OTHER ARTICLES Georgia Reaches Into the Future With Caterpillar Companies Have Georgia on Their Minds Georgia Proves Fertile Ground for E*Trade Briggs & Stratton: State Quick Starts an Engine Manufacturer Workforce Development Expert Sees Quick Start a Solid National Model Focus: Vice Presidents, Economic Development Programs Technical Institutes Brief R. K. Sehgal

Georgia Proves Fertile Ground for Fast-Growing Online Company In the world of electronic commerce, time moves at a pace somewhere between a "New York minute" and warp speed. Such is "E*Trade time" at the Alpharetta office of E*Trade, which provides online investment services for consumers. Even in stepped-up, E*Trade time, Quick Start receives rave reviews for its flexible training packages and well-coordinated service. During a 1997 site search in the South and Southwest, Atlanta impressed California-based E*Trade with the quality of the city's employee candidate pool and proximity to high technology and technology training. Because E*Trade knew it was poised for major market growth, a top priority was how to meet customer demand quickly at the new location. Quick Start's responsiveness and its training resources helped convince the company that Georgia should surge ahead of two sites in Texas to win the E*Trade business expansion. "Even though Quick Start impressed us up front, I was skeptical about the group's ability to deliver in our fast-paced environment," says Suzi White, E*Trade's vice president, customer service. "But at every turn, Quick Start exceeded our expectations. "Not only has the training increased the retention of customer service associates, but also participants have come to expect the quality and consistency of Quick Start materials," says White. "In our culture, improvements in customer-service delivery come from the bottom up. The reference materials from Quick Start serve as aids for improved job performance." For example, E*Trade customer service associates had put together their own database system. A Quick Start overview of the system yielded a protocol for navigating it and streamlined how associates could find information. Prior to Quick Start's work with the company, new customer service associates took three to four months to achieve the learning curve on product and performance knowledge. After Quick Start training, the company reports that the learning curve is achieved in three to four weeks. Cyber-savvy companies such as E*Trade have opportunities not open to brick and mortar operations. But with the freedom and equality in cyberspace, competitive edges can erode rapidly. On-line service providers must respond quickly when opportunities do arise. "Because we move so fast, our philosophy had always been 'just get the job done,'" says White. "Before Quick Start worked with us, we had plenty of good subject matter, but it lacked organization, flow and focus. There was no corporate big picture on how training should be executed. "Quick Start's impact came from putting the pieces together. Now we have a consistent, well coordinated training package, where the modules fit together so they can be interchanged." Flexibility and interchange are important in E*Trade time, where tremendous growth can often interrupt training schedules or cause classes to be abbreviated. Things aren't expected to slow down. With 100-percent growth planned at, the Atlanta location over the next six months, Quick Start will have more opportunities to help the company refine and expand its customer-service training. The company plans to expand its service delivery to include 24-hour, seven-day-a-week, live coverage. The expanded service will mean more than 2,000 new jobs for Georgians. Training also will be updated to accommodate the growing importance of IPOs (initial purchase offerings), bonds and mutual funds in the product mix.

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