Training on your own documents vs generic AI courses
Generic AI courses teach what the tools can do. Training on your own documents teaches your people to do their actual work with them — proposals from your call transcripts, a knowledge assistant on your policies, reports from your sheets. The second changes habits; the first mostly builds awareness.
What is the difference, in one example?
A generic course shows how to summarise a document. Training on your own work has your account manager summarise yesterday’s client call from the real transcript, turn the follow-ups into tasks, and draft the proposal using your pricing sheet — then do it again for homework on the next call. One builds understanding. The other ends with a working habit and a measurable time saving.
When is a generic course enough?
For awareness across a large company, for people who will rarely use AI, or as a free first step before a team programme. Self-paced libraries are cheap and fine for that. They rarely change how a team works together, because nothing in them is about the team’s work.
How is company-specific training built?
- Each participant names one task to hand to AI before the first session.
- The programme is assembled from modules and adapted to those tasks.
- Every session uses real documents: contracts, policies, product documentation, call transcripts.
- Homework is the participant’s own task, reviewed by the trainer.
- A rule set on what must never go into a model is written for your data, not in general.
How can you tell them apart before buying?
Ask the provider what happens in the week before session one. If the answer is “nothing, the syllabus is ready”, it is a generic course. If it is “we collect your tasks and documents and adapt the programme”, it is built for you. Then ask to see a before-and-after report from a previous client. Ours from ImLink is public.
Questions
Do you need access to confidential documents?
Only those the participants choose to work with, under a written agreement. Sensitive material can stay out entirely; we use anonymised examples instead.
Does this take more of our time?
About an hour of preparation per participant before the first session, and homework between sessions. That time is spent on their own work, so it pays back during the programme.
How we write these guides: figures about our own work come from before-and-after measurements on client projects (names withheld where under NDA); market figures come from the sources listed, with the date we checked them. Prices exclude VAT.
