Can't afford a training course? Rent the video

By KATHIE SUTIN, Special to the Post-Dispatch, 02/13/2004

NMAU Business Lending Library sends out instructional materials on CD-ROM or DVD for an upfront fee, like Netflix does for movies.

Small-to-midsized businesses can find themselves in a squeeze when it comes to employee training. On a limited budget, they can't afford to spend thousands of dollars on expensive classes.

That's where the NMAU Business Lending Library comes in. The company, based in Creve Coeur but moving soon to Chesterfield, offers memberships in a lending library of training materials.

"We offer a Netflix-type service for businesses," owner Dean Pichee said. "You can borrow and exchange any training videos or CD-ROMs or DVDs that you might need to train your employees."

Subscribers can borrow as many items as they want, but the number of items they can borrow at one time depends on the level of membership they purchase. Memberships start at $2,220 a year for borrowing one item at a time. Most clients buy a Level 3 annual membership for $3,420, allowing them to borrow three items at a time, Pichee said.

Most videos come with leader's and facilitator's guides as well as quizzes and exercises. "It's more than just a little video tape," said Pichee, who started the company in 1996. "It's really a training session that's been prepared for you." Each day, the company receives about 100 return packages and ships out roughly an equal number. It has 3,000 video, CD-ROM and DVD offerings.

An additional 2,000 training courses are available through its online service. The cost of online training begins at $99 per employee a year, depending on the types of courses a client needs.

Topics covered by the lending library and online service are as diverse as certification preparation, sexual harassment, customer service, team building, hiring, firing and leadership.

Royalties, based on usage of the programs, are paid to the producers.

One example of their offerings is "Whale Done," a video about the power of positive spirit in the workplace, featuring the training of Sea World whales.

"It's a great video to show your team or your entire employee base, but the problem is it's an $800 video and you're only going to show it once or twice," Pichee said.

NMAU Business Lending Library's typical client has 50 to 1,500 employees. "They have enough employees that they have real training needs and people problems, but they're not so large that they have a full-scale training department to serve those needs," Pichee said.

The company doesn't focus on any particular industry, but rather offers job-specific or skills-specific training, Pichee said.

Ronn Keyes, a training specialist with the Center for Human Services in Sedalia, Mo., has used the NMAU Business Lending Library for about four years. The nonprofit agency, which has 270 employees, provides services to children and adults with mental and physical disabilities.

"They are an excellent service provider," Keyes said. "We're an agency that needed some flexibility on some of the training courses we offer to new hires and also to staff. It falls in the area of annual training. We needed something that's flexible, so we use a lot of their CD-ROM courses.

"Some of our staff just couldn't do the classroom time," he said. "Having a CD-ROM course, when they can come in at a time of their own choosing, met the needs of a lot of supervisors. That's a big plus for us."

Keyes found the lending library on the Internet when he and his supervisor were looking for a way to deal with his training needs.

The training library's online college offers courses ranging from Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer for information technology professionals to computer literacy for someone "who barely knows how to turn on that computer," Pichee said.

With online courses, the client can track and manage training and development activities, keep assessments or tests that were taken and do online skills assessment or training-needs surveys. Also, it can track a training or learning transcript for each employee.

"It's a way for them to manage and track the learning that's going on in their company," Pichee said.

Pichee has been in the training-video industry for 20 years. He began by producing and selling training videos for Bankers Training and Consulting Co.

Before starting the NMAU Business Lending Library, he owned Capital Training, which specialized in financial-services companies. "We found that small companies just couldn't afford to purchase our materials, so we actually started a small lending library of our own materials," he said. "It was very successful. We ended up selling the company but keeping the idea."

Pichee said only about 3 percent of his company's nearly 1,000 clients are in Missouri; only a few are in St. Louis.

Though most producers of the training materials are on the East and West coasts, Pichee said, it doesn't hurt that his company is in the middle of the nation.

"Right now, it works well because we're essentially a sales and distribution company, and being here in St. Louis is actually an advantage from a shipping standpoint," he said. "We can ship anywhere, and a program arrives within three days.

"I also think there's a real advantage in St. Louis just because of the quality of the work force here," he said. "I think we have an educated work force. We think that's the real strength of our company - the quality of the people that we have here."

One big challenge is getting the word out about what the company offers, Pichee said. The company uses direct marketing, trade associations and chambers of commerce.

Pichee realizes that the NMAU Business Lending Library competes with community colleges, seminar companies and other vendors for budget dollars.

Printed with permission from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. This article is copyrighted (2004) by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.