King's College London

King’s College London (KCL) partnered with the specialist user adoption consultancy Optimum to design and deliver tailored end-user training programmes for the implementations of Unit4 ERP (formerly Agresso and Business World) and CoreHR.

KCL, one of the UKs top ten universities, is undergoing an institution-wide digital transformation project, including a major restructuring of teams and processes. The university first implemented the Finance, Projects, Procurement and Cash Management suites of Unit4 ERP, followed by a phased introduction of CoreHR, including HR, recruitment and staff management.

KCL chose Optimum to support them with end-user training because of their experience of Unit4 Business World and their ability to create customised courses for KCL’s system builds and business processes.

“KCL had complex requirements,” said Joanne Harrison, Optimum’s sales director. “They needed our expertise in developing a tailored, flexible, blended learning solution that worked across a large number of individual workstreams and users.”

Optimum first scoped the wide-ranging user training needs across both systems. With multiple modules, 8,500 employees across five London campuses with varying IT skill levels and in the midst of a major change programme, identifying who needed training in what, when and how, was a real challenge. In addition, full time project staff, business champions, departmental stakeholder groups and internal trainers all had input into the planning and content.

KCL had unveiled its digital transformation project to mass audiences in auditorium roadshows and favoured a similar approach for the training of large end-user groups. Optimum worked with KCL to deliver the training materials and recommended an approach specific to each workstream. For example, the core finance users received hands-on classroom training, whilst requisitioner training was delivered via auditorium roadshows to accommodate the large groups of users at one time.

The training consultants created a mix of deliverables utilising KCL’s bespoke Unit4 ERP build, with a particular emphasis on both interactive and passive eLearning as per the client’s request. However, reference guides, quick cards and trainer packs were also created to cater for the different user group sizes and levels of expertise.

In order to provide a future-proofed training capability, KCL asked its internal trainers and local business champions to take ownership of the ERP system training and deliver some of the classroom courses. Optimum therefore upskilled these staff members via skill the trainer sessions which covered the course content, consistent delivery styles and how to maintain and update the suite of training materials as the system evolves.

Optimum took the same tailored, flexible approach for the user adoption phase of CoreHR which followed the Unit4 ERP go-live.

Due to changes in the HR/Payroll department and people moving between teams, a large number of stakeholder groups from different departments had an input into planning the training. To focus the decision making process and streamline communication, Optimum created a menu of the main topics that would need training, with one member of each team selecting the modules.

Post go live, the relationship has continued with Optimum regularly delivering refresher training for KCL’s HR and payroll teams and most recently designing and supporting the user training for the roll out of the recruitment module.

KCL was a hugely successful partnership for Optimum, where expertise and flexibility came into its own. Harrison said: “A lot of people from different areas of the university were involved, at the same time as a major restructuring, so finding a consensus and keeping to deadlines was difficult. But everything was kept on track and we were delighted with the outcome.”