Learning technology Support

Typical enterprise software application is controlled and executed by the IT team, but  learning application management is a little different because it usually impacts an internal and external user audience. LMS systems started the same way as other software technologies. But organizations increasingly found that LMSs were slightly different because customers were also a part of the LMS user base. The result was it proved futile to constantly train users on the LMS interface. Expertus’ survey asked training managers ‘How satisfied are you with the support and deployment of your learning technology?’ 70% of respondents chose the ‘high level of dissatisfaction’ to ‘somewhat dissatisfied’ option signifying that they believe the system is in some way hindering learning. Therefore in looking for a partner to create value and to enhance user adoption, organizations need to identify an optimum balance to make their learning dollars more valuable. One of the main aspects to look for when making a decision is that the training partner understands the technology and IT setup of the customer organization. This typically enables the support vendor to provide services globally. Some key strategies for effective vendor relationships are identifying the highest impact audience to define realistic objectives for improving the roll-out process. Spotting the key indicators that measure the success of the installation before hand can really help make the implementation on time and on budget.

Training in a streamlined organization

The increased need for training in a streamlined organization presents some interesting challenges. Our recent round table conference witnessed learning leaders sharing their views on the ways with which they successfully meet these demands and equip their organizations for current and future success. One of the important challenges was to create training programs that ensure excellence without a loss of productivity. The solution that many executives arrived at was to Shift to Virtual and e-Learning.

Roundtable participants earmarked e-learning as a critical training tool in a cost-conscious business climate. A smaller workforce means that productivity has to be maintained by limiting the time that employees are away from their jobs. This makes e-learning development a more efficient method of training. One participant commented that e-learning has allowed for much quicker deployment and can be developed and implemented effectively and efficiently by a “leaner and meaner” training team.

For successful Learning systems

The key driver behind centralization and integration is improved data and reporting. Performance measurement parameters and the relevant data sources should be integrated with the system to generate effective reports. The reason organizations are reluctant to integrate their systems is the high cost of ownership. Also integrations are further impacted by traditional IT model version updates and upgrades.

To minimize the cost of ownership and reduce the pain of multiple integrations, middleware technology can be introduced. This “broker” system can act as a go-between the portals and the multiple applications that serve as data repositories. So any changes in the applications would be detected by the middleware and communicated to the portal. This process simplifies the number of validations and change points between systems and significantly reduces the cost of the technology over time.

At first glance, modifying processes to fit the LMS seems counter intuitive, but it is critical to controlling the cost of your learning systems. The cost of customizing adds up very quickly and tends to be a recurring cost as software upgrades are made. The message here is to centralize LMS services and modify the business processes and reserve customization for only critical long-term enhancements.

Reducing the cost of a typical customization frees up the training dollars to spend on enhancing processes. In the long run, this is a much better approach. The typical LMS is designed for more efficient operations, so patterning your processes after the LMS is usually the right way to improve training efficiency and reduce the recurring cost of customizations.

Need for centralization

Outsourcing proves to be highly cost efficient because it can help an organization centralize and consolidate key learning functions, such as learning facility administration, class rosters and registrations, LMS integration, and content development and management. These functions, often called shared services, tend to be used by multiple units throughout the enterprise.

When organizations have a decentralized learning set-up– that is, when business units autonomously manage learning — these functions are often duplicated. For instance, various business units would likely have their own learning administrative staffs, handle their own class registrations and reports. The positive side of a decentralized approach to training is that business units have complete control over employee learning and can customize all aspects of learning to the specific needs of their employees.

The downside of decentralization is that it is rife with inefficiencies. Technology purchases are duplicated and staffing is often redundant. Integration efforts can be lengthier and more costly because of a lack of standardization. When a learning BPO service provider initially obtains a company’s business, the typical first response is to centralize as many commonly used functions as possible in order to eliminate duplication of tasks. This does usually result in immediate cost savings but it does not account for the need for different business processes.

Get a realistic perspective

While Expertus participated in the CLO Symposium, we had discussions with 23 senior learning executives about a variety of training-related topics. Again and again, executives expressed a high level of frustration with learning management systems (LMSs).

Our recent survey on LMSs also showed significant challenges. More than half of the survey respondents (About 55%) expressed that LMS customization was their top LMS challenge. Integration was next highest. Almost 40% of respondents said their companies did not use the latest versions of their installed LMS. Reasons for not upgrading included lack of budget (38%), impact on previous customization work (32%), uncertainty about version stability (32%), and lack of technical resources (25%).

Why the problems? Are they part of the package, so to speak?

