As the old adage goes, "The customer is always right!" So, I decided to ask some of our customers how they would characterize the Axonify Employee Knowledge Platform in one word. They’re definitely right. Here’s what they had to say:   Chad McIntosh - VP of Loss Prevention and Risk Management at Bloomingdale’s Imperative. If you are not doing a program like this today, you are missing opportunities in your organization really to improve them and add value in the process. Dorothy Tenute - National Training Manager at Toys"R"Us Canada It is innovative. It delivers results. It’s user-friendly. That was way more than one word. Rodric Hampton Mitchell - Senior Project Manager for Southeastern Grocers The one word that came to my mind was vibrant. And I think it is because, in my mind anyway, vibrant describes a very vivacious alive, colourful, kaleidoscope of possibilities. Peter Sprague - Senior Manager of Sales Effectiveness at Ceridian HCM Easy and impactful. I’ll take three words. Brittny Kinnaman - Learning and Development Specialist at Bimbo Bakeries Fun is the word that I hear the most from people and I think it it’s fun, so fun. Kaven Delarosbil - Communication Advisor at Uni-Select Human. I would say human because we develop our employees; we train them; we support them; we are there for them, So, yeah, I would say, human. Mia Phillips - National Manager of Dealer Education Strategy and Digital Solutions at Toyota Engaging. I would call it engaging… I would say that the precepts and principles around Axonify, the bite sized learning, when you need it at your fingertips, easy access has actually changed our mindset about training and learning all together. Rodric Hampton Mitchell - Senior Project Manager for Southeastern Grocers Axonify to me just makes me want to shout on the house tops because there are so many possibilities and so many avenues of delivering content to people in a way they can understand it. Want to learn more about why our customers love using Axonify in their environments? Check out some of our customer success stories. Written by Richele Black   The post In a word: Here’s how Bloomingdale’s, Toys"R"Us, Toyota and others describe Axonify appeared first on Axonify.

Everyone’s excited about the promise of microlearning and rushing to jump on the bandwagon. But there’s a misconception out there: If you simply break large training topics into smaller ones—for instance a 30-minute video into 1-minute clips—your training will be vastly improved. That’s just not true. Micro content isn’t enough by itself In fact, chunking learning topics into microlearning "bites" does nothing more than break the content down into smaller segments. While your employees can digest a small bit of knowledge much easier than a large slab, If you don’t use microlearning properly, you’re going to spend significant time replicating the existing problems of traditional training across hundreds or thousands of training modules. Let’s say you’ve chunked a 1-day onboarding program (perhaps 5 hours of content) into microlearning chunks. This means you might have between 50 and 100 microlearning chunks of approximately one to five minutes each. Do you expect an employee to log onto your LMS and systematically click through each chunk? The sheer volume of chunks would make even the most dedicated learner turn tail. Besides this, the same problem exists: The content still doesn’t lend itself to helping employees build up knowledge on the entire subject so they can remember it and then apply it on the job. 8 Microlearning Essentials A Microlearning solution must do the following for it to produce real learning results that have a significant impact on the business: Deliver bite-sized content in a consistent and effective way, using proven techniques for reinforcing information. This allows employees to thoroughly learn a topic, retain that knowledge for the long term and apply it on the job. Support multiple content formats (i.e. text, video, images, etc.) that allow information to be presented in the most effective way for learning. Provide personalized and adaptive learning experiences that fit with each employee’s job demands, adapt with his/her learning path and align with preferred ways of learning. Offer a gamified learning experience to engage employees continually in learning each and every day. Include modern social elements for collaborative learning with individuals across the organization. Ensure learning can be accessed from multiple devices, including mobile. Make all learning bites available on demand to allow employees to quickly search and select learning at the point they need it for the job. Offer tracking and measurement capabilities for measuring learning effectiveness and tying it to business results. Microlearning can be an extremely powerful tool to bring knowledge to your employees when and where they need it for the job. And when it’s delivered in a consistent, ongoing way, you have the ability to drive continuous learning, build up knowledge over time, and produce real behavior change that leads to improved job performance and significant business impact. Is this achievable? You bet! Read our new Microlearning White Paper to find out how you can deliver big impact in small bites. Written by Laura Martin The post The Microlearning Myth: Why you need more than bite-sized content to drive learning success appeared first on Axonify.

Robust employee knowledge is a critical component of optimal performance. After all, if employees don’t know, they can’t do. Unfortunately, when it comes to arming employees with the knowledge they need to execute their roles to the best of their ability, many organizations skip an important step: providing on-demand access to information. This is one of the most critical components of workplace knowledge. Here’s why… In reality, your organization’s information—the sum of all of the product details, processes, policies, and procedures that dictate how you do business—is the real foundation on which all other knowledge is based. But, rather than provide employees with direct access to the entirety of this information, managers typically engage in what I call "perceived importance" and decide what bits and pieces should be made available. This puts employees at a considerable disadvantage, as they are unable to take ownership of their own knowledge to meet their performance needs. And yet we often complain that employees always need to be spoon-fed! This hierarchical approach simply isn’t how information moves nowadays. After all, no one attempts to drip-feed you information at home. You are free to search the Internet and make the decisions necessary to locate the best possible information when you need it. It’s time we provided this same autonomy to employees as the foundation of our learning and performance strategy. It won’t be easy, and you can’t expect to change your organization’s approach to knowledge management over a few weeks, months, or perhaps even longer. But, for the long-term good of your people and your business, you have to get started. Here are 5 important steps you should take to establish on-demand access to information as the foundation of your learning and performance ecosystem: Establish a single-source repository When they don’t know where to go for information on the Internet, people typically start at a single access point: Google. Leverage this established behavior by curating all of your organization’s information in a single online repository. Move away from complex file structures, email attachments, and shared network drives and give your employees a single, searchable place to go when they need to find information quickly to do their jobs. Organize content by topic, not role Many existing knowledge management systems are hamstrung by hierarchical silos. Each team builds their own space with their own information and restricts access to just their own people. Again, this assumes that people only need certain information to do their jobs and inhibits collaborative learning. Overcome this problem by building and organizing information by topic rather than role. This will cut down on duplicative work and break down unnecessary silos through shared information. Install an organizational curator There’s A LOT of knowledge floating around your organization. Unfortunately, the majority exists only in the minds of your employees. Many companies take the time to formally document only vital processes and procedures—often, as required by regulation. To collect the full scope of organizational knowledge, create the formal role of curator. In addition to their content development ability and deep familiarity with all parts of the business, be sure this person (or team) is a skilled researcher who can both locate valuable information and, through effective curation, transform it into meaningful shared knowledge. Enable employee contribution As I mentioned, tacit knowledge is a massive gap when trying to collect shared organizational knowledge. A single curator likely cannot handle the total amount of information within even a medium-sized business. To truly scale your curation efforts, turn on the "save" button and allow your employees to contribute their knowledge. Provide simple, low-barrier opportunities for people to share their knowledge in the ways they prefer, such as basic text, documents, or video. Motivate employees to share valuable, relevant information in a timely way to support not only the organization, but also their peers and customers. Where necessary, establish guidelines and approval workflows to please all necessary stakeholders. Leverage peer recommendations, such as content ratings or other social triggers, to help bubble the best, most relevant information to the top and further simplify the user experience. Connect everything L&D does to curated information As the foundation of your learning and performance ecosystem, this curated information should be the basis of everything L&D does. When you hold an instructor-led event, be sure the information on which the course is based is available to employees. Deploying short bursts of microlearning for reinforcement? Link the content back to your shared information so employees can learn even more about the most important topics. Simply stated, don’t train it unless it’s available to all employees all the time. Establishing on-demand access to information as the foundation of your ecosystem will not only help you make better use of the other components in your learning and performance strategy, but also create an integrated, user-centric support system that enables your employees to truly boost their knowledge. How do you enable on-demand information access as a foundational component of your learning and performance strategy? What role does information access play in your larger ecosystem? Share your thoughts in the comments below! Written by JD Dillon The post Are you missing this critical step when trying to build workplace knowledge? appeared first on Axonify.

This past week, we had the pleasure of hosting a special webinar with Dani Johnson from Bersin on the topic of learning measurement. According to Bersin, the importance of using learning measurement as a way of demonstrating business impact is growing in importance; however, many L&D organizations are not very good at it. Here are three suggestions for how you can approach learning measurement with a new mindset: Don’t be afraid of it. We don’t have the tools to measure. We don’t have the people to measure. We don’t have the time analyze the little data that we do have. We don’t have budget. Fears around learning measurement are very real, but the truth is to fight this fear you need just one weapon: focus. With the correct focus, you can realign your tools, people, time and budget around impact. Start specific, start small, but just start. When you are thinking of a place to start, consider a business outcome first and work backwards from there. What behaviors will lead to a business outcome, what knowledge is required to perform those behaviors and what content is needed to fuel that knowledge. The more specific the outcome, the easier it becomes to measure the pieces that lead to it. Don’t think it’s impossible. Many other departments in your organization - Finance, Marketing, Sales, Operations - are using data to make decisions and demonstrate impact. They have been for a very long time. The argument that the tools for learning measurement do not exist is now simply untrue. There are many platforms in use today that can help piece together the measurement puzzle. What’s missing is the mindset. As the lens on learning measurement continues to get more focused, many L&D organizations are looking for ways to sharpen their existing measurement practices. What were some of your big takeaways from the webinar? If you missed it, you can catch it on-demand at any time. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below. Written by Shum Attygalle The post Learning measurement: Fear, initiative and possibility. appeared first on Axonify.

