Now that my stint at working for a large corporate is drawing to a close (and a new start looms up ahead), it’s perhaps time to reflect on what I have learned over the past five months.
My main task was to learn the CMS of their websites, and then write training manuals for them. But hey, wasn’t I doing that with Fairy Blog Mother? Of course I was, and now I have had the opportunity to learn a different CMS than WordPress, and understand what facilities are used when coordinating over 30 websites (B2C) and their sisters (B2B) from Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Writing the training manuals has also been good experience. Even without the benefits of Photoshop to hand, I still continued to make them very visual. Done via power-point, I created what could be a slide show, moving through each step as they generated on the page, with previous text greyed out once it had been read.
Explaining something that is generally considered complex is a challenge. It was up to me to make it seem simple, continuous and obvious. Even so, I received some very interesting queries about aspects of the CMS I didn’t realise could cause a problem. It’s exciting when a quandary materialises from nowhere and gratifying when a solution is produced that results in consumer satisfaction. I delight in watching the penny drop when comprehension happens, and the relief flood over them once the black cloud of uncertainty has been lifted.
Another venture I undertook was to write reactionary training presentations. To me it was clear that one exposure of a training module doesn’t make a person an immediate CMS expert. And anyhow, there is only so much you can fit into a training exercise. So I started to break down the ‘modules’ into bite-sized pieces, taking each subject on their own, carefully presented as a ‘How to’ for quick and easy reference.
I also composed answers to frequently asked questions, especially those that weren’t able to be covered in the training sessions. Sometimes it’s the tiniest of little things that cause the biggest barriers, but unless you know the answer, it can seem like a marathon to be endured before the solution is found. And if I can give a hand in solving those problems, then that is a job well done.
