Three of the biggest issues the Learning & Development (L&D) Organisation faces are content creation and managing content and reporting compliance. These lead to a number of questions that we must ask ourselves. Perhaps you have gone through the scenario when a new system or process is introduced to the business and you are asked to “put together” a training course. Costs are rising as one hour of content costs $1,772 USD to create, up from $1,471USD in 2011[i], the first question that must be asked is, “do we have the budget to create that training?”[i] Once content is created, the L&D organisation must troubleshoot any issues and determine how to push this out to employees. The second question when creating new training, is, “do we have the resources to support it?” Lastly, as a learning and development professional, we have all had “fun” trying to prove that employees are trained and compliant in their jobs. This could be from gathering different spreadsheets from regions or different reports from various Learning Management Systems (LMS). The question L&D organisations much ask, is do we have the data and can it be reported on? We must also ask is the training delivered throughout the organisation the same - the same curriculum and the same quality. SAP offers three products that provide a full solution to alleviate the administrative burdens that the L&D organisation face.
SAP Workforce Performance Builder (WPB) is a tool that simplifies the process of creating learning content. WPB lets you combine reading, listening and simulations to create engaging content. Engaging content can allow the user to consume it in a more tangible manner that helps retain knowledge more efficiently. When change in regulations or processes occur, WPB allows the subject matter experts to update the content quickly and painlessly. Using wizard-guided creation tools, pre-recorded content, automatic content updates and localization for multilanguage content organisations can significantly reduce the cost and time of creating e Learning.
Most companies struggle with managing their learning content assets. Premium Content Management (PCM) uniquely provides ‘Content as a Service’ (CaaS) which removes the burden of online content management, reducing costs, increases training efficiency, and greatly improves the user experience. PCM adds an additional resource to your L&D team to specifically help manage and test content. By reducing the overhead and infrastructure administration, organizations realize substantial cost savings and ensure faster, more reliable content delivery. Much more than content hosting, PCM provides bandwidth & delivery (via Akamai), management, security and updates for all of your e learning. PCM enables you to focus on what matters- the quality and effectiveness of your training.
After creating and testing the content now, the L&D administrator must determine how to deliver and report on the training. SuccessFactors LMS allows L&D administrators to quickly push out the training that they have developed to their users. From an Assignment standpoint, we have built a powerful rules-based assignment engine that allows you to mix & match user defined rule sets to assign training courses and programs to your employees. It significantly reduces administrative overhead and the need for manual intervention. Once set up, you can allow the system to do the work for you. Once training is completed, the administrator has one place to report on all training in the organisation. The L&D has the ability report not only who has completed training and compliant, but also who is out of compliance and has upcoming training.
By using WPB, PCM and LMS, L&D organisations can alleviate the most common burdens they routinely face. Administrators can easily create content, have it tested by a skilled resource and deliver and report on the training easily. SAP provides the tools to move from tactical point solution to enabling strategic business execution around training within organisations.
Find out more information:
SAP WPB
SuccessFactors LMS
SuccessFactors PCM
[i] ASTD 2013 State of the Industry Report