It’s Monday and I’m tired. But, I’m tired for the best possible reason. I just spent the past week with my Axonify teammates immersed in the world of learning and performance as part of the eLearning Guild’s 2016 Learning Solutions Conference & Expo (#LSCon). With this year’s theme "Sharing What Works," LSCon offered members of the learning and performance community a chance to come together and share stories. Successes and failures. Challenges and triumphs. It was a reminder that many L&D professionals are trying to solve the same problems within their unique organizations and can, therefore, provide significantly greater value by reaching out for support from talented peers as well as knowledgeable experts within the learning community. The Axonify team was hard at work throughout the event, delivering 5 sessions, exhibiting on the expo floor, and engaging in countless insightful and inspiring conversations with learning professionals who are passionate about making people better at the jobs they do every day. We were also honored to be recognized alongside Bloomingdale’s for the award for Best Alternative Vendor Solution during the DemoFest exhibition. When reviewing the conference schedule a few weeks ago, I noticed a series of emergent themes. These 5 themes were further reinforced as I attended sessions and spoke with participants throughout the event. Here’s my perspective on their significance: Modernization of Learning Multiple sessions addressed the future of learning, especially the evolution required within the next 5 to 10 years to ensure L&D continues to provide the best possible value to organizations that are constantly facing disruption in an ever-changing marketplace. While cutting-edge learning technology will certainly play a big part of this evolution, L&D professionals must also identify new and expanded roles to play while building their own professional skills along the way. Specifically, L&D must improve its ability to leverage the full workplace ecosystem and ask better questions by examining organizational data. The Human Side of Learning Regardless of industry or role, the people supported by L&D have one thing in common: they’re human. This reality, along with continued insights into the way our brains work, has pushed the science of learning into the forefront of industry discussion. L&D is beginning to recognize inherent capabilities and limitations while looking for ways to tailor training and performance support solutions to maximize human potential. Microlearning L&D professionals are trying to get past "microlearning" as a buzzword and find ways to bring the idea to life within their organizations. In addition to selecting the right tools, we must help L&D recognize that microlearning represents a paradigm shift in the way we support workplace learning. And rather than focusing just on the size of learning content,organizations must leverage bite-sized training in tandem with proven memory-building concepts, like interval reinforcement and retrieval practice, to realize its true value alongside other strategic learning and performance support capabilities. Gamification We’re entering a period of improved understanding and renewed excitement around gamification. Not only are we seeing more and more data on the effectiveness of game mechanics within the workplace, but L&D is able to integrate these concepts more seamlessly into learning solutions to create personalized, social, and mobile learning experiences. If L&D is strategic about its understanding and application of game mechanics, organizations will be able to reach employee engagement levels similar to those attained by consumer technologies. Video Using video to support learning is far from a new idea. In fact, the oldest "training video" available on YouTube dates back to 1941 (automobile sales). However, given the growing ubiquity of video in our everyday lives and ease of production, thanks to smart devices, L&D is exploring new ways it can be applied to aid learning and performance. As part of a series of sessions on the topic, I led a discussion on the ideal ways to leverage video, including applications beyond standard instruction and demonstration. My goal was to share ideas on how L&D can engage employees with immersing video storytelling along with interactive opportunities now available, thanks to livestreaming technology. While it’s impossible to document everything I took away from LSCon, these ideas were some of the most significant. I’d love to hear about your experience too, so feel free to share your key learnings in the comments below. Written by JD Dillon The post We are Better Together - Reflecting on 5 Key Themes at LSCon 2016 appeared first on Axonify.

Axonified customers use our Employee Knowledge Platform in a variety of applications and industries. We wanted to learn more about how Axonify is helping them to achieve their unique goals, so I asked them to share their experiences. Here’s what they had to say: Chad McIntosh - VP of Loss Prevention and Risk Management at Bloomingdale’s Axonify is giving us the ability really to educate associates, make them aware of changes in their behavior to really make a safe environment. We’ve had a lot of success with the program and the process and it has saved our organization, this past year, over 2.2 million dollars. Peter Sprague - Senior Manager of Sales Effectiveness at Ceridian HCM It solves a problem that’s been here for the 25 years I’ve been doing training and development. It just simply makes sense. It’s kind of like, "Why wouldn’t you do this?" is really how I look at the product. Mia Phillips - National Manager of Dealer Education Strategy and Digital Solutions at Toyota They told us. I mean they just talked about how great it was that Toyota was "tricking them" into learning about the product. How they’ve sold more vehicles as a result of Axonify, as a result of knowing the product better. Rodric Hampton Mitchell - Senior Project Manager for Southeastern Grocers Axonify has really made it more fun, more engaging, more relevant to the job that they are actually doing, so that our cashiers can actually see why they’re doing the training, why they’re preforming it the way they are because it’s actually teaching them what they need to know to be successful. And that’s what it’s all about. Brittny Kinnaman - Learning and Development Specialist at Bimbo Bakeries We identified safety, because of the manufacturing environment that we work in, as really a primary goal for us and saw the potential of Axonify to really do a lot of work with our safety program and building our safety culture across the company. As far as I know, since we’ve launched, two of the sites actually hit new safety milestones. Kaven Delarosbil - Communication Advisor at Uni-Select Warehouse employees, they don’t have emails; they don’t have computers. So, before we couldn’t reach them. We couldn’t communicate directly with them. So since we have the Axonify system, every time we have a communication from the management we push it through the platform. So, now we can reach all our employees across Canada. So, even in the office or warehouse, everybody gets the same message. Peter Sprague - Senior Manager of Sales Effectiveness at Ceridian HCM I’ve had a manager say to me, "I know this rep is not using Axonify because we were in a meeting and the client asked a question that I know is in Axonify and the rep couldn’t answer it. And I know other reps can answer that question, and I can answer that question, because I’ve had it before." So, that tells me it’s making a difference, right where we want it—in the interaction with the customer. It tells me, content wise, we’re developing the right content—which I think is a huge challenge for us—to make sure we’re giving them what they need. So, those are ways that I can tell it is making a difference. Dorothy Tenute - National Training Manager at Toys"R"Us Canada With omni-channel, it’s about how do we make things easy for the customer so they can shop how they want to shop and kind of like when and where they want to shop and how they want to shop. And so what’s great about the Axonify platform is, first of all, it enables us to reinforce those messages and that key content to our frontline employees. But, we’re also kind of mirroring the same philosophy. You’re able to get learning very quickly. It’s accessible. Chad McIntosh - VP of Loss Prevention and Risk Management at Bloomingdale’s When you think about Bloomingdale’s, 35% are millennials. They don’t want to learn in a classroom; they don’t want to learn from a book; they don’t want to learn from the posters that I had by the coworker door. They want this interactive process and we’re being able to satisfy that with Axonify. Rodric Hampton Mitchell - Senior Project Manager for Southeastern Grocers We’ve been able to, through the Axonify development process, determine the behaviours, specific behaviours that we want our associates to be able to exhibit when they’re interacting with customers. And when you do that, and every single associate in every single store, it makes a huge difference in the shopping experience for our customers. Kaven Delarosbil - Communication Advisor at Uni-Select The knowledge growth increased by, if I’m not mistaken, 18 or 20%. Mia Phillips - National Manager of Dealer Education Strategy and Digital Solutions at Toyota Through Axonify, it has gone from 68 to anywhere between 84 and 85%. So we’ve seen huge increases in knowledge retention. That’s been extremely important. Brittny Kinnaman - Learning and Development Specialist at Bimbo Bakeries Really, Axonify will teach anything you put into it. So, there is a lot of potential to really do anything you need it to do. Dorothy Tenute - National Training Manager at Toys"R"Us Canada I don’t want to think of what the environment would look like without Axonify. And what I see happening with Axonify is we truly are creating a learning culture in the stores and that informal learning culture. Chad McIntosh - VP of Loss Prevention and Risk Management at Bloomingdale’s In my 40 years of experience, this is probably the most innovative program that I’ve put in place in any of the positions that I’ve been in Retail and Loss Prevention. Want to learn more about how our customers are using Axonify in their environments? Check out some of our customer success stories. The post Bloomingdale’s, Toys"R"Us, Toyota and others tout the benefits of Axonify appeared first on Axonify.

