Corporate Training is Impeded by Scarce Time and High Travel Costs, Citrix Online Survey Finds

Few companies doubt the ability of training programs to boost employee productivity and morale, strengthen customer relationships and hone a competitive edge. But a new survey finds that many training programs underperform for distinctly mundane reasons: time constraints, lack of employee availability and cost. The survey was conducted by Kelton Research on behalf of Citrix Online, a division of Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CTXS).

“Businesses understand the advantages of well-executed corporate training programs,” said Elizabeth Cholawsky, vice president of products and client services of Citrix Online. “What gets in the way are logistical issues, and when companies try to move training online, they are often discouraged by complicated or costly technology.”

The survey of small and medium-sized business decision makers found broad understanding of the benefits of employee training, but deep challenges in getting employees together under one roof.

Conflicting demands: With many training programs, attendance is a real problem—survey respondents cited conflicting work responsibilities (63%) and cost (43%) to explain why employee participation rates drop off.
Mobile workforce: Even the best planned training session can be thwarted by a distributed workforce. About 33% of respondents cited business travel and working offsite as obstacles to attending.
The “face-to-face” habit: Despite the logistical challenges, the tradition of in-person training is entrenched. More than 40% of respondents with training programs in place report that most of these sessions are conducted entirely in-person. But attitudes are changing. More than half (54%) of respondents said that an online training program would make a difference, although the technology must be easy to use.

Citrix Online’s answer to the training logistics dilemma is Citrix® GoToTraining™. Launched today, the service addresses the crucial ease-of-use issue reported by more than half (54%) of survey respondents. GoToTraining enables companies to save time and reduce travel costs by moving their curriculums online and delivering sessions to trainees in multiple locations quickly, easily and cost effectively.

According to Cushing Anderson, program vice president at IDC, the ability to reach a large, often dispersed workforce, with consistent content and minimal impact on time or travel, will be a key driver in online training adoption: “It’s essential to make content available to employees when it fits with their schedule and location,” says Anderson. “Citrix Online’s approach to training, with a focus on ease-of-use, should have broad market appeal, especially for the SMB market.”

“GoToTraining has a great set of useful features at a very reasonable price. These tools streamline the whole training process for us,” said John Corder, vice president of sales and support for Identi-Kit Solutions. “We have excellent feedback for our training programs and our applications from the outstanding tools offered in GoToTraining. With tools such as pre-tests and in-session polls we can customize our training to meet the customer’s immediate needs.”

“Companies are increasingly recognizing that they must up-level the caliber of their training programs, whether to maintain competitive edge, retain top talent, or deliver on effective external presentation initiatives,” said presentation and training consultant Roger Courville, a member of Citrix Online’s Worldwide Workplace Council and author of The Virtual Presenter’s Handbook. “And as technology drives rapid changes in how people work and enables new workplace and remote collaboration dynamics, virtual presentations can be more efficient and can certainly solve for traditional in-person training hurdles like location and scheduling, even as they incorporate social media elements, polling and other innovations that make them more effective and engaging for participants.”

For more information, visit www.gototraining.com. Follow @GoToTraining on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gototraining.

About Citrix

Citrix Systems, Inc. is a leading provider of virtualization, networking and software-as-a-service (SaaS) technologies for more than 230,000 organizations worldwide. Its Citrix Delivery Center, Citrix Cloud Center (C3) and Citrix Online Services product families radically simplify computing for millions of users, delivering applications as an on-demand service to any user, in any location on any device. Citrix customers include the world’s largest Internet companies, 99 percent of Fortune Global 500 enterprises, and hundreds of thousands of small businesses and prosumers worldwide. Citrix partners with over 10,000 companies worldwide in more than 100 countries. Founded in 1989, annual revenue in 2009 was $1.6 billion.

Citrix® and GoToTraining™ are trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.

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