The Business Case For ELearning [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Learning Portals for Productivity: Facilitating the Manager

As a business tool and process, skills-gap analysis efforts stand to generate substantial productivity advantages. A unique element of the process is how closely line managers are tied to the development efforts undertaken by their teams. Because line managers have a vested interest in their teams' success, the approach creates automatic organizational buy-in for learning within the organization.

A portal such as MyDevelopment, deployed by Cisco Sales Force Development, generates output that is useful to managers for work-force development decision making without the additional paperwork and other cumbersome activities.

Following is the list of outputs from the process flow that a portal might generate for business-focused implementation of a skills- and competency-based development effort. (See Figure 7-1.)

Selection of success attributes.

To begin, managers can identify key business drivers and priorities within an organization and select the attributes against which employees are to assess themselves.

For example, a senior manager responsible for sales forces development in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) might be faced with distinct product training needs for each of the submarkets. The senior manager in this example might decide to focus on advanced technologies in the Western European markets, core technologies in Eastern European markets, solution selling in Middle Eastern markets, and new product introductions in Africa.

Prioritization and forecasting by territory.

The analysis should enable management to prioritize and forecast by territory, identifying spending against development and rapid response to changes within each region of the organization.

In the example of training in EMEA, the prioritization would translate into making decisions about what type e-communication, e-training, and e-assessment tools are needed in each of the markets, the number of users expected for each of the tools, and the speed of implementation in each of the markets. Accordingly, decisions around budgets and delivery timelines for learning tools would depend on such analysis.

Progress review.

Management can retrieve reports to see the skills trends within the overall organization.

Because each of the markets in this example have distinct learning objectives, the senior manager can retrieve learning successes achieved by the sales force in each of the markets and measure progress against the business objectives for that particular region.

Input into individual learning plans.

Combining a development forecast with territory priorities and seeing the overall analysis of an organization, managers should be able to assign learning that ensures that they have reached the team or departmental goals.

The tool offers the capability to drill down to the individual level to provide insight into any deviations from the plan. The senior manager can adjust the strategy or allocate more resources toward implementation of the learning tools by reviewing the progress of specific individuals, if needed.

Determine a return on investment (ROI) on learning.

After the team has completed its targeted learning plans and has been applying their knowledge and skills, managers can assess the ROI and use those results to influence future business decisions and priorities.

Six months or a year into the implementation, the senior manager in our example of EMEA can determine the improvement in the visibility and improved sales of products and solutions based on each of the markets. Customer satisfaction numbers, feedback from the sales personnel, and feedback from sales leadership can offer useful input into quantifying the improvement specific learning initiatives have made in each of the regions.