Truth? Or Myth? Depends on which decade you’re operating in. Not long ago, these statements might have been true, but not any longer. To be sure you’re not April fooling yourself, we invite you to review these statements and see why they should be relegated to the myth category. Myth 1: Our LMS is all we need. Debunked: Over the past decade, many organizations have invested in a learning management system. The thinking was this tool would help employees learn. But the truth is that the LMS has fallen short of meeting expectations. Employees aren’t learning more; they’re not retaining enough knowledge; and they’re not able to apply their learning effectively to the job. From difficulty of use, to lack of social collaboration capability, to outdated methods of delivering learning content and measuring success, there are many reasons why organizations are looking for new options. Myth 2: Breaking learning into bits and pieces means people will never learn the whole story. Debunked: In fact, when done correctly, microlearning is an effective way to deliver short bursts of information that are easy to digest, don’t overwhelm employees and allow them to learn more over time. With the right approach, you can deliver and reinforce learning every day, allowing employees to build knowledge continually and more firmly embed it into long-term memory. For more information, read our Microlearning White Paper. Myth 3: Training starts with content. Debunked: Traditionally, L&D has looked at the subjects employees should know and then has created training content around those subjects. But this approach is all backwards. If learning programs are ever to have a measurable impact, L&D must start with understanding the strategic objectives of the business first. Leaders should then identify the employee job behaviors—that when done consistently—will allow employees to achieve their objectives. Only then should L&D design continuous learning content that addresses specific knowledge and performance needs that will help employees meet those objectives. Myth 4: There’s no way to link training to strategic business results. Debunked: For years, training has been viewed as a "supporting" function and, as such, a cost center. Traditionally, it has also been very difficult for L&D to quantify the results of soft skills—such as decision-making or customer service—in terms of dollars and cents. So L&D focused on the results it could quantify, such as number of courses completed, average test scores, and survey feedback. But the problem is that this data doesn’t showcase how learning impacts the business. Organizations need to know that training has a direct, measurable impact on the bottom line: L&D leaders must generate the right data for decision-making in their own organizations, as well as for other lines of business. And today, new business practices and learning technologies make it much easier to do just that. Check out what Bersin by Deloitte has to say about measuring the impact of learning. Myth 5: Employees will never voluntarily participate in training. Debunked: Training has always been seen as something to be endured, but not enjoyed. But by using effective gamification techniques and microlearning, organizations are finding that employees of all ages, and from all areas of the business, are engaging in learning because they want to. Crowe MacKay enjoys 87% voluntary participation and knowledge retention of up to 90%. Pep Boys has garnered 95% participation resulting in 55% reduction in retail shrink. Myth 6: Playing a game is no way to learn. Debunked: Research shows that gamification has a significant impact on employee engagement, which drives substantial knowledge improvements. The data is very compelling, and well worth a look. Myth 7: One training session is enough on any topic. Debunked: Research has proven that people forget most of what they learn within 30 days of learning it. So unless you can guarantee that your learners will immediately—and over a sustained period—apply what they’re learning, you need to find ways to reinforce learning to ensure the value of your training. Truth: Employee learning is rapidly changing and it can be confusing to separate truth from myth. But don’t be fooled by old thinking. What we once held as truths must be challenged, and new methods of learning must be investigated and embraced to keep organizations moving forward. Have a training myth you’d like to debunk? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. The post Employee training myths you could be "April fooling" yourself about appeared first on Axonify.

I attended the CLO Symposium this week, which shone a spotlight on the struggle L&D leaders face to keep up with modern workplace demands. Conversations highlighted how employee learning needs have become almost unrecognizable from those of just ten years ago. The lightening-fast pace of business, combined with the integration of technology, increased customer demands and the need to support multi-generational workforces, have called attention to the importance of changing the way learning leaders have traditionally approached corporate training. Attendees were keen to find practical ways to address the new needs of businesses and employees alike. They were also passionate about challenging convention and rethinking current approaches. Today’s learning leaders want to build strategies that go beyond simply delivering training and, instead, focus on creating high-performing organizations. But the challenge involves figuring out how to do that, while also finding data to convince the right people in the organization to get on board. A recent report by Aberdeen Group, entitled "From Learning to Knowledge: Best-in-Class Methods for Enabling Employees to Propel the Business Forward," provides research to confirm modern thinking about corporate learning. The report identifies that top-performing companies are changing their learning approaches and focusing on how to help employees build, sustain, share and apply knowledge continually to have a measurable impact on business results. Aberdeen Group benchmarked organizations against several key performance metrics and identified best-in-class performers were achieving overall business results by implementing modern approaches to building employee knowledge. These results include: 15% increase in revenue per full-time equivalent (FTE) 16% increase in customer/patient satisfaction rates/scores 85% of employees rated themselves "highly engaged" Aberdeen then evaluated the key Learning & Development practices that these organizations are leveraging to achieve business results. We’re delighted to share this information with you. Download this comprehensive report and learn: Why traditional corporate training methods aren’t working. What Best-in-Class companies are doing to cater to a mulit-generational workforce. Modern learning methods that best-in-class companies are using that enable a higher degree of employee understanding and performance on the job. Three steps that all organizations should take to improve employee and organizational performance. Are you incorporating any of these best-in-class learning practices in your organization? We’d love to hear what you’re doing in the comments below.

Microlearning is a hot topic right now—and for good reason. Providing solutions that align to the science of learning and fit into employees’ regular workflow should get people plenty excited. But, the reality is, not everyone may share your enthusiasm. After all, microlearning isn’t just about making shorter videos. It represents a fundamental shift in how most organizations have traditionally approached learning. So, in order to get your organization micro-ready, you’ll likely need to do some homework to help people warm up to the idea. Here’s how: 1. Recognize current conventions. Then challenge them. Most people grow up associating learning with dedicated locations and times. We go to school for a regimented day of learning. Then we head to scheduled piano lessons. Now it’s time for homework. This institutional mentality naturally carries over to the workplace, where employees and executives alike, associate learning with a specific place and time. But the fact of the matter is that "Learning doesn’t look like school." (Credit to Jane Bozarth for this seemingly obvious yet wicked smart comment regarding workplace learning). We know that learning is a constant process that doesn’t rely on structure. So, help leaders see this new reality by citing real-life examples. Emphasize that every time you Google or Wikipedia a topic, you learn. This familiar ability to find, consume, and share small pieces of targeted information in a moment of need is actually microlearning in everyday life. So, don’t be afraid to argue that workplace learning should mirror this reality. 2. Be prepared to respond to objections I worked with bite-sized content for several years—before the term "microlearning" was even popularized. It just made sense to deliver small chunks of ongoing reinforcement to employees rather than making them sit in a classroom for a few hours now and then. But, while this was a no-brainer to me, here are some objections I faced when trying to implement it at a previous organization: ● "It’s easier to schedule people for the two hours away from the operation rather than a few minutes every day." ● "Can’t you just put it all together in a longer class so I only have to do it once?" ● "I can’t learn stuff that quickly." ● "How are we going to know people did it if we can’t see them doing it?" ● "I don’t have time to learn today." Be prepared to answer these objections by demonstrating how microlearning, done right, can improve learning results. (Our Microlearning Whitepaper offers some valuable insights). 3. Start a Perception Shift Existing beliefs about learning are extremely difficult to change. After all, we’ve been conditioned to accept the traditional idea of institutional learning since we were 5 years old. So, instead of taking a "cold turkey" approach that demands a switch to microlearning, engage your audience in frank conversations about learning first. Of course, I don’t expect everyone to be as geeky about the science of learning as I am (and maybe you are). But, this process will help you get a better sense of where people stand and allow you to better communicate your point of view. Here are a few steps I have used in the past to start the process of shifting existing perceptions: ● Ask people to Google and share a picture of what learning looks like. Do they come back with institutional images like classrooms or more modern concepts like peer-to-peer conversation and social networking? ● Dedicate a few minutes during your meetings with management to discuss—in layman’s terms—basic principles of modern learning and how they relate to the needs of your employees. ● Share practical examples of learning in context that do not align to an institutional mentality but have delivered real value to the organization (e.g. sharing on your enterprise social network). ● Relate unfamiliar ideas like microlearning to the real-world learning and problem-solving activities we all engage in every day (e.g. using a YouTube video to help fix a broken pipe). To ensure the best possible outcome for any new strategy, it’s important to first assess the playing field and find ways to overcome existing barriers to entry. This is especially true for microlearning as the industry looks to identify best practices and success stories. I hope these tips will help. Are you exploring the idea of microlearning in your organization? How do you think it aligns to your audience’s perception of learning? What can you do to help shift that perception if you believe microlearning can become a valuable part of your learning culture? Check back for future posts that will explore the value of microlearning and how to bring it to life as part of a modern learning and performance ecosystem.

L&D is under increasing pressure to prove the business value of learning: to demonstrate ROI and directly link learning initiatives to improved business performance. But, up until now, one of L&D’s biggest challenges has been to identify and capture metrics that clearly align learning with bottom-line business impact. Will Big Data be the answer? Many think so. So what is Big Data anyway? Every action we perform using modern technology - from business transactions to social media posts, to information captured by machine sensors or barcode readers - generates incredible volumes of information (Big Data) that can be stored, aggregated and analyzed. There’s no doubt that Big Data has achieved mainstream business adoption.  An IDG study in 2015 revealed that 80% of enterprises and 63% of small businesses had either already deployed or were going to shortly deploy Big Data initiatives. These firms see Big Data as a chance to gain and act on insights quickly to increase market share. It just makes sense that L&D should also seize the opportunity to use Big Data to its advantage. L&D needs to expand its Big Data focus. Historically, L&D has found it difficult to use data to correlate learning to business outcomes. However, this is starting to change. Recent technological developments, such as xAPI (and, quite frankly, sophisticated algorithms in our Axonify Employee Knowledge Platform), are helping learning professionals more quickly and effectively capture and perform analytics with valuable learning and performance data that tie to business results. A study by i4cp found that 22% of organizations with more than 1000 employees are already leveraging learning-related Big Data, while another 39% have Big Data plans for the future. The standard metrics provided by Learning Management Systems—such as assessment scores, training hours completed, survey feedback—might be valuable for running the day-to-day of L&D, but they don’t identify a measurable impact on the organization’s bottom line. Instead, L&D must identify, measure and assess metrics that clearly establish how employees’ knowledge levels impact their ability to improve job performance. This means establishing a measurement strategy to generate data about how employees retain what they learn and effectively apply it to the job.  It means comparing employee knowledge against behaviors (what they do), comparing behaviors against the results they achieve, and comparing their results against business goals. By creating a measurement chain that links knowledge, application and results, you can not only identify learning’s impact on job performance, but aggregate the data and analyze it at the organizational level as well. Is Big Data the key to proving the value of L&D? It certainly holds a lot of promise.  From identifying whether specific learning initiatives have improved performance across the enterprise, to whether an individual was able to improve sales performance due to learning, the right type of Big Data offers the ability to not only inform strategic decisions, but directly align learning to performance. Depending on the data captured and analyzed, we can extract intelligence from the organizational level, right down to the most granular level metrics for individual learners: Why do employees in one location perform better than in others and why? How much did the company save in accident reductions due to new learning initiatives? What percent of improved customer ratings is due to employee knowledge improvements? And we can use the power of predictive analytics to improve our business planning: How long will it take to bring employees to competence on a new product line? What specific learning does this employee need to improve job performance? What type of training content do we need to help prevent specific safety incidents? There’s no doubt Big Data has the opportunity to be a game-changer for L&D. But, for it to be truly valuable, learning metrics must first be clearly aligned to business performance. Stay tuned:  The next post in our continuing discussion on Big Data will provide more concrete examples of analytics and how they can improve job performance as well as L&D’s overall results. Are you using Big Data in your organization to provide more valuable learning insights to the business? We’d love to hear your stories in the comments below.

