The Business of Training

Presenting your business results.  This chart, created in MS Excel, is a very simple way to report any number of different metrics.  This is an example of revenue verses budget by month.  The chart is updated monthly or quarterly to the appropriate management team and posted to all team members.  It is an easy way to show a Pareto Graph of the root causes of the deviations from budget and the planned actions, when necessary, to correct.  Easy to read, easy to do.  Fig. 1 - Metric - Revenue Report Chart  Let's look at each area of the chart separately.  The first area is the Revenue/Budget Graph (Fig. 2).  Plot your budget (Revenue Forecast ) out by month for the year then add actual revenue results as they are documented by month.  Be sure this is posted for all team members to see.  It is important for everyone to feel ownership for the business results. Fig. 2 - Revenue Report Gra...

Return on Investment (ROI) or justification for invested capital, time, etc. is an important concept for training organizations.  Again, this is the language of business and you must know and understand how to demonstrate the value of your training programs to the company. To calculate the Return on Investment for Performance Solutions (Training) can be easy or difficult due to the nature of Learning Events or Training Interventions. The ROI formula is simple: ROI  =   The Net Training Event Benefits                    The Training Costs For example: Cost of Training Program = $195,000 Benefits of Training Program (1st year) = $350,000 then: ROI  =  $350,000 - $195,000   =  $155,000   = 0.80 X 100  =  80% return in one year                ...