Get the data you require

Training leaders are faced with the challenge of getting accurate and reliable data on the effectiveness of the training programs. To overcome this challenge one has to generate less data, and more learning intelligence.

Cost and activity measurement is suitable to some extent. But many training leaders struggle in this area, knowing the data they bring to the executive table has limited strategic value. This includes information such as total training hours delivered, total learners trained, and the quantity of classes conducted etc.

In most cases, organizations face two important challenges – unsophisticated LMS reporting capabilities, and data that’s limited to whatever resides in the LMS. In other words, the data they need to produce more valuable business intelligence is hiding in disconnected data sources. That’s because training departments rarely capture some of the most useful information for their reports.

Working closely with various business units can help to overcome the first obstacle, because they typically gather critical performance data. For example, you’re likely to find appropriate performance metrics, quota attainment data, and employee evaluation scores-all of which is valuable.

Comparing that information with training participation patterns will provide evidence that helps quantify the impact of your training programs.

For the second issue – dealing with fragmented data distributed throughout disconnected databases – there are three possible solutions:

(1) Pulling data into a single system. Usually, this is an unrealistic option, especially for large corporations.

(2) Build connection points between specialized systems. Assessment data typically exists within an assessment tool database (LMS or HRMS). And various functional groups in your company may have their own performance or evaluation-focused systems. The challenge is how to create and maintain feasible connections to gather all the critical data needed for a complete reporting structure.

(3) Create data marts or similar repositories. This implies consolidating all essential data from multiple systems into a single database, enabling you to build reports from a central resource. This is usually the easiest and most cost-effective solution.

To learn more about this concept, and to find out more about how to optimize your learning technology, download the white paper: Secrets of Successful Learning Systems.

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

Obtaining the real value of outsourcing

One of the key reasons why organizations outsource training activities is to achieve cost savings. And most accomplish this objective. According to a 2005 survey, firms that outsource training reduce total per learner costs by 31%. But what does this mean? These savings come at the cost of satisfaction and customized support of business units. And without these critical stakeholders, any outsourcing initiative is likely to fail.

THE EXPERTUS FORMULA FOR SUCCESS

Costs are certainly important. Outsourcing can bring efficiencies in many areas that businesses just can’t match. For instance, those companies outsourcing training administration have a reduction of 30 to 40% in administrative staff (per 1,000 learners). Nevertheless, focusing solely on cost reductions can be extremely short-sighted. Consider this: The typical corporation allocates from 1 to 3% of its overall operating budget to learning. On average, labor costs absorb 70% of that same budget. By identifying where training can impact overall workforce performance and have direct correlation to business results, even fractional improvements can produce remarkable financial reward. Through complete understanding of business unit requirements and an objective analysis of business processes, Expertus can help its customers identify areas of greatest business impact and help in establishing how these rank in terms of priority. Learning strategy Consultants assigned to each business unit ensure each manager is made to feel like a major stakeholder and has the opportunity for direct input. They can also be highly valuable in preparing formal, business-based proposals for new investments or programs.

We also encourage continual input and feedback from business managers. Typically, we set up quarterly review meetings to go over learner data collected and to discuss all aspects of current and planned programs. Besides helping us continually improve service, these meetings also increase each manager’s level of involvement and ownership in learning.

Optimizing training costs

While optimizing your learning organization, it is important to consider optimizing learning technology support and training administration. This is the human activity that surrounds learning technology, like technology support, or the cost of administration.

This is where Software as a Service (SaaS) can play an essential role. Today  as many LMS providers provide software as a hosted service, the need to buy, implement, and manage learning technology is reducing. Security isn’t the issue that it used to be and you can be confident that your technology and training is secure.

In a recent survey by TrainingIndustry.com and Expertus, we found that the average corporate training organization spends 39% of their budget on training administration and training technology. This means that only 61% of the average training budget is spent on training development and delivery, which is the “reason for being” of any training organization.

Much to the delight of learning executives, there are organizations like Expertus with teams of people focused solely on learning technology support. These vendors train and manage their people to support various LMS and LCMS systems and have deep experience with learning domains, best practices, efficient processes, and IT bandwidth. This deep experience is typically lacking in most corporate training departments.

The big benefit is more efficient training processes, which result in lower costs that can be re-allocated to the important stuff, which is training development and delivery.  I highly recommend tapping into these types of services.

For more information, take a look at the recent white paper, Eliminate Waste and Reap the Rewards: Nine Ways to Trim Operational Expenses to fund Strategic Learning, available at www.TrainingEfficiency.com.

