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Special Reports
Recruiting & Training:
Renaissance Professionals
Looking at Different Ways to Teach Technology
'It's wise to hire a corporate trainer.'
By Anthony Garritano
LENEXA, KS -- In today's market there are several different training methods
that a company can use to ensure that those learning to use automation get the most out of the experience and the
huge technology investment made.
Leader Mortgage Co., a mortgage brokerage firm based here, recently went with
PaperClip Software Inc., Has-brouck Heights, N.J., to move toward paperless processing.
In terms of training on the new automation, the transition was actually very smooth
because of the quality of the techniques used.
When going through this process you "have to create good manuals," said
A.W. Pickel III, the president of Leader and the immediate past president of the National Association of Mortgage
Brokers.
"You also have to make sure that you have someone in your office that's an
expert. Without that you can't do anything," he said.
"From there, that one person becomes the teacher and drives acceptance throughout
the whole organization," Mr. Pickel said.
Beyond this method, some companies are hiring experts to join the staff to create
an internal expert that has actual technology experience.
"We just hired a corporate trainer," said William G. Alvaro, chief executive
officer at Global Home Loans and Finance, a lender based in Melville, N.Y., that recently implemented Mortgage
Cadence, which is a loan origination solution put out by 3T Systems, Denver.
"This is a big move for us because before each department head had to go
through Cadence training and roll it out to their individual people," Mr. Alvaro said.
"What we found was that the training and teaching was a job in and of itself,"
he continued.
"What I noticed was that the numbers were slipping because the management
focus was on training and not on volume. At that point we did our due diligence and have since hired a corporate
trainer," Mr. Alvaro said.
"Most users take the train-the-trainer approach to implementation,"
said Michael Detwiler, president at 3T.
"They take the head of underwriting, originating, secondary marketing, etc.,
and train them on the product and they in turn go on to train their department. The problem, although it is very
doable, is that the people doing the training can't roll that out in their departments and still do their job,"
he said.
"For that reason it's wise to hire a corporate trainer and most companies
don't have the foresight to take that route," Mr. Detwiler said.
"If you do the numbers, you could probably hire two corporate trainers when
you consider the money lost in delayed closings and lost business," he said.
In fact, that is exactly the route Global hopes to take.
"The train-the-trainer approach is fine, but couple that with a company that's
going through extreme growth and you're going to have a shortfall," said Mr. Alvaro.
"If we weren't on such a growth curve we wouldn't have hired the corporate
trainer, but for us it's the best way to go. Within the next six months we'll likely have hired a second one because
it's all about training the people," he said.
Yet another popular route is to hire an outside consultant on a part-time basis,
but Mr. Pickel warned that this may not be the best way to go.
"My problem is that hiring a consultant isn't as cost effective because in
most cases they aren't experts on the product and they don't know your corporate culture," he noted.
"If you've never been a loan originator, it's hard to understand what a loan
originator goes through," Mr. Pickel said.
"Also, a lot of the technology is custom designed for you, which makes training
even more difficult for an outside consultant," he continued.
"What happened with us is that we had one person that just outshined the
rest. From there I said, 'OK. This person's got it. Let her go with it,'" Mr. Pickel said.
Another key to a successful implementation is taking it slow and utilizing a phased
approach. "You can't change everything all at once," said Mr. Pickel.
"You can't make a sharp left turn. What I mean by that is if you're going
30 miles per hour you can slow down and make that sharp left turn, but if you're going 70 miles per hour on an
interstate you don't make a left turn, you make a winding curve. In my experience, most companies I know are going
70 miles per hour or more," Mr. Pickel said.
"So, if you make that left turn the company is still going to be going in
the other direction and you'll cause an accident. To avoid those sharp left turns you change one thing at a time,"
he said.
The new wave in technology training is to incorporate the Web into the process
to make it more interactive.
"Training is going to significantly change from how we've done it in the
past," said Claire Hernandez, director of technology at First Interstate Financial, a lender operating out
of Shrewsbury, N.J.
"The process used to be very manual. Consultants were brought in and trained
each user one-on-one. The other method was to do a presentation in the conference room as a group," she said.
"Going forward, I'm looking at more interactive Web-based training where
we don't have the expense of bringing in a consultant or sending out our employees to be trained either,"
she continued.
"When the employee is out, there is a significant cost there. We have to
pay for travel expenses and there's also a loss in productivity. On the other hand, with Web training we can have
interactive sessions in-house that can be molded to accommodate our schedule so we can divide the workflow accordingly,"
Ms. Hernandez said.
FIF is also looking at recorded sessions. "We are also interested in recorded
training sessions to be stored on a server," said Ms. Hernandez.
"This allows the user flexibility in viewing the session at a convenient
time and it also provides an available library of training subjects pertaining to the operations of FIF,"
she said.
Nonetheless, Ms. Hernandez sees the Web as the real future of efficient technology
training.
"With the Web sessions it's like a conference call where we are able to interact
with other companies asking similar questions or new questions that you didn't even think of," she pointed
out.
"This method allows you to learn as a group. Going forward I'm going to look
for that type of training on all new products," she said.
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