July 2009 Archives

Snowflake sponsored the CC The Exchange Conference this year.  Held at the headquarters of Ordnance Survey, it attracts a good number of Heads of National Mapping Agencies, and other notable industry Government departments across the world. As sponsor, you get a stand and a chance to meet the delegates during coffee - to speed date them towards your point of view.

So was 5 minutes discussion over coffee enough to get our message across?  Well, judging by the look on most of the faces when we told them "trust me this will save you time and money but you need to change your way of thinking" I would say no. I know we have a great proposition because we have an increasing order book from around the world, great case studies. However, a 5 minute conversation on something so important and so fundamental is never enough.

We did get other chances to discuss our value and technology advantage, but with even more great food and drink plus the national song of Norway (or was it the Geography song of Norway), who am I spoil the party. Anyway all that singing made me smile, not forgetting singing happy birthday to Vanessa in many different languages, which was great and interesting at the same time.

So my point in all of this is that important people need important messages and this is ours...

To evolve, National Mapping Agencies need to adopt new infrastructure and embrace new technology. The trick is to be in charge of change and take positive steps to ensure that change delivers real business benefit. Snowflake technology is providing real benefit at the infrastructure level across many markets and many countries. So Heads of National Mapping Agencies, be bold and take 5 minutes over your next cup of coffee to think about changing your business.

Long before I joined Snowflake, training courses were being carried out here, on "basic" GML and "hands on " GML . They have always been successful and widely talked about around the world. Up till now Eddie Curtis was the only person we could spare (and he wrote the courses) to carry out the training, with increasing demand from new markets we found the need to carry out more training. To provide these new courses we needed more trainers and we have great people in our Pre and Post sales team with fantastic  industry knowledge so who better than these guys to deliver industry focused training. Eddie embarked on a "train the trainer" course for the guys with the result that we have 2 more trainers in Ballal Jogleker and Richard Rombouts, raring to go.

Then two things happed. A customer wanted to know the value of training  so they could sell that to the boss to get the permission to come on the course. That got me thinking, well actually that got Sheila Drake ourTraining Manager thinking, because she runs all the courses, what is the value of training?

We did our investigation and these are our thoughts:

We are in the midst of a global recession and training is one of the first budget lines to be cut when the need to drive out cost is critical. But good companies taking the longer-term view recognise the value training brings to an organisation on both a corporate and individual level.

Successful companies train successful people.

In other words companies are successful because of fully trained people.

From an organisational perspective professionally delivered, relevant training delivers this value:

Reduced management costs - It is cheaper to train existing employees than to recruit new employees.

With a fully skilled workforce, good shared knowledge and skill base, managers are better equipped to manage the risk to their business of long term absenteeism or loss of key employees.

A trained workforce will make succession planning easier for managers.

Training and qualifications will strengthen your employees commitment to your company.  They'll stay longer and you'll save money on recruitment costs.

From an employee perspective you understand that professionally delivered, relevant training delivers:

Employees feel motivated, confident and are better able to do their jobs thereby gaining greater job satisfaction. 

With greater skills levels, employees benefit from increased salary, greater responsibility and possible promotion.

Skilled employees are more likely to have a successful career path.  

Training can give employees a strong sense of feeling valued by their employer increasing morale and enthusiasm. Attending training courses is not just about what is learnt but sharing ideas and experiences with other professionals ? that leaning is then reabsorbed back into the business.

The next thing that happed was that we had to run two courses simultaneously. Not only that but one held in the UK and the other in Europe! That's a first for Snowflake Software.
So major achievements for the team in such a short space of time and it will only get better as we have a new programme of courses coming up (please check out the Website) and a possible move to bigger premises due to demand.

Training in recession for survival is a requirement and essential!