I attended the CLO Symposium this week, which shone a spotlight on the struggle L&D leaders face to keep up with modern workplace demands. Conversations highlighted how employee learning needs have become almost unrecognizable from those of just ten years ago. The lightening-fast pace of business, combined with the integration of technology, increased customer demands and the need to support multi-generational workforces, have called attention to the importance of changing the way learning leaders have traditionally approached corporate training. Attendees were keen to find practical ways to address the new needs of businesses and employees alike. They were also passionate about challenging convention and rethinking current approaches. Today’s learning leaders want to build strategies that go beyond simply delivering training and, instead, focus on creating high-performing organizations. But the challenge involves figuring out how to do that, while also finding data to convince the right people in the organization to get on board. A recent report by Aberdeen Group, entitled "From Learning to Knowledge: Best-in-Class Methods for Enabling Employees to Propel the Business Forward," provides research to confirm modern thinking about corporate learning. The report identifies that top-performing companies are changing their learning approaches and focusing on how to help employees build, sustain, share and apply knowledge continually to have a measurable impact on business results. Aberdeen Group benchmarked organizations against several key performance metrics and identified best-in-class performers were achieving overall business results by implementing modern approaches to building employee knowledge. These results include: 15% increase in revenue per full-time equivalent (FTE) 16% increase in customer/patient satisfaction rates/scores 85% of employees rated themselves "highly engaged" Aberdeen then evaluated the key Learning & Development practices that these organizations are leveraging to achieve business results. We’re delighted to share this information with you. Download this comprehensive report and learn: Why traditional corporate training methods aren’t working. What Best-in-Class companies are doing to cater to a mulit-generational workforce. Modern learning methods that best-in-class companies are using that enable a higher degree of employee understanding and performance on the job. Three steps that all organizations should take to improve employee and organizational performance. Are you incorporating any of these best-in-class learning practices in your organization? We’d love to hear what you’re doing in the comments below. The post New Research: Best-in-class corporate learning approaches that drive business results appeared first on Axonify.

Microlearning is a hot topic right now—and for good reason. Providing solutions that align to the science of learning and fit into employees’ regular workflow should get people plenty excited. But, the reality is, not everyone may share your enthusiasm. After all, microlearning isn’t just about making shorter videos. It represents a fundamental shift in how most organizations have traditionally approached learning. So, in order to get your organization micro-ready, you’ll likely need to do some homework to help people warm up to the idea. Here’s how: 1. Recognize current conventions. Then challenge them. Most people grow up associating learning with dedicated locations and times. We go to school for a regimented day of learning. Then we head to scheduled piano lessons. Now it’s time for homework. This institutional mentality naturally carries over to the workplace, where employees and executives alike, associate learning with a specific place and time. But the fact of the matter is that "Learning doesn’t look like school." (Credit to Jane Bozarth for this seemingly obvious yet wicked smart comment regarding workplace learning). We know that learning is a constant process that doesn’t rely on structure. So, help leaders see this new reality by citing real-life examples. Emphasize that every time you Google or Wikipedia a topic, you learn. This familiar ability to find, consume, and share small pieces of targeted information in a moment of need is actually microlearning in everyday life. So, don’t be afraid to argue that workplace learning should mirror this reality. 2. Be prepared to respond to objections I worked with bite-sized content for several years—before the term "microlearning" was even popularized. It just made sense to deliver small chunks of ongoing reinforcement to employees rather than making them sit in a classroom for a few hours now and then. But, while this was a no-brainer to me, here are some objections I faced when trying to implement it at a previous organization: ● "It’s easier to schedule people for the two hours away from the operation rather than a few minutes every day." ● "Can’t you just put it all together in a longer class so I only have to do it once?" ● "I can’t learn stuff that quickly." ● "How are we going to know people did it if we can’t see them doing it?" ● "I don’t have time to learn today." Be prepared to answer these objections by demonstrating how microlearning, done right, can improve learning results. (Our Microlearning Whitepaper offers some valuable insights). 3. Start a Perception Shift Existing beliefs about learning are extremely difficult to change. After all, we’ve been conditioned to accept the traditional idea of institutional learning since we were 5 years old. So, instead of taking a "cold turkey" approach that demands a switch to microlearning, engage your audience in frank conversations about learning first. Of course, I don’t expect everyone to be as geeky about the science of learning as I am (and maybe you are). But, this process will help you get a better sense of where people stand and allow you to better communicate your point of view. Here are a few steps I have used in the past to start the process of shifting existing perceptions: ● Ask people to Google and share a picture of what learning looks like. Do they come back with institutional images like classrooms or more modern concepts like peer-to-peer conversation and social networking? ● Dedicate a few minutes during your meetings with management to discuss—in layman’s terms—basic principles of modern learning and how they relate to the needs of your employees. ● Share practical examples of learning in context that do not align to an institutional mentality but have delivered real value to the organization (e.g. sharing on your enterprise social network). ● Relate unfamiliar ideas like microlearning to the real-world learning and problem-solving activities we all engage in every day (e.g. using a YouTube video to help fix a broken pipe). To ensure the best possible outcome for any new strategy, it’s important to first assess the playing field and find ways to overcome existing barriers to entry. This is especially true for microlearning as the industry looks to identify best practices and success stories. I hope these tips will help. Are you exploring the idea of microlearning in your organization? How do you think it aligns to your audience’s perception of learning? What can you do to help shift that perception if you believe microlearning can become a valuable part of your learning culture? Check back for future posts that will explore the value of microlearning and how to bring it to life as part of a modern learning and performance ecosystem. The post Culture before Content: 3 Steps for Warming Up Your Organization to the Idea of Microlearning appeared first on Axonify.

L&D is under increasing pressure to prove the business value of learning: to demonstrate ROI and directly link learning initiatives to improved business performance. But, up until now, one of L&D’s biggest challenges has been to identify and capture metrics that clearly align learning with bottom-line business impact. Will Big Data be the answer? Many think so. So what is Big Data anyway? Every action we perform using modern technology - from business transactions to social media posts, to information captured by machine sensors or barcode readers - generates incredible volumes of information (Big Data) that can be stored, aggregated and analyzed. There’s no doubt that Big Data has achieved mainstream business adoption.  An IDG study in 2015 revealed that 80% of enterprises and 63% of small businesses had either already deployed or were going to shortly deploy Big Data initiatives. These firms see Big Data as a chance to gain and act on insights quickly to increase market share. It just makes sense that L&D should also seize the opportunity to use Big Data to its advantage. L&D needs to expand its Big Data focus. Historically, L&D has found it difficult to use data to correlate learning to business outcomes. However, this is starting to change. Recent technological developments, such as xAPI (and, quite frankly, sophisticated algorithms in our Axonify Employee Knowledge Platform), are helping learning professionals more quickly and effectively capture and perform analytics with valuable learning and performance data that tie to business results. A study by i4cp found that 22% of organizations with more than 1000 employees are already leveraging learning-related Big Data, while another 39% have Big Data plans for the future. The standard metrics provided by Learning Management Systems—such as assessment scores, training hours completed, survey feedback—might be valuable for running the day-to-day of L&D, but they don’t identify a measurable impact on the organization’s bottom line. Instead, L&D must identify, measure and assess metrics that clearly establish how employees’ knowledge levels impact their ability to improve job performance. This means establishing a measurement strategy to generate data about how employees retain what they learn and effectively apply it to the job.  It means comparing employee knowledge against behaviors (what they do), comparing behaviors against the results they achieve, and comparing their results against business goals. By creating a measurement chain that links knowledge, application and results, you can not only identify learning’s impact on job performance, but aggregate the data and analyze it at the organizational level as well. Is Big Data the key to proving the value of L&D? It certainly holds a lot of promise.  From identifying whether specific learning initiatives have improved performance across the enterprise, to whether an individual was able to improve sales performance due to learning, the right type of Big Data offers the ability to not only inform strategic decisions, but directly align learning to performance. Depending on the data captured and analyzed, we can extract intelligence from the organizational level, right down to the most granular level metrics for individual learners: Why do employees in one location perform better than in others and why? How much did the company save in accident reductions due to new learning initiatives? What percent of improved customer ratings is due to employee knowledge improvements? And we can use the power of predictive analytics to improve our business planning: How long will it take to bring employees to competence on a new product line? What specific learning does this employee need to improve job performance? What type of training content do we need to help prevent specific safety incidents? There’s no doubt Big Data has the opportunity to be a game-changer for L&D. But, for it to be truly valuable, learning metrics must first be clearly aligned to business performance. Stay tuned:  The next post in our continuing discussion on Big Data will provide more concrete examples of analytics and how they can improve job performance as well as L&D’s overall results. Are you using Big Data in your organization to provide more valuable learning insights to the business? We’d love to hear your stories in the comments below. The post Is Big Data a Game-Changer for L&D? appeared first on Axonify.

