Even in an industry where rapid change is the status quo, it takes a special kind of company to handle the training challenges posed by a major corporate acquisition and massive product rollout. No one has ever accused Verizon of thinking small-scale when it comes to training initiatives, but over the last year, the telecommunications giant definitely has been taking things up the proverbial notch. The company's acquisition of Alltel in late 2008 precipitated one of its most ambitious training initiatives to date: onboarding close to 12,000 legacy Alltel employees into the Verizon Wireless organization. Even in the absence of high-profile initiatives, the nature of Verizon's business necessitates an ongoing, sustained training push. Verizon has little difficulty tying its training programs to the achievement of its corporate strategic goals. For any company that is looking to improve its training programs (or cut costs from such programs), there's much to learn from the Verizon model.