1. Training ROI Keeping
Deere
Running
John Deere’s training motto is “No boundaries,”
and that is appropriate when considering its cen-
tralized training structure. The company devel-
oped a centralized system for training develop-
ment and management and an organized, struc-
tured skills-development curriculum for all
employees at North American dealerships. That
involves a lot of training. In North America
alone, Deere has 30,000 dealership employees
selling and servicing its agricultural products.
Training the service technicians at those
dealerships is a crucial component of Deere’s
training program, as their performance affects
warranty costs and customer service for its North
American customers. Deere is constantly looking
for ways to train those technicians more effi-
ciently.
“At John Deere, we consider our training to
be a competitive advantage and a product support
requirement,” said Todd Zehner, training delivery
manager for John Deere. “We have complex
products and need qualified personnel in our deal-
erships to support the products.”
Reprinted from ASTD Conference Proceedings: ROI Network, University of Maryland, December 2002
ACT Reprint Series
As John Deere’s
reach spreads all over
the world, the efficiency of
its technician training
is becoming increasingly
important. Taking
advantage of ACT’s
training evaluation
methods, Deere
discovered the many
benefits of its
training system.

2. Deere has developed an Electrical/ Electronic
(E/E) Certification course for the technicians who
work on Deere agricultural products, including
tractors and combines. The training’s main pur-
pose is to improve service technician skills
related to diagnosing and repairing electrical and
electronic problems.
Service technicians typically work with
equipment that breaks down during crucial plant-
ing or harvesting times. The time spent fixing the
equipment needs to be short in order to maintain
customer satisfaction. Also, the equipment is
expensive—often costing hundreds of thousands
of dollars—and is often still on warranty, which
can mean significant costs for Deere.
Those costs were the primary reason that
Deere wanted to evaluate its E/E Certification
training. If the technicians could perform more
effective diagnoses and repairs, they could signif-
icantly decrease Deere’s warranty costs because
the right components would be repaired the first
time they were diagnosed.
Deere wanted to analyze the effectiveness of
its technician-training methods, both in terms of
cost and in participants’ post-training job perfor-
mance. It also wanted to provide evidence of the
value of the course to dealership owners. The
company had three questions to answer:
1. Do course participants and their managers
agree on post-training performance improvements?
2. What are the dollar values of those improve-
ments?
3. What is the return on investment for the
training?
John Deere’s North American Agricultural
Marketing Center hired Training Evaluation
Services, part of ACT’s Workforce Productivity
Solutions™
, to conduct a study detailing Deere’s
return on training investment.
Examining the course
The E/E Certification course is a four-day
event designed to teach technical personnel about
basic electrical theory and troubleshooting, using
both in-class lectures and hands-on learning
activities. Offered throughout North America, the
course begins and ends with tests—one entry-
knowledge pretest and one post-course test in
which the trainee must demonstrate a specified
level of competence. Data from the two tests
show the amount of information trainees
absorbed from the course.
John Deereis a worldwide
leader in farm equipment manufacturing and a Fortune 500
company. In North America alone, more than 30,000 technicians in
agricultural dealerships sell and repair its products.

3. ACT first interviewed service managers at
North American Deere dealerships, as well as
training instructors and participants, to get a bet-
ter understanding of course objectives and
methodology, and to determine how the course’s
impact could be measured. Service managers
were asked to describe service technician demo-
graphics and various factors relating to their job
performance, including skills, knowledge, turn-
over rates, experience, and training. The group
also was asked to provide information on the
types of maintenance the technicians perform and
problems they encounter—in order to find out
how the training was expected to be applied—and
what measures they use to track their efficiency.
Using the findings from those interviews,
two questionnaires were constructed—one for
Deere service technicians who had completed the
certification course and one for their managers.
The questions contained parallel content for com-
parison purposes, including an open-ended item
asking for respondents’ views on the training
course and the certification process. The parallel
content of the questions aided in demonstrating
whether managers and technicians shared the
same views on training and certification. For
example, managers and technicians were both
asked whether they agree or disagree that techni-
cians spend less time diagnosing problems after
E/E training. If they agreed, both groups were
asked to give an estimate of how much diagnosis
time was saved per job (less than one hour to
greater than five hours or more).
To evaluate the questionnaire results, ACT
focused on the third and fourth levels of Donald
Kirkpatrick’s widely used four-level system of
training evaluation. Kirkpatrick’s third level con-
cerns how trainees change their work behavior
after completing training, which is typified by the
agree/disagree item involving the time spent diag-
nosing problems. In this case, the change in
behavior would be an increase in diagnosis effi-
ciency since completing training. Asking for a
reduced diagnosis-time estimate addressed Kirk-
patrick’s fourth level, giving Deere concrete data
relating to how training affected a performance
metric—in this case, how much time was saved in
diagnosing equipment problems.
Results
A total of 432 surveys were completed. ACT
analyzed the data and developed a detailed report
for Deere, assessing these performance metrics:
• Diagnostic time saved
• Repair time saved
• Parts saved
• Time spent finding information
• Number of service returns
Among the findings were that E/E Certifica-
tion training reduced diagnostic and repair time,
as well as the waste of parts during repair.
Training Evaluation
Servicesis a component of ACT’s
Workforce Productivity Solutions™
, which provides a
sophisticated system of strategic measurement, assessments, needs analysis,
and program evaluation services to help organizations focus on
strategies and tactics essential to organizational success.

4. Training also affected service returns, reducing
them by 20 percent. ACT also reported to Deere a
significant return on training investment. For
every dollar Deere spent on training in the U.S.,
Deere received a net benefit of $1.34. In Canada,
the ROI numbers showed a $1.55 net benefit (in
Canadian dollars) for every training dollar spent.
The study also found that technicians saw addi-
tional benefits from the training, including an
increased understanding of electrical schematics
and of how to read and use technical manuals.
Standard practice calls for assessing the level
of confidence in the measurement results devel-
oped during the study. For the level of confidence
in the ROI numbers, the study used information
from the technicians’ and managers’ question-
naires. It took into account the average percent-
age of agreement between technicians and man-
agers across three of the performance metrics
studied. The ROI confidence levels were:
• 96 percent for time saved in diagnosis
• 84 percent for time saved in repair
• 92 percent for parts saved
Taking the levels of agreement into account
among managers and technicians, the confidence
levels to the ROI results would change so that the
net benefit would be $1.13 and $1.31 in the U.S.
and Canada, respectively.
In addition, responses to the written question
gave Deere a detailed view of how managers and
technicians viewed the training. Responses
included positive comments (“very informative,
excellent instructors”), negative comments
(“when the classes are four days or more at a time
it gets too long”), and suggestions on how to
improve E/E training (“it would be nice to test out
of classes if possible”).
Zehner said Deere has found ACT’s training
evaluation to be a competitive advantage.
“ACT has a very objective, honest, and sci-
entific approach to measuring training effective-
ness,” he said. “The results are determined and
presented very well. Our experience with ACT
has been very positive.”
For more information on John Deere, go to
www.deere.com.
For more information on ACT’s Training Evaluation
Services, go to www.act.org/workforce/consult.html.
“At John Deere, we consider
our training to be a competitive advantage and a product support
requirement. We have complex products and need qualified
personnel in our dealerships to support the products.”
Todd Zehner,
Manager of Training Delivery
for John Deere