Sitting in Starbucks sipping his favorite beverage, a venti iced double expresso with a dash of cinnamon and a twist of lemon, Philip perused the overview he received late last the week from the ISP Committee. He knew this had potential to be an extremely rewarding project, but had been struck with a smidgen of apprehension ever since he accepted the offer.

His apprehension was in many ways justified; as part of the ISP, AVU recently invested over $50 million implementing a university-wide Intranet. Consequently, administrative pressures going as high as the President's Office and the Board of Visitors were asking that all training for the ISP be delivered via their newest information “superhighway.” The pressure was certainly on to deliver something to train users quickly and efficiently. Having designed instruction for ERPs in the past, Philip knew he couldn’t train everyone to use the new enterprise systems overnight!

The University has also invested a significant amount of resources into their existing training department, CTI. CTI has been designing and developing various forms of training for University departments over the last four years. Although Oracle offers an Online Learning Application (OLA), an integrated Web-based training product that supports outside vendor training, the University is hesitant to go “out of house” for a training solution.

University officials are confident CTI can produce whatever training is needed for the new system and want Philip to work with CTI to design the training for the new systems application. They might use an outside vendor if Philip determines CTI does not have the capability to offer an effective solution, but Philip knew he would have to make an extremely strong case for this to happen. The budget for the project is large enough to allow Philip the lattitude to hire additional staff and resources for CTI if needed.

Feeling a rush of adrenaline (maybe due to the cinnamon?), Philip left Starbucks and headed over to CTI for his first meeting with the training team.