8 must-haves every organization needs to be successful with Microlearning. When Microlearning is delivered in a consistent, ongoing way, you have the ability to drive continuous learning, build up knowledge over time, and produce real behavior change that results in improved job performance. This whitepaper takes a comprehensive look at Microlearning and outlines what’s required for making it a reality in your organization. Here’s a peek at what’s included inside: >> Why Microlearning is essential in today’s business environment. Discover why an increasing rate of change and growing demand for employee knowledge lend themselves perfectly to a Microlearning strategy. >> 8 components of an ideal Microlearning platform. Beyond just being able to deliver content in small chunks, what other features are essential for driving impact? Find out. >> Examples of Microlearning in action. Discover four stories of how global organizations from around the world are leveraging Microlearning to drive business results. >> … and lots more. Get your copy today. The post Microlearning: Small Bites, Big Impact appeared first on Axonify.

If you haven’t noticed, Axonify.com just got a facelift! (Well, okay. It’s more like a complete body makeover).   But rest assured, we’re not just about looks, we’re about substance too. So, we wanted to let you in on 5 ways our new website will assist you with building corporate knowledge to boost organizational performance and results: 1. Get answers to top corporate learning challenges at rocket speed: Modernize Corporate Learning Build Employee Knowledge Retain with Microlearning Engage with Gamification Prove Business Impact   2. Prove the value of modernizing your approach to corporate learning with complimentary resources: From Learning to Knowledge: Best-in-class Methods for Enabling Employees to Propel the Business Forward Microlearning: Small Bites, Big Impact When The LMS Isn’t Enough Measuring Impact Gamification and Your Enterprise Learning Strategy   3. Inspire your organization to do things differently by sharing incredible stories from Axonified customers: Customers tout the benefits of Axonify Bloomingdale’s saves millions by investing in associate knowledge-building Walmart achieves unprecedented safety results by building employee knowledge and translating it into job action Ethicon boosts selling power by keeping daily pulse on medical reps’ expertise   4. Understand how Axonify works across different industries and applications: Retail Workplace Safety Professional Sales Call Centers Finance & Insurance   5. Learn more about what the Axonify Employee Knowledge Platform offers: Axonify Platform Overview Axonify LearnerZone Axonify LeaderZone Axonify ImpactZone Axonify DiscoveryZone Axonify AdminZone Axonify Mobile Axonify Personalized and Adaptive Learning Technology   So, check it out! We’d love to know what you think. And don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or would like more information. The post Top 5 reasons why you need to check out the NEW Axonify.com appeared first on Axonify.

I’m CONSTANTLY curating online content about learning and performance. As a learning geek, It’s my thing—well—one of my things. Every month, I’ll dig through my collections and share my favorite articles on a particular theme along with a few insights of my own. This month, I found some really interesting stuff about gamification. Gamification works—if done well. At Axonify, we’ve witnessed the power of gamification in learning through the continued real-world success of our customers and partners. It may have been heavily dismissed as a trend just a few years ago, but gamification is definitely gaining validation as organizations get past the hype and apply the concept to solve real-world problems, like employee engagement and motivation to learn. Here are my curated insights on gamification for April 2016: Find your personal gamification guru from Sponge UK This is a curated list IN a curated list. How meta! A big part of getting past the hype and finding the value in a new concept is figuring out who to listen to along the way. The Sponge UK team has pulled together an awesome list of gaming experts in this post. While I don’t know everyone on this list personally, I can validate the big pile of gaming knowledge that lives in these people’s minds. Karl Kapp and Gabe Zichermann specifically have informed my work with gamification for several years. The list also provides suggested readings, videos, podcasts and social networking contacts for each SME. If you want to learn more about how games and gamification can support workplace learning and engagement, this list is a great place to start (in addition to info from Axonify, of course). Gamer Motivation Profile Findings - #GamesUR US Conference 2016 from Nick Yee Warning! Psychology ahead! In this 30-minute recorded presentation on YouTube, Nick Yee reveals insight from research his team conducted into the psychology of gaming motivation. It’s an overall fascinating presentation for anyone even remotely interested in games and/or psychology. I was excited to see how many of Nick’s observations align with my practical experience. For example, during my L&D work with Disney and Kaplan, we were able to realize improved motivation by applying concepts VERY similar to the cluster motivations Nick discussed, including social, mastery, achievement, and immersion. An improved practical understanding of workplace psychology is paramount for continued success in organizational learning, especially when attempting to integrate game mechanics and complex decision-making into the user experience. The Big Easy Budget Game Lets New Orleanians Balance The City Budget from FastCompany How much do you know about your hometown’s budget—besides the fact that things you care about never seem to get enough funding? What if you could improve your understanding and have fun at the same time? That’s exactly what New Orleans will attempt in the fall when they release the Big Easy Budget Game. In addition to exploring this real-world application of learning through gameplay, this article also looks at the question of accessibility—a common concern for digital workplace learning. The team must consider both the lack of available public technology as well as language barriers when deploying a game-based solution. Yes, this application is more of a simulation than gamification, but it’s still an interesting story about the value of gameplay in non-traditional situations. I’m looking forward to a follow-up after the game launches with the release of the city budget in a few months. Gamification Research: What the Numbers Reveal from Karl Kapp These curated insights would not be complete without highlighting the latest research by gamification guru Karl Kapp. Karl has partnered with Axonify to use our massive database of user data to dig into the real-world business impact of gamification. In this presentation from Learning Solutions 2016, Karl reveals some initial findings from his research, which will be published in a peer-reviewed journal later this year. For example, he found that employees using Axonify were 51.64% more motivated to engage when they had the choice to play a casual game as part of the experience. Results like this not only validate Axonify’s approach, but will also help L&D teams better craft their gamification strategies based on what really works. I’m excited to follow Karl’s work as he continues to merge an academic approach to research with real-world outcomes. That’s it for this month’s curated insights on gamification. I’ll be back next month to share a collection of articles on another theme that is impacting the world of workplace learning. If you’d like a behind-the-scenes look into my curation efforts, follow me on Flipboard, where I post new articles on a variety of L&D themes every day. Written by JD Dillon The post Curated Insights - It’s ‘game on’ for Gamification in the workplace appeared first on Axonify.

Last month, I shared a blog post about the need to understand your organization’s learning culture before attempting to introduce a new approach, such as microlearning. But wait… What is a "learning culture" anyway? You’ve probably heard about your executive team’s desire to build a "strong learning culture," especially if you work in L&D. It’s a pretty popular sentiment nowadays and helps to explain why companies are spending so much money on training—$70.6 BILLION in the US in 2015, according to Training Magazine. That said, only 31% of organizations currently describe themselves as having a learning culture, according to Deloitte’s 2016 Global Human Capital Trends Report. Everyone wants a learning culture. They’re investing piles of cash in it. Why haven’t we figured it out yet? The problem is that many organizations are simply looking at the learning culture concept from the wrong angle. A learning culture is not defined by the volume or quality of learning opportunities. Just because you spend money on training resources doesn’t mean you can shift your culture. There’s a big difference between fostering a LEARNING CULTURE and just providing a pile of learning opportunities. Unfortunately, many organizations confuse these two ideas and believe that a well structured and resourced L&D program justifies the inclusion of "learning" in the list values they have hanging in the lobby. It does not. Fostering a learning culture was the theme of a discussion Axonify, President and CEO, Carol Leaman, and I led during the Learning and Performance Ecosystem Conference in March. (You can check out our full presentation on SlideShare to see how we explored a set of exemplary organizations with well-established learning cultures along with the attributes that helped them put learning at the center of everything they do). I’d like to highlight 4 of those attributes here, as well as describe a few related tactics you can use to strengthen your organization’s learning culture: 1. Velocity An organization’s long-term viability is not solely determined by the quality of its product. It’s now highly-dependent on how quickly the company can evolve in the face of disruption. Just look at what happened to Blockbuster, Polaroid, and (most recently) Yahoo. Organizations must be learning constantly to ensure survival. This extends to all employees, who are being asked to flex in their roles and handle more and more responsibility. To ensure maximum velocity, organizations must shift their talent recruitment practices to identify candidates who have demonstrated proven capabilities to learn —instead of just evaluating them based on past experience and existing skills. Besides this, organizations must also embed learning into every employee’s daily experience at work. Through practical, science-based approaches like microlearning and continued reinforcement, employees can ensure they stay up to speed with the knowledge most vital to their roles. This will also help L&D make better use of traditional, event-based training when needed. 2. Narrative Every company has a story, but it’s important to figure out how this story feeds a consistent narrative to help employees relate their roles to the organization’s larger mission. I always use Disney as my ultimate example. During my time in L&D with the Walt Disney World Resort, we constantly and effectively used storytelling techniques as the foundation of our learning approach to both demonstrate desired behaviors and foster a continued sense of connection and added meaning for the Cast. Every company isn’t Disney, of course. But your employees are generating new stories constantly through their work with peers and customers. How are you leveraging those stories to expose successes and foster a greater connection across the organization? In my corporate L&D work, I have used tactics like blogs, user-generated video and scripted stories within instructor-led sessions to help share these stories at scale. This is also where enterprise social tools come in handy as a way to enable employees to share their own stories in the moment. 3. Teaching Most organizations align the idea of teaching (aka imparting knowledge and experience in structured ways) to specific roles—specifically managers and trainers. Unfortunately, this limits the value of employees who don’t have big titles, but do have plenty of knowledge to share—and often unique ways of sharing it. A learning culture requires an understanding of the subject matter and a big title isn’t a prerequisite. Organizations need to focus on helping employees at all levels to share their unique knowledge, experience and perspective. For example, Pixar holds art classes that anyone in the company can attend, an approach that has recently expanded into the public via Khan Academy. Google is known for driving internal learning with Googlers teaching Googlers. Enabling peer-to-peer teaching in this way not only reinforces the value of the teacher but also positions employees as the foundation of the overall learning culture. 4. Enablement Consumers now control the marketplace. Thanks, Internet! The same is true in the workplace, where employees now have options with regard to how they improve their knowledge and performance. Why trudge over to your LMS and take an hour-long course when you can just Google the problem and watch a 2-minute YouTube video? Organizations must wake up to this reality and, rather than fight it, embrace it by finding ways to enable their employees through right-fit technology. Knowledge must be made searchable and shareable using single-source repositories. Employees should be motivated to use and contribute to these performance support resources. This approach not only enables employees to get the information they need, when they need it, but it also provides an opportunity for them to offer meaningful feedback and strengthen their connection to the larger organization. Your organization has a learning culture—whether or not it’s formally recognized. It’s not up to L&D to build anything from scratch. Yes, learning opportunities should still be a big part of the L&D role, but learning leaders must think about the bigger picture, assess the current state of the learning culture and partner with the rest of the organization—including frontline employees—to find ways to bring these attributes to life every day. As the learning foundation strengthens, you’ll notice that the role of L&D suddenly becomes simpler. Employees will find new ways to share knowledge more easily and solve problems more quickly in the moment of need. In case you missed it, here is the presentation that Carol and I did on this topic a few months ago. Written by JD Dillon The post What’s a learning culture anyway? 4 essential attributes for bringing it to life appeared first on Axonify.

