Slides

The business standard for many years. The upside is slides are relatively inexpensive to produce by almost anyone in your organization using off the shelf software. However if your slides are just text or non-descriptive photos with clip art, it may take five to ten minutes to explain a key point or process. If the person presenting the material is not a polished speaker he may quickly lose the audience. So, what would be an alternative?

Training with Video – DVD

A simple 15 second video clip can relay a complex concept without losing your audience. The clip can be presented on VHS or DVD. Because DVD’s are menu driven they are a more efficient delivery of video than standard VHS. And with the drop in price of a basic DVD player to $40 the market is quickly catching up with VHS players. As of March 2003 there was an estimated 58 million units sold and the rate of units sold per month was estimated at 3 million.

Online Training

A rapidly growing segment of training is now being done using the internet as a pipeline for delivery. Why? Cost. After development cost, there is virtually no difference in the cost of training 5,000 people as opposed to training five. Additionally, the people you are training can be in almost any part of the world. This form of training also allows for feedback and interaction. Another way to use the internet for training is to post for download PDF files (Adobe Acrobats – Portable Document File – format) with built in indexing and search capabilities for text books and research materials. This makes research convenient so your employee or student does not have to continue going online to find answers. Also they can print out any single portion of text or illustrations needed. As with most technology there a few pitfall and precautions that you should be careful to avoid, such as making sure you set permissions and passwords on documents you post online.

Visual Aids

If the service, product or training you need to do is more visual than technical, this too can be accomplished via DVD, CD or online. A good format for online delivery of illustrations and how-to-information is Flash. Most all browsers now come with this plug-in pre installed. The stats from Adobe, the owners of the Flash player, say it is on 96% of all computers. One caveat to using Flash is to make sure the version you publish in, is the version everyone has or you will need to provide a link to Adobes website. Not only is it visual, it also allows sound, so adding voice over can strengthen your presentation. All of this at a relatively low bit rate for downloading.

Bottom Line

With the new avenues for delivering compelling sales, training and marketing materials it makes sense to take your company to the next level.

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