We never stop hearing about the frenzied pace of technology's advance, but we hear relatively little about what is needed to keep IT pros abreast of the changes. IT teams require periodic training to do their jobs well, and summer is a great time to send them out to get it, writes CIO magazine's Todd R. Weiss.

ERP might be a good place to start when it comes to getting the staff's skills up to snuff, Weiss suggests. Panorama Consulting Group offers an ERP Boot Camp consisting of lectures, insights from analysts, shared anecdotes from the field and information about suppliers. The camp provides more of a strategic and operations perspective than technical training.

Five IT employees and the finance director for SparkFun Electronics participated in the boot camp this spring. The company was considering deploying commercial ERP software at some point, and the camp was intended to bring the team up-to-speed on systems that were available.

"Going to the boot camp was a good thing," said Susan Nylen, SparkFun's finance director. "They warned us about where the land mines are and shared the stories of companies who have been incorporating ERP, as well as some of the horror stories you hear in the news."

For more:
- see Todd R. Weiss's article at CIO

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