 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 9 - 15 March 2000 Issue No. 472 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 9 - 15 March 2000 Issue No. 472
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Focus Books Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons To train the hard-sell
By Aziza SamiUp to 40 busy professionals, with little if any spare time on their hands, taking time off to attend a seven-day workshop on the "marketing of training"? It is still not a common event in Egypt, but it is one that will happen more and more frequently.
As privatisation gains pace, government funded training courses are becoming ever more scarce. To fill the gap businesses, and even some government departments, are examining ways to make their own in-house marketing programmes more viable -- which means successfully marketing these training programmes to clients sufficiently interested to pay for the service.
"Innovative Marketing Communications: Promoting and Selling Training in the New Millennium", a workshop organised by the World Bank Institute and the American University in Cairo's Institute of Management Development, in concert with a private firm, Social Planning, Analyses and Administration Consultants (SPAAC), headed by Sarah Loza, aimed to help them do just that.
"It is essential that we train our up and coming generation in the arts of innovation so they can keep pace with a rapidly changing economy," United Parcels Service's (UPS) general manager in Egypt, Karim Zaki, told the workshop held last week.
"The Egyptian private sector has a vested interest in extending training and covering its cost, given the importance of well-qualified personnel. Companies no longer assess their performance purely in terms of profit, but in the way in which they develop human potential as well," the Executive Director of SPAAC's Human Empowerment Center Rosa Abdel-Malek told Al-Ahram Weekly. "Businesses such as Mobinil and UPS , in addition to Mubarak Professional Development Organisation and USAID are sponsoring this workshop" Abdel-Malik added.
The importance of upgrading training programmes has also been recognised by the World Bank, most significantly through the Washington-based World Bank Institute.
"With its new emphasis on development and human resources, the World Bank is positioning itself to become a knowledge-based bank," insists Rhonny Adhikarya, Senior Training Officer at the WB Institute's Knowledge Products and Outreach Division. The institute has been working with academic and private institutions worldwide on improving training quality.
Workshops which rely heavily on peer-learning, as well as presentations by experts, focus on state-of-the-art marketing techniques, such as cyber-marketing via the Internet in addition to furnishing participants with practical experience in promoting of training. They also utilise the Internet for on-line coaching and on-going, post-workshop consultations.
The Cairo workshop attracted a good cross-section of participants, including managing directors and academics. Simulations of marketing were provided by four case studies -- a management institute, a university, an institute selling a marketing certificate and a medical society -- devised specifically for the workshop. After detailed presentations participants are asked to help classify clients, define competitive strategies and develop a communications programme, as well as to discuss the elements which might be impeding the institutions in marketing their product.
Sometimes a marketing strategy might be sound but lacking in "creative execution", as a simulation of the American Cancer Society (ACS), a philanthropic institution, indicated. In this case, the benefits of its selling product, a medicine, needed to be dramatised "with a memorable selling idea to become relevant to the potential user" so as to "produce word of mouth communication".
The simulation of an international management and marketing institute, presented by Amr Kais from AUC, showed how a leading telecommunications group operating in the Egyptian market was able to provide training courses in marketing and communication to large enterprises. The simulation highlighted common problems encountered in the Egyptian market, many a result of negative perceptions of training and the poor appreciation afforded by Egyptian organisations to training as added value. Too often it is regarded as an unnecessary cost rather than an investment. At the other extreme is the overestimation by executives of the value of personnel training, and the expectation that it will automatically solve all their problems "without taking into consideration individual limitations, job capabilities etc".
"Such a workshop is useful because through it one can find ways to institutionalise or franchise training to create a methodology other institutions can adopt," says Magda Iskandar, a medical doctor who has launched, along with the Coptic Evangelic Organisation for Social Services (CEOSS) and Al-Salam Hospital, a programme which trains home health care providers for the aged. It has already adopted the principle -- advocated in the workshop -- that trainees bear a portion of the expenses of their training.
The World Bank Institute is preparing further workshops on the strategic management and marketing of training in Manila and Bangkok, both scheduled for April. The outcome of these periodic workshops, held in different places at different times, is resulting in what might be termed an international club of professionals. The Cairo workshop attracted participants from Turkey, several African countries, North America and Latvia.
