Offering a focused technical training concept    Along the lines of the well-worn Chinese saying, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." Consider giving your team the latest financial tools, the skills to use then, and stimulate their imaginations on how to apply them toward the greater good of the entity. The entity will receive increased production, cost savings, better decision making, and employee satisfaction on into the future. The Stanford "Concept:" Perform a review of all or a selected division of your accounting and financial operations for heavy reliance upon spreadsheet information collection and reporting. Look for those known to require a significant amount of time to prepare and for those that either have resulted in errors or may not be providing the answers or types of reports management needs. Alternatively, allow William Stanford to do a survey of your operations for needs and opportunities in the area of better use of technology.   Focusing for performance: The next step is to evaluate the collected "projects" for priority, level of complexity, and the personnel involved for their ability and willingness to be trained. William can provide valuable feedback at his juncture of the process, as to a general plan for going forward in developing a comprehensive training program.   A typical training plan would involve a series of group sessions to give the group an overview of the tools that Access and Excel share and how Microsoft attempts to give users logical and easy access to them. This is designed to remove fear and open the attendees mindsas to the possibilities. It also enables the instructor to evaluate the participants' skill levels for later use.   Next the group would be divided into two person teams and the assingment of each team to a selected "project," one they were interested in. The teams would work together to propose a skeleton solution structure. The instructor would be moving from group to group helping each shape a viable solution. As useful group information comes to light, the entire group will be reassembled and participate in the developmental insights. The teams can work outside of a training meeting and then be reconvened for sharing and progress and team solving of problems under the direction of the instructor.   For those projects that need more expertise than the trainees can provide economically, William Stanford can provide management with fixed bids to complete each. William would prefer to work with the staff who would be using the solution during the development process so as to reduce time, produce a lasting solution, and improve your staffs' level of confidence in the software.     Contact us