If your organization wants to increase the training efficiency, in terms of your learning technology or training processes, or if looking for LMS implementation and LMS upgrade services contact me.

For more information log on to www.expertus.com

www.trainingefficiency.com

Increase the value of your training budget

As training budgets are slashed and money becomes tighter, our recent research findings are being quite useful to training organizations across the country.

To maximize the value of your training budget it is very important to start managing your training organization like a business.

To start with, it is important to know your training organization’s core competency, and your true value to the company as a whole. If your value is not in training administration or application management, then it would be a good idea to shed that work or find ways to streamline it. This will help you gain focus on your core areas. Training content development is one other area of this kind which could either be shed or streamlined for improved efficiency in the training organization.

According to our research, cost of training administration accounts for around 40% of a total training budget. Streamlining or shedding some of these responsibilities makes it possible to redeploy a percentage of your budget to more valuable services like training delivery and content development, and yields a greater return on investment. Business process reengineering and outsourcing allow your organization to operate in a more strategic way – by letting you focus on designing and delivering learning initiatives that directly help your company improve its performance and competitive position.

It is also important to market your training programs, especially during this financial crunch. Just because you build a program doesn’t mean learners will enroll! This is especially true if you’re moving away from instructor-led training to more cost-effective models such as e-learning development. This cultural shift typically 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 advice on how to increase the training efficiency of your learning organization, feel free to contact me.

Learning management systems and their challenges

When we had discussions with senior learning executives about a variety of training related topics, we found that, executives expressed a high level of dissatisfaction with learning management systems (LMSs).

Our recent survey on LMSs also revealed significant challenges. Almost 55% of survey respondents said that their top LMS challenge is customization. Integration was next highest. One other important finding was that, almost 40% of them did not use the latest versions of their installed LMS. Reasons for not upgrading included lack of budget (38%), uncertainty about version stability (32%), impact on previous customization work (32%),  and lack of technical resources (25%).

All these might arise the question – Are problems part of the package?

Not necessarily so! But to avoid major problems does require some upfront thought and to have a realistic perspective.

LMS implementation, upgradation, 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. Your LMS might be a stand-alone application today, but we can guarantee that you’ll want integration in the future.

LMS customization is the major requirement for most companies to achieve the promised benefits of the application. This is the case whether the LMS is hosted or installed behind a corporate firewall. On the other hand, 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.

To work on your LMS application it is very important to have what we call domain expertise, a complete understanding of corporate learning and its best practices. For instance, if your LMS implementation is based solely on your current needs, then there are chances of getting yourself trapped and limited within the next year or so. Though there’s no need to over-engineer, it is quite important to consider likely future needs and de facto standards for corporate training.

Highly sophisticated applications like LMSs offer great value if handled 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.

Leverage the value of web 2.0 capabilities for learning

The evolution of informal learning and its relationship to formal learning are some of the key developments in training over the past decade. This can be called as a learner-centric model, where content comes from anyone and anywhere in the organization. Informal learning which takes place everyday from person to person is something that we are familiar with, but in a Web 2.0 world of interactivity, there are various forms of collaboration, information and training that become highly personalized. These consist of a variety of 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. These are mostly things 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 make the learners practice what they have learnt and provide feedback on what is working and what is not. A second approach is to develop an internal teaching culture where the existing resources like blogs, webinars etc are taken advantage of, which would enable to extend learning well beyond the classroom.

And the third is to 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 relevant 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

A case for the training portal

Achieving effectiveness in the learning organizations requires to move beyond just managing training delivery and controlling the cost of learning activities. It crucial to achieve a high rate of LMS adoption, since technology is such a big part of the learning experience – and that demands a user-centered learning portal or website.

When implementing an LMS, most training managers say their major goal is to deploy and measure training and increase user return visits. Though, in reality, most LMSs are too cumbersome for the typical learner. This can be solved by 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. This also facilitates bringing out the hidden values of the learning systems deployed and to make the complete utilization of the technology.

In addition to increasing user friendliness, learning portals offer other advantages. Portal technology means reduced support load on your IT staff, and decreased cost of ownership for the business.

A portal also improves the user interface of the system at the front end, while providing administrators maintain a high degree of control at the backend. Although the objective 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 important to take a role-based approach to user access. This allows for capabilities such as informal learning. Thus, LMSs will increasingly move from playing the role of mainframe systems that hold and track registrations to providing formal and informal learning with the addition of portals.

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.

Though, one important recurring 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.

ILT to Blended learning

Based on a recent survey by Expertus, the most important strategy that learning organizations are considering for the cost reduction of training delivery is to transfer instructor-led training to either blended learning or e-learning. The obvious advantages here are cost reductions in travel, facilities, equipment and trainers.

