An IT skills gap is just one of several significant barriers to change that may prevent workforces from successfully adopting new technology. It is not uncommon that an organization's employees lack capabilities related to certain IT skill sets. Most organizations struggle to keep this gap from widening as technology evolves from year to year.
Without effective and early coaching on software and hardware changes, employees' frustration due to a skills deficit leads to wasted time and lower productivity. Organizations with no plan to address these issues might not fully realize the savings associated with their new technology upgrades.
New tech should not be daunting
A Pet Retail chain was experiencing an IT skills gap after upgrading 1,600 US stores to Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM), which replaced its legacy Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express (a smaller system deployed at individual retail locations).
Because its IT department was unprepared skill-wise to support the new technology post-implementation —only three of their 14 UC engineers had worked with CUCM before —the company was not seeing the expected benefit from its integrated communications investment.
The customer needed a way to bridge the IT skills gap and realize the workforce productivity benefits that CUCM could provide.
Custom training and tailored use cases narrow the gap
The Pet Retailer engaged WWT for our CUCM On-Demand Collaboration Lab for workforce training. During the CUCM Collab Lab —hosted in WWT's Advanced Technology Center (ATC), a multi-OEM testing and learning environment —WWT's Adoption Services experts provided customized training, support and guidance centered around the proper use of the CUCM hardware and software, as well as use case demos targeted at the various collaboration challenges the customer might experience.
Realize the full potential of your investment
Thanks to WWT's Collaboration Lab and Adoption Services training plan, the Pet Retailer has narrowed a key IT skills gap and armed its workforce with the knowledge to fully leverage its new CUCM system.
Results to date include increased store-to-store collaboration, better overall customer experience and reduction in costs by avoiding use of the public switch telephone network (PSTN).
