We have come very far in our journey to 10 best practices from education customer for information management, reporting and analytics. We are up to Best Practice #9: Empower Users by Providing Training and Self-Help Materials.

Most education professionals will need training in order to understand data, reports and analytics. The last thing you need is your users misunderstanding and misrepresenting the data and reports. Thus, they will need help learning how to understand data and interpret analytical reports correctly before they can make informed decisions.

The education customers I interviewed recommend investing in user training and self-help resources. Education customers explained that this can take various forms. Some institutions use a train-the-trainer approach by identifying key stakeholders whom they can educate and turn into effective, confident data consumers. So that way once these key stakeholders are up to speed, they can begin to train new users in their perspective areas. Another idea is to provide hands-on user workshops in computer labs.

Regardless of the type of training provided, it’s recommended that you complement it with self-help materials, such as user manuals and data dictionaries that define value hierarchies, data elements and more. These materials can be offered in hard copy or through context-sensitive online documentation.

If you missed the previous best practices blogs in this series, you can find them all here. Stay tuned for one more post in this series. If you are excited about learning all the tips, read the full white paper now: 10 Tips from SAS Education customers.