Though, organizations should not focus only on cutting the costs. They should also work to leveraging the big benefits that blended learning development provides—such as accessibility, reusability, effectiveness, and particularly scalability.

Though E-learning is available 24/7, organizations don’t have to deliver all of their content as classic e-learning modules. Designed appropriately and broken down into small, usable pieces, e-learning can be utilized for time-of-need training, alerts, or performance support. Organizations should think about looking at small learning modules, even if it means some content conversion into reference materials, lists, diagrams, stories, or lessons-learned.

A great deal of value can be assured if certain information is made available quickly, and in an easy-to-digest form. An option may be to set up some learning outside of the LMS. If the LMS cannot be configured for immediate and easy access, then put the developed content outside. Eliminating the requirement to track it will make it easier for learners to access and digest the content faster.

For more details on this subject and to find out other ways to increase your training efficiency, please download our recent webinar recording or read our white paper, Eliminate Waste and Reap the Rewards: Nine Ways to Trim Operational Expenses to Fund Strategic Learning, both available at http://www.trainingefficiency.com/.

If your organization is thinking about repurposing your ILT content into E-Learning, creating content without compromise or if you’re interested in increasing the efficiency of your learning technology infrastructure, contact me.

Get your LMS aligned with your business

In most instances, learning organizations face the challenge of the training technologies not communicating with other enterprise systems effectively. Even our recent Learning systems optimization survey witnessed 64 percent of training executives reporting this issue.

All kinds of software systems were always expected to interact with other computer applications, ever since 1960s, when the first mainframe computers hit the market. Currently, companies are looking to their learning technologies to support their initiative to obtain trackable, measurable business results, through integration of LMS with other applications like CRM, HRMS, portals and business intelligence software. While learning technology integration issues are one of the major issues discussed today, what is that which is the root cause of this challenge?

When trying to identify why these learning technologies are not communicating effectively with other enterprise systems, we understand, that the business processes and learning initiatives are not aligned.

There are many protocols, tools and technologies on the market today that help technology systems speak the same language. But ultimately, to achieve communication between systems, it takes two other things.

1. Review your learning activities against your business goals and current processes. Based on that assessment, a long-term strategic plan can be positioned to build communication channels for software systems and varied groups of employees.

2. Take that plan and acquire, maintain or upgrade your technology infrastructure regularly.

For the complete utilization of your learning tools it is imperative to have such an approach. This helps your learning technologies to do a lot of “speaking” that could be heard aloud.

If your organization is grappling with LMS integration issues or if you’re interested improving the efficiency of your learning technology infrastructure and your entire training efficiency, contact me.

Training administration – Trim your operational expenses

One of the ways  to trim the cost of your training programs is to centralize your training support, but not your processes.

Let me explain.

We can probably all agree that decentralized training administration is inefficient.

It becomes a problem when there are multiple administrators in multiple groups completing the same tasks or transactions, but doing it in multiple ways. Various groups within an organization have variations in their processes and procedures, such as registration requirements or course description details. But very often these differences are because of lack of bandwidth or minimal training.

For instance, the process of uploading courses to an LMS. If an organization has various people doing this, it’s common to see different administrators using different course-naming schemes and course descriptions. The result is that it’s difficult for users to find courses, for managers to assign courses to their employees, and for anyone to get dependable reports out of the system. This becomes a serious hindrance to good training reporting, auto-enrollment and competency management. The resulting issues can be very costly, both in the short and long term.

So, centralization of learning support and learning operations management is critical, which goes without saying.

On the otherside, it’s not a good idea to develop inflexible processes that don’t adapt to the needs of your customers, the business units. Be careful about trying to eliminate customized support that they’ve grown accustomed to. Dissatisfaction quickly rises when executives feel their needs and interests are not heard, considered, and acted upon. this becomes almost very important while deciding on the process changes.

Establishing a decentralized approach to customer learning support is that business units have adequate control over employee learning and can tailor all aspects of learning to the specific needs of their employees.  Long term, you get ever closer to the elusive goal of aligning learning with business objectives, creating an ideal situation.

To learn more about the concept of Centralized Services and Decentralized Processes, download the white paper.

For more information on this topic and the nine ways to trim operational expense, please download the recent webinar or read our white paper, Eliminate Waste and Reap the Rewards: Nine Ways to Trim Operational Expenses to Fund Strategic Learning, both available at http://www.trainingefficiency.com/.

If your organization wants to increase the training efficiency in terms of your learning technology or training processes, contact me.

For more information log on to www.expertus.com

www.trainingefficiency.com