Computer Classrooms - To Rent, or Not To Rent?

When working with a client to put together a private training course, the question often arises about training space. Most large companies have their own training classrooms, so they of course prefer to leverage their own internal resources; however, circumstances can arise when it may be necessary. For example, training rooms get booked by others in the company, or the room’s computer hardware is inadequate to meet the requirements for a particular training course.
There are a number of reasons that companies are reluctant to use outside training space; in my personal experience, the chief reason among them is, “we need people to be available for coverage or to deal with a problem.” Apart from a unique circumstance like a catastrophic system failure, this is a BIG mistake. You are running the training event to deal with some sort of issue, be it performance, efficiency, or simply that a task cannot be performed at all until training occurs. If you’ve asked yourself the question “What are the consequences of NOT performing this training?” (and you always should), then you understand why it’s necessary. Keep the students in the classroom. And please do not let this be a reason for NOT moving the class off-site.
Another reason companies opt to keep a class in house is budget. They prefer to reserve their training budgets for training resources like instructors & courseware, and would rather not pay the extra overhead for an outside classroom. However, under certain circumstances, budget may be a reason IN FAVOR of going to an outside facility. Sounds counter-intuitive, but consider this scenario:
You need to train the entire Finance department of 200 people on the latest version of SAP. You do your due diligence, find an excellent FI/CO training vendor, courseware, etc. However, your training room at your site only holds 10 people. If you rented an off-site room, you could train 16 at once. You’ve just reduced your training requirement from 20 courses to 13! Weigh the expense on a per-student basis, and you may actually come out AHEAD by renting an outside classroom.
Don’t take my word for it – run the numbers for yourself. (of course, I’m happy to help if you’d like). Your situation is always unique, and you are your own best judge of your training requirements.


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