AJ is a Program Manager in a Multinational Software Company. His company has operations across the globe. He travels extensively to meet customer demands and motivate his global team. He operate a huge budget that allows him to move his engineers to different locations across the globle for project execution and customer based trainings.

There is a sudden recession in the economy and Management has cut budget to great extent and AJ's budget was no exception. His Training budget was reduced by 95% and was advised to operate with what he is left with. AJ has already scheduled his annual training calendar and finalised dates and identified engineers for each training programs. He discussed with his team at length and were able to cancel most of the trainings.

One Customer based training seems to be unavoidable. AJ had already recruited this team of engineers for the new project. The project cost included this customer based training while planning. He also gave a commitment to all these new engineers that they will be on-site on customer based training for atleast one year and could join only if they have a valid passport. All the new engineers who joined AJ's team left their previous employer only because of the ON-SITE training assignment.

This being a new project, it cannot be started without product training with the customer. The 5% left on the operations budget will not meet the cost of this training. The management has left AJ to decide what to do but said very clearly that he cannot utilize his budget to send his team on-site.

Consider youself as AJ (Program Manager). What strategic decision would you take to retain the engineers morale, get them the training required, meet customer requirements and save the cost to Management?