Business C is a major force in retail, with both corporate and franchise operations operating world-wide. Their stated aim in adopting content reuse stemmed from a dissatisfaction with the results of their training programs. They felt that they could achieve better, more consistent training outcomes by creating better and more consistent training content.
Business C quickly selected a content management package from one of their existing vendors and implemented it on a trial basis in a single division whose training outcomes were dead average for the organization as a whole. Although the system did result in economies in the production of training content consistent with the vendor's promises, the training outcomes did not improve.
The trial implementation was written off to experience and a new vendor was selected with a different content management solution offering. The results of this trial in a different but equivalent division produced approximately the same economies and the same mediocre training outcomes.
Leaping to the correct conclusion that garbage in results in garbage out, business C conducted another trial of the second system within the organization that had the best track record for producing positive training outcomes. To their great surprise, the training resulting from this trial was as indifferent to the technology as the others had been.
An expensive consulting firm was brought in to study these three trials and to find the silver lining in having apparently wasted several million dollars. Half a year later, the consultants returned their verdict: business C was attempting to solve the wrong problem with the right solution. The consultants recommended that the organization implement the second vendor's solution across the entire enterprise. This would produce economies in production of training, but more importantly it would save tremendously in localization costs for training materials.
The consultants pointed out that the poor outcomes from training indicated that training was being used inappropriately as the cure for problems that did not arise from a lack of good training. By reducing their focus on training as a cure for all ills, the company was able to concentrate on better internal communication. The same content management system that was adopted for training was the perfect solution for most of the new communications initiatives.