Knowledge sharing has always been an important part of the workplace. Historically, organizations have relied heavily on tenured employees and legally required documentation to help people do their jobs. However, as organizations continue to go global and roles become more and more complex, this dated approach just doesn’t work anymore. The best information remains locked away in the minds of your top performers, only to walk out the door when they leave the company. If this sounds familiar, it’s time for your organization to explore best practices and implement technology that will put the knowledge employees need at their fingertips. Here are my curated insights on knowledge sharing for May 2016: 5 reasons your employees aren’t sharing their knowledge from JD Dillon Shameless self promotion! I wrote this post for my Just Curious Learning Blog to address the "if we build it they will come" mentality many organizations have with regard to employee knowledge sharing. Companies are riddled with empty enterprise social networks and poorly trafficked intranets, but they can’t figure out why. Well, this post explains why—based on my practical experience and several years exploring the concept of workplace knowledge sharing. My most important point: knowledge sharing is more about culture than technology. I will continue to explore knowledge sharing themes via various channels, including the Axonify Knowledge Blog, my personal blog and future conference sessions. The introduction of the Axonify DiscoveryZone will give me a chance to get even more tactical in my discussions and show how the right approach to knowledge sharing, plus right-fit technology, can really make a difference for employees in their moments of need. The six key skills of learning curation from Carole Bower Curation isn’t just about collecting content you like and sharing it back out with your network. To do it right, a curator needs both a well-defined process and commensurate skill to make sure the content they share has value to the audience. Several models for curation have been discussed during the past several years. In this post, Carole breaks down her 6 core skills for effective curation. I’d like to call out the importance of "synthesise," or, as Carole puts it, pulling "all the bits together and to join up the dots to paint a bigger picture." Most people are savvy enough to find disparate content on the internet on their own nowadays, but a skilled curator can help them establish new meaning by strategically putting pieces together and shining a light on previously unrelated information. There is a never-ending sea of content out there - whether it be on the internet or in your workplace repositories. A great curator can bring order to the chaos and help you find the right information to help learn and solve problems effectively. Hopefully, you see my monthly blog posts as a great example of the curation skills Carole presents in her article! How internal blogging with Confluence created a culture of knowledge sharing at APT from Dave Pacifico Here’s a great practical example of the benefits of workplace knowledge sharing. Dave’s organization was growing quickly and realized they had to do a better job keeping everyone updated and informed. Rather than craft a big complicated strategy, the company picked a familiar medium—a simple blog—and gave it a try. I like the organic approach. Rather than dictate how the blog should be used, the company let employees figure it how the platform could be most useful based on their needs. I applied a very similar (and successful) approach to enterprise knowledge sharing while with Kaplan. I actually wrote the company’s only internal blog for several years. It was enlightening to see how often my "work out loud" posts from months prior would transform into reference articles as my ideas were adopted. Dave goes on to share some great steps for getting started with internal blogging, but these ideas can also be applied with other knowledge sharing strategies. If anyone ever questions the value of spending time and effort on sharing your knowledge at work, point them to this article! Learning Insights, naturally from Cammy Bean My last curated entry is a short story from my industry peer and accidental instructional designer Cammy Bean. Cammy tells the tale of how her husband used online resources to fix their air conditioner without the need for formal training. She relates this experience to the inability of employees to solve their own problems on the job due to the lack of shared knowledge. I often use a similar example about broken kitchen pipes when I discuss the value of shared knowledge. Too many companies try to control their employees’ learning experiences, and their reasons just don’t make any sense to me. Meanwhile, in many cases, all employees need are workplace versions of Google, YouTube and Wikipedia so they can apply their natural problem solving behaviors between 9am and 5pm (Monday - Friday). I particularly enjoy Cammy’s reference to "natural learning environments" as a way to put knowledge sharing into an enterprise L&D context. Oh … and plus 10 points for the Willy Wonka reference! That’s a wrap for this month’s sharing on knowledge sharing! Keep an eye on the Axonify KnowlEDGE blog in June for my next collection of articles on a major theme from the world of workplace learning. For a behind-the-scenes look into my curation efforts, follow me on Flipboard, where I post new articles on a variety of L&D themes every day. Written by JD Dillon The post Curated Insights: Why knowledge sharing at work is a good thing appeared first on Axonify.

We’re just a few days away from the BIGGEST event on the learning and development industry calendar - 2016 ATD International Conference & Expo. Axonify will be in Denver to meet new people and share our approach to modern workplace learning. You can find us at Booth 139 in the Expo Hall throughout the event. Be sure to say "hi" if you spot one of us in the halls or if we happen to attend the same sessions! Speaking of sessions, we’d love if you would attend Escape Extinction! 4 Ideas for Restoring Relevance to L&D on Tuesday, May 24 at 3 pm in room 217. During this one-hour session, Axonify CEO Carol Leaman and I will discuss the evolving knowledge needs of today’s employees and share examples of how we have helped numerous companies improve their learning ecosystems and achieve considerable business results. Here’s a special sneak preview of 4 key points we’ll discuss during our session: The workplace has changed, but L&D has not. There’s no doubt that organizations have come to understand the value of workplace learning. 84% of executives rate learning as an essential part of their strategies, and $70.6 BILLION was spent on corporate training in the U.S. in 2015. Despite this acknowledged importance, L&D-provided resources are often the least-valued learning opportunities used in the workplace. This disconnect is the result of L&D’s failure to keep up with changes in the workplace and the people they support. Traditional strategies, such as event-based training and eLearning, are not sufficient to drive the knowledge and behaviors employees need to do their jobs and deliver the expected results. To avoid an extinction of irrelevance, L&D must evolve its strategies and tactics to align to the modern workplace ecosystem. Tying learning to business results is not only possible but essential. L&D has been historically and regrettably unable to connect their efforts to measureable business results. For many L&D professionals, the concept of ROI fits into mythical workplace lore somewhere between the sasquatch and a unicorn. Regardless of effort, this disconnect leaves L&D open to scrutiny and unable to provide its value to the overall business. The "right thing to do" approach is no longer sufficient to justify the investment in workplace learning. No, I’m not saying that everything L&D does to support performance must be tied to a definitive ROI. However, L&D must work with stakeholders to identify key pain points and implement strategies that address performance problems in meaningful, measureable ways. If you can’t answer the question "How will we know it worked?" then why do it? You’re supporting humans first, employees second. The brain works how the brain works. While we still don’t know all that much about it and—of course—everyone is unique, people are people and therefore have inherent capabilities and limitations when it comes to learning. To effectively leverage the science of learning, L&D must provide resources that are built the way humans naturally consume and share knowledge. We can’t overcome human nature just because we expect our employees to learn EVERYTHING they need to do their jobs as quickly as possible. One important consideration is the proper "sorting" of knowledge based on expected use. Employees cannot be expected to know everything. Therefore, L&D must separate knowledge that must be retained from that which can be referenced on the job. Learning strategies, such as spaced repetition and retrieval practice, along with performance support resources, including on-demand knowledge sharing and job aids, can then be provided in alignment with these expectations. Their context is more important than your strategy. Have you ever been told "I don’t have time to learn today" by one of the people you support? This statement speaks to not only a possible misperception of learning within the organization but also a misalignment in learning strategy. The workplace is called the workplace because the focus is on WORK—not learning. Therefore, L&D must align its strategies to fit within the context of the workplace and not require unnecessary time and effort from employees who are likely quite busy and possibly stressed out. Microlearning is one approach that can be used to overcome this challenge, as bite-sized and on-demand content fits more easily into natural gaps in an employee’s day. It’s also important for L&D to understand employees’ workflows so they can position learning opportunities at the most opportune moments and locations (physical and/or digital). It’s not enough for employees to find time for learning. They must be as open and ready to receive new knowledge as possible to ensure proper focus and retention.   I hope to see you at our Escape Extinction! Session so you can hear the full story and grab a few practical ideas to improve your learning and performance strategies. If you won’t be in Denver, check out our full presentation on SlideShare, and share your insights and questions via comments below. We’ll also be live tweeting during the event using #ATD2016. Be sure to follow @Axonify and @JD_Dillon. Written by: JD Dillon The post ATD 2016 Sneak Peek - 4 Ideas for Restoring Relevance to L&D appeared first on Axonify.

