DealersEdge Professional Forums

During my recent travels, I have come across many clients that have installed Executive Assistant and understand the power of the product, but they are reluctant to go to a local community college or to purchase basic training on Microsoft Excel. Although understanding how to use Excel is not a pre-requisite to use EA, you certainly can take the tool to new limits if you understand how to manipulate data with a product like Excel.

Why are many dealers hesitant to provide their staff members with even the basic elements of training so they can be productive in their day-to-day operations?

Do any dealers out there have a training plan developed for staff members that include computer/system training? If so, how have you been able to document or measure the results of having this plan in place?

At our dealerships we do offer computer training. We offer Excel, Word, Outlook, Computer Basics and even typing in house. The problem however is not the availability of training, but the employees resistance to change.

In most cases, the employee uses the excuse of their too busy to attend a training class. However I believe the ultimate excuse is they are either afraid to learn a computer that it is going to explode or they do not want to look foolish. Fear of computers is a challenge for many people so even when the training is available they still do not take advantage of it.

We encourage our employees to attend computer classes offered by New Horizons. GM Common Training has a discounted rate available for Excel training. Several have and enjoyed the basic class. It does take a more experienced Excel user to set up an EA worksheet. Once the Query is set up others can use the worksheet and tailor it to their needs. The main problem is we are so busy taking care of day-to-day things that new Queries tend to not end up getting written.

Has anyone ever tried these computer training CD's I see advertised on TV for Excel and Word? If so, how effective are they?

Also, many companies set minimum training hours for employees each year, are any dealers doing the same, say 40 hours of training (non-service tech)?

Matt:
The problem is one of industry culture. I doubt that EDS would hire anyone that could not use Excel, Word and Outlook. If you did hire someone who was not proficient then the first thing you would do is train this person, probably before you started them on anything else.

Most dealers cant use Excel and dont see the value in encouraging anyone other than the business manager to learn these skills. We constantly work with the PC functions of all the computer vendors as a part of our bar coding and data extraction work. I will tell you that only one of 10 parts departments has ever used any of the pc download functions available from their DMS. The manager can accomplish most of what they need to do without using any pc skills. Just like the old card systems we used to managed our inventories. They got the job done. The issue is that there are a lot of easier, faster and more efficient ways to get the job done.

In my former dealership life as a parts and service director, I prepared the annual profit sharing calculations for the 160 employees at the dealership because I was the only one with the Excel skills to accomplish it. Introducing new technology is a real struggle and very frustrating at times. I remember one of the hardest things I ever did was installing repair order billing at our dealership. The agony was huge until everybody got on board and then they wonder how they ever did without it.

I am not sure the problem is a lack of training as much as it is a lack of understanding how these tools can help the individual manager do their job more efficiently and better utilize their time. The first step is to try and convince the managers that they need these skills and then provide a means to train them.


------------------
Frank Burrows ABS
fburrows@absdata.com

In my personal library I do have some of the CD's that teach programs, but while they are good what I find is most people still don't want to take the time to listen to them for any period of time.

When I first joined the company we used New Horizons, but found that the quality varied by instructor and many employees were not going. So now we only used them for advanced classes and upper management.

Now we have broken down Word & Excel into 2 1/2 modules that are taught in our computer lab so that the training is done on company time and we pay the employee. This has really helped our computer skills alot.

We do still have some big resistance to change which is the biggest problem we have.