Our client (a midsize scientific software company) started to outsource some of its product-related services engagements to specialized providers. An externally sourced pool of skilled software implementation engineers would become available on short notice to support lab informatics implementation projects. A product training and skill certification program had to be set up to manage the knowledge transfer to the new resources as well as to ensure a guaranteed level of product expertise that the outsourced software consultants would provide to our Client's customers.
Maintain a high standard of responsibility to customers.
Saber Informatics was brought in to design and implement a certification test for the outsourced software implementation engineers. Those who pass the test would work directly with our Client's customers.
Based on our experience in the industry and practical knowledge of our customers' informatics environments, we designed and implemented a "project simulator" VM that included a standard install of our Client's products alongside a realistic data set.
Deploy and scale online, streamline repeated steps.
The test was deployed online using our Client's standard, secure cloud environment, and calibrated to take a preset amount of time. Candidates take the test from the comfort of their own office; they can log off and log back in to continue the test; no software installation is required, which dramatically streamlines the test procedure. After completion, each test candidate's dedicated test environment is frozen and graded by the Client's certification team who follow a predefined set of criteria to assign a numeric score in less than 15 minutes. We designed the grading criteria to simulate a "real-life" implementation.
Realistic consultant training is key to success with customers.
In this project we addressed an important issue in most knowledge transfer initiatives: the software engineers that are being trained on a new product need to demonstrate not only that they know the main capabilities of a product but that their knowledge can be applied in a realistic project situation. The initial feedback from the Client has been excellent: now that the test environment VM has been set up, the in-house team can clone it, tweak the included dataset and upgrade the software to create specialized testing scenarios.