Not necessarily so! But, avoiding major problems does require some upfront thought and a realistic perspective.

Work on LMSs whether an implementation, an upgrade, or a consolidation requires in-depth technical expertise with both the LMS application as well as a wide range of other applications, tools, and content. Even if your LMS is a stand-alone application today, we can assure that you’ll want integration in the future.

We’ve found that most companies require LMS customization whether the LMS is hosted or installed behind a corporate firewall in order to achieve the promised benefits of the application. Most companies simply do not have the technical resources for such work despite what their IT teams may tell them. And LMS projects are too important for them to be viewed as training projects.

Anyone who touches your LMS application also should have what we call domain expertise, a thorough understanding of corporate learning and its best practices. For instance, if you implement an LMS based solely on your current needs, you’ll likely find yourself trapped and limited within the next year or so. Though there’s no need to over-engineer, it is highly essential to consider likely future needs and de facto standards for corporate training.

LMSs are highly sophisticated applications that offer great value if you handle them with care. If you’ve got questions about the direction you’re taking on an LMS-related project, contact us. We’d be happy to offer an objective and practical perspective.

Informal Learning in the corporate scenario

The evolution of informal learning and its relationship to traditional formal learning are some of the key developments in training over the past decade. Call it a learner-centric model, if you will-one where content bubbles up through the organization by coming from anyone and anywhere. Leveraging the power of learning 2.0 services or capabilities can really be beneficial. Informal learning that takes place day to day from person to person is something that we are familiar with, but in a Web 2.0 world of interactivity, various forms of communication, collaboration, information and training become highly personalized. These include informal learning elements such as white papers, wiki’s and blogs, Google searches, knowledge management components and other useful bits and pieces that can be accessed via the Internet- and which don’t necessarily fit within a pre-defined learning structure. There are a variety of ways to leverage the value of informal learning in the corporate scenario, which could otherwise be called as corporate social learning. One is to have managers as instructors where they deal with practical application of the skills acquired and then have participants practice their new skills and provide feedback to determine what is and isn’t working. A second approach is to develop an internal teaching culture that can take advantage of existing resources-including blogs, webinars and the like-to extend learning well beyond the classroom.

And the third is use corporate social learning as a natural adjunct and follow-on to more formal methods, a very cost-effective approach that enables organizations to squeeze more knowledge and value out of the learning continuum. Lastly, a simple Google search really is informal learning. Your Learning Management System or Learning Portal should have the ability to do federated searches. If a student is searching for a class, they should also have the ability to find other resources that might save them a day of training and get the knowledge they need quicker.

For more information log on to http://www.expertus.com/.

www.trainingefficiency.com

Ways to manage training effectively with slashed budgets

The research we conducted recently with www.TrainingIndustry.com has been useful to training organizations across the country, as training budgets are slashed and money becomes tighter.

Our most important recommendation for getting the most value out of your training budget is to focus on managing your training organization like a business.

This could be done by knowing your training organization’s core competency, and your true value to the company as a whole. If you don’t add value through training administration or application management, then it would be apt to shed that work or find ways of streamlining it. Apart from these two areas, training content development is one other area of this kind- typically these are the best areas for improving efficiency and offloading responsibilities.

Our research revealed that the average cost of administering a training program is around 40% of a total training budget. Streamlining or shedding some of these responsibilities allows you to redeploy a percentage of your training budget to more important and valuable services like training delivery and content development, which helps you, obtain a greater ROI. Business process reengineering and outsourcing helps your training organization operate in a more strategic way. This is done by allowing you to focus on designing and delivering learning initiatives that have direct impact on your company’s   performance improvement and competitive position.

During this slow economy and financial crunch it is also important to market your training programs. Building a training program alone will not help in getting higher learner enrollment. This is especially true if you’re shifting from ILT to more cost-effective models such as e-learning development. This is a cultural shift and requires internal marketing to achieve a reasonable adoption rate.

To learn more about this concept and to learn how to eliminate training waste, download our white paper.

If you need to know how to increase the training efficiency of your learning organization, feel free to contact me.

Consequences of distributed training administration

Today many training organizations face the challenge of spending less money and providing more training than ever before, this obviously is to achieve increased training efficiency.

How do learning executives balance spending and results? In a recent study by Training Industry, Inc. and Expertus, half of training executives said that one of their top challenges when it comes to learning measurement is data accuracy and standardization. The effectiveness with which the training money is spent and the efficiency of the training organization is in doubt if this is not resolved.

Organizing the training operations and processes which results in a uniformity in data management is the solution to this.

