Well-trained teams can be a company’s greatest asset. Similarly, untrained resources can be their biggest liability.
So, what is the ROI of a well-trained team? It’s important to remember that while ROI is generally a financial valuation technique, value is really about whether you are getting more out of something than you are putting into it. Returns aren’t always financial (though of course it is nice when it works out that way). When it comes to enterprise training, there are other additional important ROI considerations, such as developing innovative capabilities and delivering on customer expectations that may help enterprises become more agile, resilient and meet their goals. Additionally, there is considerable value in enterprises better managing their risks in areas such as security, compliance and when dealing with third parties.
Each of these slices of ROI are achievable through ISACA’s enterprise training offerings. I’ve seen it time and again. Let me provide an example: A manufacturing organization I assisted was dealing with framework overload – they had more frameworks than they needed. Two of the competing frameworks they had in their ecosystem were COBIT and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. The organization lacked a single focus because the CIO and the CISO were constantly bickering about how to leverage the frameworks, funding, resource allocation and more. By going through enterprise training, we were able to talk through how the frameworks could complement each other, and they built an enterprise model supported by information and technology that helped them mature their processes and optimize their operation.
These types of breakthroughs are unlikely to materialize outside of a team training setting. I’ve seen many companies that have experienced a significant pain point – or even made the news for a major mishap – and we’ve found ways to make them more resilient. Training surfaces topics that some teams might be too busy to address in the head-down flow of a typical workweek, but when you’re in an open, learning environment, you can solve a lot of issues. Through this process, companies become more resilient, agile and open to continuous improvement.
Enterprise training is especially valuable in today’s complex business environment. Whether related to ongoing impacts from the pandemic, geopolitical strife, the changing regulatory environment, or more, major business disruptions are happening around the world. Enterprise training can help companies better understand those disruptions and how areas such as audit, risk, privacy and governance can be brought to bear to provide a more stable foundation on which to innovate and build digital trust with customers.
People, skills and competencies are a central governance component for enterprises to effectively prioritize their efforts, and team training can play a key role in making this component perform at a high level. In the short term, ROI from enterprise training can take the form of innovative ideas from a highly engaged team looking to quickly apply some of what they learned. Over the longer haul, ROI can be tracked in mission-critical areas such as program and portfolio success, customer satisfaction and whether a knowledgeable workforce is clearly contributing to the enterprise meeting its goals.
Editor’s note: Find out more about ISACA enterprise training here and watch a video with more of Mark’s thoughts on enterprise training ROI here.