#ATD2016 is the biggest learning and performance event of the year. With more than 10,000 L&D pros from across the globe in attendance in Denver, Colorado and an expo the size of 2 football fields, it certainly felt like it! Our Axonify team was on the move throughout the conference. Carol Leaman and I presented 4 ideas for restoring relevance to L&D. The team had countless great conversations and met plenty of amazing people. We hosted a fun cocktail reception for our friends and partners. We were also honored with the award for Best Island Booth during the expo, thanks to our display as well as the friendly and informative support we provided to attendees who stopped by.   With so many people engaging in so many conversations during so many sessions, you’d think it would be super difficult to narrow the emergent themes to a short list for this blog post. And it was—at least at first. However, after a few conversations, a 3-hour plane ride and a good night’s sleep, I landed on 4 core themes to summarize #ATD2016. 1. Vulnerability  The idea of embracing vulnerability was prominent throughout the conference. In my Escape Extinction! presentation, I spoke about the inherent vulnerability required to support continuous learning in the workplace. To learn, we must first be vulnerable enough to admit that we don’t know and we need help. This is often a sticking point for organizations that are culturally afraid of failure and may therefore look down upon—or even punish—a lack of knowledge rather than frame it as a learning opportunity. Keynote speaker, Brene Brown, echoed this idea. She discussed the nature of trust and vulnerability as it relates to organizational leadership. To quote "Vulnerability is not weakness. It’s our most accurate measure of courage." I believe this same courage must be supported within our organizations to promote continued learning, strategic agility and performance improvement. Brown was simply amazing! She connected with the audience in a very natural, unassuming way and effectively layered storytelling, research and humor. Check out her popular TED Talk ‘The power of vulnerability’ to get an idea of what it was like to attend her keynote presentation. 2. Learning Tech Evolution (Moving Beyond the LMS) Several sessions focused on learning technology. In one session, the presenter began by asking how many people like their learning management system (LMS). Zero of a possible 300 hands (2 per person of course) went up. This sentiment was echoed during many conversations throughout the event and it isn’t new. (I can empathize from my years within corporate learning). However, L&D pros now have an even stronger understanding that right-fit technology is needed to support modern workplace learning. They are looking for technology that not only pushes content at their audiences, but also allows employees to pull information on-demand when problems arise on the job. This technology must adapt to the needs of each employee and provide actionable insights into learning and performance within the organization. The good news? This technology exists! The L&D community must keep asking questions and realize that there are better options out there (such as Axonify) to support the knowledge needs of today’s employees. Complaining about legacy tech isn’t enough. It’s time to take action and leverage tools that are built for the modern workplace. 3. Formal Training Tactics vs. Big Picture Strategy While sessions on an array of topics were well-attended, much of the chatter centered on formal training concepts, including eLearning authoring software, PowerPoint, leadership development and instructional design. Formal training tactics are and will continue to be an important part of workplace learning. However, as research has shown, traditional training isn’t enough. L&D pros must shift mindsets and become connectors first, creators second. They must embed learning in the workflow and help employees share their knowledge to truly scale workplace learning. Our formal training offerings can then become a more strategic way to support the organization’s learning ecosystem. The evolution has begun, but we still have a ways to go. While there are certainly conversations taking place regarding big picture workplace learning, they can still be drowned out now and then by the more familiar discussions of tools and instructional strategies. Of course, in the case of #ATD2016, this chatter may have been the result of who was in attendance and the roles they currently play within their L&D teams. What do you think? 4. Community is more than an event. I’m always energized by the opportunity to spend 3 or 4 days immersed in the world of L&D with people who are as passionate as I am about helping people do their jobs better. That said, it is only 3 or 4 days. What about the rest of the year? After all, community is more than an event! Too many L&D pros wait for these scheduled IRL (in real life) moments to engage with the larger professional community. Then, they go back to work and get overwhelmed by projects and deliverables. Meanwhile, their organization is trying to solve the exact same problem that many others face,but going at it alone. This isn’t a matter of time or money. It’s about effort and commitment. L&D pros must engage continuously with the community for their own development as well as the betterment of their organizations. We have tools like Twitter, Slack, Blab, Google and LinkedIn. We have professional organizations like ATD and the eLearning Guild. Let’s take advantage, create personal learning networks (PLNs) and dedicate the same amount of effort into improving ourselves that we put into improving our organizations. Everyone will benefit! There are my 4 big takeaways from #ATD2016! Thanks to everyone with whom I had the chance to interact at the show. It was a great event! If you were in attendance in Denver, what did you think? If you didn’t attend, I highly recommend keeping an eye on the #ATD2016 hashtag on Twitter so you can review the various recaps and perspectives that are being shared as your peers return to work. Written by: JD Dillon The post 4 Themes from #ATD2016 appeared first on Axonify.

Meet Millennials. Described as demanding job hoppers with little loyalty, they’re projected to make up half of the workforce by 2020. So, if you haven’t taken notice, it’s time to pay attention. The future success of your business depends on it. A few of the many Millennials of Axonify Millennials know what they want and aren’t afraid to go after it - even if it means leaving what appears to be a dream job for a risky venture at another firm. So, how do you keep a talent pool of Millennials on your payroll for the long term?  How can you help them perform today and develop into tomorrow’s leaders? The answer is through learning. But not just any learning. Don’t expect your 20-year old training methods to work:  this generation has high expectations and little patience. To retain, engage and push this generation to perform at their best, learning at work must mirror how they learn in everyday life. Here’s what Millennials want: Quick and Instant Info. In today’s distraction-riddled workplace, Millennials have no interest in sitting through lengthy training sessions, or reading "how to" manuals and books. They want learning that reflects real-life interactions (think Twitter and Google): short, to the point and immediate (e.g. I’m doing something in my job. How do I do it?). That means, if you want to grab their attention, you’ll need to swap out lengthy classroom sessions for bite-sized learning modules that take no more than 5 minutes of their time. Mobile Access. Millennials are the first generation of "digital natives" and would be lost without their mobile devices. The good news is they’ll embrace learning that’s available via an app—even logging in after hours if it’s really compelling. So, get rid of the notion that learning has to happen in a formal setting and let them learn whenever and wherever they want. You’ll get far better results if you give them more freedom. Social Elements.  Millennials are communicating constantly via email, text and social networks. They’ve established their comfort zones around peer support.  They thrive in this environment. And they react positively to social feeds and discussion groups.  They’re also intensely motivated by a sense of value, and want the opportunity to contribute to the organization’s success in a variety of ways, such as participating in knowledge crowdsourcing. This means you need to stop locking up content behind closed doors and start making it accessible. A central repository of learning content that enables and encourages collaboration allows the entire organization to benefit from shared knowledge. And the more Millennials are able to participate in contributing their knowledge and ideas, the more they’ll feel valued and engaged. Plus, you’ll also benefit from hearing their point of view. Entertainment.  Gaming is embedded in the psyche of Millennials, and they’ve grown to look for entertaining, engaging experiences wherever they go. If learning can be made fun, and offer challenges and a bit of competition, this generation will just eat it up!  After all, why should training be boring? By changing this mindset and gamifying the experience, learning becomes something that they want to do, rather than something they have to do. And when they want to learn, they will participate more and elevate their performance, benefiting the organization as a whole. Personalized Experiences. Millennials are accustomed to app personalization technology, and have little patience for generic anything. They expect learning content to be relevant to their needs and timely. Otherwise, they’ll tune out or just not bother to complete the learning module. With today’s technology, there’s no reason all employees should receive the same type of training anyway. Personalized learning just makes much more sense from a development standpoint for everyone across the organization. So, if you’re serious about attracting and retaining Millennials, it’s time to change your approach. Give them learning opportunities that appeal to the way they want to learn, instead of forcing them to adhere to old-school methods that just don’t work. The secret’s as simple as that. Written by: Carol Leaman The post The secret to attracting and keeping millennial workers appeared first on Axonify.

