Reaping the Business Rewards of Online Training
How can an online training solution go from a simple cost and time-savings initiative to a key driver of business advantage? Because the advantages of e-learning can be leveraged into a much broader range of transformative capabilities: One-to-many scalability – The economies of scale online learning delivers enables organizations to dramatically increase the ratio of learners to trainers. Companies can grow the number of employees, add training requirements, and increase the amount of training offered without having to grow the training budget correspondingly—and can further extend these resources to the very edges of their customer base and supply chains using the same resources. This scalability garners greater results when applied to the re-use of training materials, either for serial delivery in live online sessions, or as self-served, on-demand modules, created once and consumed multiple times.
Matching information delivery to business goals – Online learning enables cost-effective delivery of targeted training – mapping training objectives directly to the business goals of the company. Training specialists can now replace all-day, multi-topic training with briefer, live online sessions targeted to specific subject, function, or job role, improving information retention and rapidly delivering business benefit.
Capturing performance metrics and compliance – Unlike traditional learning methods, online training offers a wealth of easily tracked data on users and the training information they interact with. This allows training organizations to, perhaps for the first time, track compliance with learning objectives and to visibly demonstrate the efficiencies and cost benefits of e-learning. Organizations can further document how, when, and on what subjects training was conducted, supporting compliance with regulatory and corporate requirements.
Extending working capital – By enabling organizations to effectively train more people and create and deliver more training content with less resources, online training frees up working capital that can be applied to other business areas and allows the training organization to provide ever greater results with less budget. Creating new revenue streams – Organizations can productize training classes or modules as cost-based offerings to generate additional revenue, even leveraging previously internally-focused trainings for consumption by external audiences. The training organization is transformed from a cost center to a revenue center.
Increased productivity – With online training, attendees and trainers don’t need to leave their desks or travel for training. Learning modules can be consumed at a pace that increases retention, and schedules can be designed to maximize attendance and convenience. Training can also be delivered at a faster pace, so information can be applied to actual business tasks more rapidly. Finally, the training organization is able to replace time spent on travel or all-day training with more productive tasks, such as developing relevant content, which results in better training, and ever more productive employees.
Real Results from Real Organizations
The following case studies present real results from organizations that have moved beyond the initial benefits of cost and timesavings available from online training, and have successfully realized greater productivity, efficiency, and strategic advantage. These three organizations – Canon, Compulink, and Mexico’s National Institute of Public Health (NIPH) – are some of the many companies and organizations who have used WebEx Training Center to transform not only how they deliver training, but their businesses as well.
Canon: Accelerating Time-to- Market with WebEx Training Center
A subsidiary of Japan-based Canon, Inc., Canon U.S.A. is an industry leader in professional business and consumer imaging equipment and information systems. With seven regional centers located throughout the Americas, the Imaging Systems Group supports a sales force of 8,000 people in a dealer network.
Overcoming Dealer Reluctance to Selling Software
In early 2000, Canon began reformulating its Imaging Systems Group objectives to address a mature copier market. This involved developing document management and workflow solutions that would provide an additional revenue stream while also driving copier sales. Marketing the new products through its existing dealer network, however, was challenging.
“Our dealers had been very successful selling our copiers and digital MFP’s, but they are hardware-oriented and didn’t have strong software competencies,” recalls Mitch Bardwell, Director and Assistant General Manager of the Sales Training Division at Canon’s Imaging Systems Group. “Since our dealers were not experienced in selling software, they were reluctant to outfit their showrooms with software to conduct training at each Canon dealer location. The only other choice was to send sales reps to a Canon regional training center, a solution that was too inefficient, expensive, and impractical to implement across its dealer network.”.
