Case Study - Survey Analysis Drives Cost Avoidance

Working with the finance team, we developed customized budget creation and variance analysis training targeting managers and support staff.  This program supported the client's efforts to engage more employees in cost management.

The client measured satisfaction along three dimensions: Relevance, Delivery, and Instruction.  The median scores on each of these dimensions were 4.5 to 5 out of 5.  

However, after a year, enrollment was falling off leading the training team to include redeveloping and relaunching the course in their budget for the next fiscal year.

We recommended that the client include work area and time with the company to their analysis before making a final decision on the course.  This information was not a standard part of their training satisfaction survey.

Attendees were catagorized using three work areas: Administration, Technical, and Operations. Adding this information to the analysis showed that scores were strongly affected by where attendees worked.  

Surveys returned by Administrative and Technical employees averaged 4.8 - 5.0 on all dimiensions.  Operations employees scored 3 - 4 on the same questions.  And, looking at the demographics over time, showed that operations accounted for much of the enrollment falloff.

Based on our analysis, the original program was not redeveloped, saving thousands of dollars.  A new program that focused on budgeting for operations and their approach to variance analysis was slotted for development.