EDS: When People are the Product

David James Clarke IV - 12/28/05

EDS is a global corporation that provides a broad portfolio of business and technology solutions to help clients improve their business performance. The firm’s core portfolio includes information technology, applications and business process services and information technology transformation services. EDS is ranked 95th on the Fortune 500, with 2004 revenues exceeding $20 billion.

At EDS, people are the product, and the breadth of product is massive. The company has approximately 117,000 employees in 60 countries around the globe, with more than 85,000 in IT-related roles in areas such as applications development, infrastructure, help desk and networking.

In the past year, under the direction of Keith Bridges, Ph.D., CPT, director of technical development within global learning and development, EDS has re-skilled more than 50,000 technical consultants. “EDS is committed to re-skilling our entire technical workforce through a blended learning approach, centered on hands-on experiences,” Bridges said. The “Technical Excellence Program” has been specifically constructed to handle this rapid training effort and to service the specific needs of EDS’s technical community.

“Technical Excellence includes skill development like the IT certification paths and so forth, but it also includes what we call the TEP Immersion Workshop,” Bridges said. “That is actually a two-week, instructor-led class that we are deploying all over the world in the 60-plus countries where we have people. This particular course, while it’s called Technical Excellence, is really an in-depth understanding of the technical direction of EDS as it applies to the agile enterprise platform, which is EDS’ new system.”

The goals for the Technical Excellence Program are:

Train technical staff more quickly, establishing common skills so the company can focus on timely, low-cost delivery.
Enhance employee skills development.
Cut costs, while improving employee morale, job satisfaction and retention rates.
Promote personal enrichment for employees by improving morale, job satisfaction and individual skill sets.
Generate positive ROI for the consulting business practices.