The biggest enemy of data standardization is distributed training administration, which is notoriously inefficient and inaccurate. That’s because there are multiple people in multiple groups completing the same tasks, but doing it in multiple ways. Various groups within an organization have differences in their processes and procedures, such as registration requirements or course descriptions. Often these process differences are driven by structures or challenges within their skill sets or a lack of bandwidth. The issues that crop up as a result of this can be very costly, both in the short and long term.

For example the process of uploading courses into an LMS. If an organization has various people doing the task, they generally use their own course-naming schemes and their own course descriptions. The result is that it’s difficult for users to find the training they need and managers don’t know what courses to assign to their employees. This acts as a serious obstacle to auto-enrollment and competency management and training utilization stays at a low level.

By centralizing this service, an organization can protect each group or department’s unique needs, while standardizing the important aspects of each of these individual processes and improve resource utilization.

To learn more about this concept and to learn the other 8 ways to eliminate training waste, download the white paper.

If you need advice on how to increase the efficiency of your training organization, feel free to contact me.

Fast-track your training programs with Customer training portals

Customer attention is vital to business success, especially during difficult economic times. That’s when successful companies shift into high gear with training programs that strengthen customer ties, accelerate product adoption and boost profitability. While we at Expertus examined how to align customer learning with business goals to create powerful marketing strategies that fill classrooms and increase training revenues, we explored ways of fast-tracking training programs in a slow economy. One important way is to improve the effectiveness of the customer training Portal or Website.

It’s clear in this age of the Internet that anything a training organization is doing online is better than anything it does offline. Accessing a learning management system (LMS) in real time through a Website or portal is by far the easiest way. Studies have clearly shown that it’s inadvisable for customer trainees to access the LMS directly. That’s because most LMSs are usually very cumbersome and difficult for people who aren’t experts in using it. Improving the effectiveness of learning portals or Websites is not that difficult. The one key that’s probably more important than anything else on the site is that it isn’t about the colors, it isn’t about the content that’s there—it’s about search functionality. It’s important that customers with questions can quickly and easily find the answer—and not to the first page of a 30-page white paper, or the beginning of a video. Can the customer seeking knowledge search the white paper, the video, the audio, the slides, the classroom materials and whatever else by using one federated search engine? It’s vitally important to focus on the user experience. LMSs aren’t really geared to this, so organizations have to find a better way. Relying on the IT organization to build something is one approach, but training organizations typically are not the principal concern of IT staffs. The best way to do this is by focusing on search and the user experience. And the best way to do that is by learning portal development that takes these issues into account.

If your organization is thinking about developing a learning portal or if you are interested in increasing the training efficiency of your learning organization, feel free to contact me.

Multiple advantages of developing a learning portal

To achieve effectiveness in the learning organizations it is quite important to move further than just managing training delivery and controlling the cost of learning activities. As technology is becoming a huge part of the learning experience it’s vital to achieve a high rate of LMS adoption – and that requires a user-centered learning portal or website, that creates learning 2.0 destinations that fits the interest of specific learner segments.

When implementing an LMS, most training managers say their most important objective is to deploy and measure training and increase user return visits. On the other hand, in reality, most LMSs are too cumbersome for the typical learner. The best solution is delivering information in the flavor, format and context that appeal to younger audiences for whom training is often designed. This can be done by developing a learning portal that acts as a front end to your LMS, offering the relevance, immediacy and usability of a Web 2.0 website.

Apart from increasing user friendliness, learning portals tender other advantages. Portal technology means reduced support load on your IT staff, and decreased cost of ownership for the business.

A portal provides multiple advantages for multiple users of the system. It improves the user interface of the system at the front end, while providing administrators maintain a high degree of control at the backend. Though the goal is not to provide everyone with all information, it is to make the right information more accessible, when and where it’s needed. Even for a centralized learning system, it’s imperative to adopt a role-based approach to user access. This allows for capabilities such as informal learning, thus fulfilling the objectives of the organizations and the training managers.

In recent discussions with leading CLOs and Training Directors, Expertus asked, ‘What are the top learning challenges when you don’t have a learning system portal?’ The answers ranged from poor usability, inefficient search capability, unfriendly user interface, slow registrations, and sporadic customer training (check for the case for customer training portal development), to expensive and unnecessary customizations.

One important frequent response was the need for learning organizations to cater to new modes of learning delivery and informal or corporate social learning.

To learn more about this concept and to learn 6 ways to unlock the value of your learning technology, download the white paper.

If you need advice on how to increase the training efficiency of your learning organization, feel free to contact me.