There are certain brand names that conjure up an image. The global company Ricoh gets one thinking about printers and copy machines.
Not anymore.
Ricoh has been in the midst of a worldwide transformation to become a company that provides business services and solutions. And the transformation has meant that Ricoh has had to train and to recruit more information technology specialists than ever before.
“We found it very important to create and train our own specialists in order to help meet the customers’ goals, ” said Roman Loos, who is the chief manager for technical training within the Ricoh Academy in Germany.
As Ricoh moved to becoming a solutions company from a products company, it faced what companies around the world are facing. The need to find more information technologists and to train its existing workforce is a constant theme in today’s global economy.
Ricoh turned to another worldwide company for help: Microsoft.
Microsoft has a certification program called MTA–an acronym for Microsoft Technology Associate. MTA is a recommended entry point into IT certification and job preparation. It’s aimed at both people who are starting in their careers with an eye toward an IT job and for people who have been working at a company for some time and need to understand technology better in their day to day jobs.
The MTA was developed by Microsoft in 2010 and was at first only offered to schools. But in late 2012, it decided to expand its offering to the business community.
“When MTA was offered to business, that was very important to us and our customers,” said Loos. “We decided to change our training from CompTia to MTA for networking and security training.”
In Europe, there is a shortage of information technologists to meet the growing demand that business needs to keep up with the fast moving pace of technological change.
MTA is rapidly becoming an attractive training solution to companies worldwide.
or instance, in Japan, business adoption of MTA is accelerating. Consumer electronics, office products and printing companies are included among those companies using MTA to train new employees, sales representatives and engineers as Japanese companies seek cloud computing solutions.
In the United States, one of the world’s largest IT Training Centers said that is an answer for what he calls the global skills gap explosion.
“Thirty percent of our MTA students are moving into higher certification programs which makes them more marketable for promotion and new jobs,” said Chet Wisinewski of New Horizons Learning in Orlando, Florida. New Horizons trains employees at government contractors, academics, health care and the hospitality industry.
“The universal language in today’s global economy is technology,” said Victoria Pohto, Product Marketing Manager for Microsoft. “Offering MTA to businesses is helping develop new and existing employees who are literate in technology.”
Click here to read the rest of the article on americannewsreport.com