Foreign Languages

These days, offices may have native speakers of over 50 languages all under one roof. It is important that main language of office is established, whether it be English, French or Spanish. Once this is constituted all employees should only converse in main language. This avoids exclusion of staff who can not understand other languages. In addition, a company should ensure that all its employees are fully conversant in main language. Language tuition should be seen as a necessity not a luxury.

Culture

International businesses with a highly diverse workforce in terms of nationality and cultural background face challenges from differences in language, values, belief systems, business ethics, business practices, behaviour, etiquette and expectations.

Cross cultural differences can negatively impact a business in a variety of ways, whether in team cohesion or in staff productivity. As we have seen above, different methods of communication are just one area in which cross cultural differences are manifested.

In such multicultural companies, objective help may be needed through a cross cultural consultant who will show teams and individuals how to manage communication and work together more cohesively and productively.

Company Culture

Company culture pertains to internal culture of a company in terms of how it is managed. For example, does company view its different departments such as sales, production, administration and HR as closed or open systems? A closed system is one in which a total lack of synergy exists between a sales and production department due to structure and communication lines between two. A consequence of such compartmentalization is that managers of departments have a tendency to become territorial. It is vital that team work, team building and team spirit are encouraged in order to create open systems.

Such measures are especially valid in joint ventures and mergers whereby co-operation between two or more companies requires their total commitment to an open system.

Understandably many companies are primarily focused on financial and strategic side of company operations. International businesses are now realising that many of their business problems have roots in man-management and communication.

In summary, we can conclude that biggest hurdle to effective cross cultural communication is a reluctance to invest in expertise and resources needed to overcome problems as outlined above. Cross cultural hurdles are easily negotiable with some objective and well-qualified assistance.

© Kwintessential Ltd

To do this, software company needs to look at how they plan to deliver online training to their end-user customers. They will want to make sure that end-user customers can track and manage online training portion of their sessions, whether it is self-paced custom e-Learning content or real-time online trainer/student collaboration. Selecting this delivery platform can be difficult but it should include following basic functions:

1.Student Knowledge Assessments 2.Student Success and Progress Tracking 3.Real-Time Interactivity 4.Self-Paced Learning Delivery

By selecting a delivery platform that addresses all four of these facets of end-user customer training, mid-sized software company can not only decrease their own costs but enhance their client/vendor relationship by delivering more than what is normally expected or experienced in today’s software market. What’s bottom line? The customer is pleased with their user’s performance and value they received from software company.

Step 2: Creating Revenue Using Custom e-Learning Content

Now that we have lowered our costs, company needs to look at how they can use their new learning technology to generate new revenue streams for their organization.

Take this scenario: The mid-sized intranet portal software company used in scenario above now has their own proprietary basic end-user e-Learning module to cover 1 day’s worth of what was previously onsite training. The company has effectively reduced their overall, offline training costs. Now it is looking for ways to generate new revenue streams using this technology to (a) make back their initial purchase costs and to (b) create more profit potential for entire organization.

Creating revenue: One way for a mid-sized software company, such as one we’re using in our example, to create this much needed revenue stream is to create subsequent, more advanced, self-paced, custom e-Learning training modules. Attractively priced, these learning modules could be made available to their end-user customers online without incurring any additional offline training costs.

In order to do this efficiently and without incurring additional offline training costs, company needs to make it easy for end-user customer to purchase more advanced training content and make it easy for end-user customer to track their own learners as they attend training courses so they can readily see its effectiveness. By investing money today to build more advanced, custom e-Learning content, this mid-sized software company could realize profits from training modules within 12 to 24 months once they begin marketing and selling it to their existing client base. Such profits would be dependent on development timeframes, how they market their new training service and their chosen modes of delivery.

Taking it one step further: Making more advanced e-Learning content convincing and attractive to purchase from client standpoint takes some ingenuity. People are very susceptible to purchasing something that is located right next to checkout lane at Target. Similarly, it stands to reason that client of this mid-sized software company will be more apt to purchase additional e-Learning content if it is readily available to them and if they can purchase it without any hassle.

One way to accomplish this is to publish new, more advanced, self-paced e-Learning modules to company’s LMS portal and then make modules available for purchase via credit card using e-Commerce or via standard invoice with a single phone call. This essentially acts as product stands we all see at Target next to checkout lane. Since everyone needs to pass through checkout lane, it makes sense to put additional products available for purchase there. In other words, if mid-sized software company is delivering portions of their beginner training program online to their end-user customers, this more advanced e-Learning content should be available for purchase right next to those basic training modules, thus, increasing its visibility and increasing attractiveness to buy from client perspective.

The Completed Solution

Because of tight software market and strain put on mid-sized software companies to perform, if these companies can decrease costs associated with their current training programs and create new revenue streams at same time, it becomes a win/win situation both for vendor and for customer. The software company gains a competitive edge and continues to move forward while client gains an easy-to-engage training program and added value from their software vendor.

Synapse SE Staff Contributor