throughout the implementation, and beyond:

• minimal loss of productivity during transition
• limited volume of support calls to the helpdesk
• high levels of user confidence with the new tools