Extended enterprise learning is all about business.  The business of training your non-employees.  The business of making money, accelerating growth, furthering your reach, streamlining your processes and achieving competitive separation. Extended enterprise learning is a business weapon wielded by the wise to build communities of customers, partners and resellers and provide them learning interventions to measurably change behavior.  The measurable change results in more sales of your primary products and/or your content and happier customers. To push out and manage training to external audiences you need an extended enterprise LMS which is a special kind of LMS that does most of what an employee LMS does but also much more.  Mobile focused, NextGen user interface, social learning, ecommerce, gamification and marketing automation are just some of the key features needed to support external audiences. So what are some ways to drive profit with an extended enterprise LMS?  Here are ten good examples: Sell Content - If there is one thing that an extended enterprise or training for business LMS must do - it must be able to sell content to individuals and/or organizations. Continuing education, assessments, aggregated content, proprietary content, books, kits, conferences, instructor-led, webinars or guides can all be sold to relevant audiences to create a primary or complimentary stream of revenue for your organization. Certify External Partners - Many organizations distribute their products and services via external partners, distribution channels, value added resellers, agents, dealers or franchises. Partners are certified as an organization based on a certain number or percentage of management, sales and service employees that are individually certified.  The end customer gets the advantage of the best technology, restaurant or retail solutions delivered with local professionals that have the proven knowledge, tools and business processes at their disposal. Organizations utilize an extended enterprise LMS solution to create programs of study and assessment to ensure a certain level of mastery to achieve a certification. Automate Partners’ Employee Onboarding - Once you have a certified partner and an extended enterprise LMS in place, best-in-class organizations provide the training and tools to help partners shorten the onboarding time of their new employees. The faster your partner’s employees can start effectively selling or servicing your product the more value.  Most organizations have an internal employee onboarding process and training programs that can be inexpensively modified to be applicable for the external channel for a fee or free. Accelerate New Product Rollouts for Channel-With every new product and service released, a targeted training and certification program is a fantastic way to drastically reduce time to market, maximize channel awareness and positively impact rollout success. Tying LMS gamification and awards to partners that certify on the new products the quickest or the best is a great motivational strategy.    Prospect Education -Continuing education providers, universities and corporations are now utilizing MOOCs (massive open online courses) and other free content as a loss leader to bring in new potential customers. The content needs to be relevant and great to convert prospects into customers.  Prospect learning helps the selling organization accelerate the sales cycle by letting prospects do most of the sales work by educating themselves. As customers educate themselves they voluntarily absorb knowledge about products and services without costly active involvement from the sales force or channel. Free Webinar!  Want to Drive Profit from your Extended Enterprise?  How to Find the Right EE LMS for You - Register Now! Onboard New Customers - Many companies use an extended enterprise LMS to provide free and recommended content based on their recent purchases. Helping your customers use your products better results in happier customers, less support calls and a more engaged client base.  Once you have your customer in your LMS, you can then cross-sell and up-sell by providing complimentary product training or engage in drip marketing to broaden customer awareness of your products and services.  There is no easier place to get another sale than from an existing customer.  Public Service Education - Corporations, governments, non-governmental agencies like the Red Cross need to educate the public on a multitude of topics. Emergency responders, veterans, business owners and job seekers are all examples of the public audience that needs to be trained and it’s not always for free.  The extended enterprise LMS is a preferred delivery method because of low cost of distribution and the ability to measure effectiveness and change in behavior.  Avoid Contract Workforce Compliance Violations — Compliance violations can cost lives at the worst and significant fines in the least and can be solved with a good extended enterprise LMS.  In the retail, energy, transportation, construction and other regulated industries, many workers are an ever rotating group of contractors or seasonal help.   An extended enterprise LMS allows organizations to easily deliver compliance content and verify compliance in a case of an audit or accident with these audiences. Solve Customer Support Problems — Every time a customer contacts your customer support it costs you. You may not be able to avoid all support calls, however, you can minimize the volume of support incidents by designing targeted learning that gives customers all the tools they need.  You can even push training to targeted groups based on call center interactions.  Decreased support calls and trouble tickets translate directly into higher profits - more importantly it translates into more satisfied customers. Expedite Global Expansion — In today’s world of cloud based LMS solutions, any organization can afford a global platform ready to support new channel partners and customers. Through the use of language localizations for both the LMS platform and content, multi-currency commerce and global tax management, it is cost effective to penetrate into new regions at a fraction of the cost of just a few years ago. Conclusion If you are stuck in HR training, break out.  Training external audiences as a business is the way to go.  With external audiences learners consume content because they want to and you want them to because it has a measurable impact on your business.  Whether you want to drive partners to sell more, provide more value to customers or engage the public, get yourself an extended enterprise LMS and start making a difference!   Need Help Finding an Extended Enterprise LMS? Fill out the form below to schedule a complimentary call with myself, John Leh. First Name* Last Name* Title* Email* Company* Tell us about your LMS woes Comments This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Thanks for reading!   The post Ten Ways to Drive Profit with an Extended Enterprise LMS appeared first on Talented Learning.

You need to attract more prospects, train your customers and external sales channel and you heard that this LMS thing can solve your problems.  You Google "LMS" and you find 600 LMS companies, countless advertisements and hopefully a few of my articles. When reviewing the LMS vendor websites, you find it is difficult to discern a difference between the LMS companies and their offerings. You have been tasked to find qualified LMS options for your organizations but it is impossible to qualify all 600 solutions in any reasonable time or cost effective manner.  I know, I’ve tried.  In the last nineteen months, I have only been able to review 90 of the 600 LMSs.  Here is what I found though.  Each of the 90 has met some business need uniquely and a bit better than the other 89. Unique LMS differentiation is based on varying combinations of the LMS vendor’s experience, services provided, regional focus, industries served, functional capabilities, technical sturdiness, license approach, and ongoing support provided. The best way to prepare for the vendor community and find viable solutions efficiently is to have your ducks in a row before you start knocking on LMS vendor doors.  Once they have you in their sights, be prepared for an onslaught of information and sales contact. You need to know your business case, functional requirements and desired professional support needs before you enter that phase or there will be too much noise to sort through intelligently. Before speaking to vendors, I recommend defining the following:   Tip #1 - Define your LMS Business Case Any wise "training as a business" (extended enterprise) LMS buyer knows all the questions and answers about their business case.  You don’t buy a business LMS without knowing how you are going to achieve much more benefit than the cost of the LMS and overall program.  Business cases for an extended enterprise LMSs are usually pretty easy to develop.  Answer the following questions and you will have the start of yours. Who are your intended LMS audiences?  Is it your channel, partners, members, customers, prospects, employees, students, general public or all?  Some LMSs are generalists that do it all (more expensive) and others specialize in an audience type or business function (less expensive). What are the measurable success criteria?  Are you trying to drive content sales, channel sales, # of channel partners, customer renewals, customer satisfaction, product rollouts or global expansion?  What percentage increase or decrease in your metrics constitute success?  Do you have a plan in place to measure current metrics and future metrics to determine the return on investment gain of your learning technology efforts? Do you have budget yet?  It is really important to know your budget status internally and shop realistically.  There is no sense looking at a Ferrari when you have $10,000 to spend.   Is budget allocated, how much, when and for how long?  Do you know the internal process to actually spend the budget? Do you have 3-year usage predictions?  You can’t get to a realistic price evaluation of LMS solutions without having usage predictions.  Who is your target audience(s)?  How big is the audience?  How will you reach them?  How often will they visit the LMS or buy content?  How will the audiences grow over time?  LMS pricing models vary widely.  Being armed with predicative data will allow you to get apples-to-apples comparative pricing.  It also helps vendors get a true understanding of the scope of the opportunity over time and facilitates pricing based on the growth vs. just the initial starting usage. What industry do you live in?  Many of the 600 LMS vendors specialize in industry solutions and provide a compelling mix of product and industry expertise.  If your extended enterprise or training for business LMS is targeting audiences in a specific industry, that is important to note and Google - "LMS for CMEs" or "LMS for Associations."  I am a firm believer that a vendor’s industry experience is an important differentiator because previous clients have educated the vendor and helped close industry product gaps.   Want deeper information about Training for a Business LMSs?  Free Webinar!  How to Find the Right LMS for You - Register Now!   Tip #2 - Define Functional and Technical LMS Requirements Maybe you are not an LMS requirements expert and you don’t know what the hundreds of features actually mean when you look at the available RFP templates or vendor websites.  Not to worry, you can use common sense to at least create a high-level requirements analysis to use as a lens to qualify LMS vendors.  If you can answer the following questions, you will have a head start on your requirements and you can shop for an LMS solution for your training business more effectively: What are the functional use cases?  How is the intended audience going to interact with the LMS?  Do they need to search and find content?  Will content be purchased and assigned to them by others?  How will your audience find the site?  Get accounts?  Who will be administrating?  Delegated administrating?  Who will need reports? Just write simple sentences of the "use cases" or how people will use the site. Those can drive your requirements. Are you going to sell content?  Not all extended enterprise initiatives involve selling content.  Often content is free for customers, volunteers and public education programs.  If you don’t need ecommerce capability that is significant in terms of LMS options and cost.  If you are going to sell content… Are you selling to organizations or individuals?  Although some ecommerce capable LMSs can support both scenarios well, many LMSs specialize in one or the other.  When selling to organizations you need to support bulk content purchases, vouchers, debit accounts, credit accounts, purchase orders, electronic checks to facilitate new and renewal purchases.  If to individuals, you need to browse the content, see comments and ratings, place content in shopping cart and have a secure checkout. How global are you?  There are varying degrees of global capability in modern LMSs.  Deploying content in one language to many countries is much different than managing many language localizations of content and LMS interfaces.  The former can be supported by most any LMS, the latter by a certain few.  Add the tax complexity created by selling content globally and your LMS choices dwindle further.  Be clear about what you really need here.  The fewer the LMS choices, the higher the price. Do you need to share data with other systems?  The sharing of data with other systems in your technological ecosystem is an important automation step for things like account creation, email marketing, external commerce purchases and reporting.  What systems need to talk with the LMS?  What data needs to be shared? Why?   Vendors are all over the board on their support for integrations and it is important to know what you need so you can ask for it. What learning media do you need to manage?  Instructor-led, virtual classrooms, videos, documents, SCORM, xAPI, AICC, podcasts, MOOCS or what?  Not all LMSs manage all types, so it is critical to be specific in what you need to manage. Social and Gamification?  This feature set usually comes at a premium cost not worth paying for if you don’t have a tangible plan to utilize.  Building a social community is critical for any successful extended enterprise initiative but existing corporate social platforms, LinkedIn Groups, Twitter and Facebook work great also and are free.   If you require a social LMS, be specific in what you need and what use cases you want to support.  You will find all LMS vendors say they are social and leave it to the buyer to define how social is social. Mobile?  Let me answer for you.   Yes.  Mobile first and only in the extended enterprise.  Since extended enterprises audiences are not your employees it is impossible to account for all the different devices, browsers and platforms used to access the LMS so you have to be prepared for all.  Modern fully responsive LMSs that change their content arrangement and menus dynamically on any device and give you more mileage and less headaches than a downloadable mobile app strategy. Are you selling or managing continuing education credits?  Most LMSs are not good at managing the complexity of multiple credit types, multiple accreditation bodies and varying regulatory requirements of professional continuing education.  If you need to sell or manage CE, CME, CNE, CPE, CPD or CLE, you need a very special kind of LMS. Technical requirements or limitations?  Do you need things like on premise solution, 21 CFR Part 11, CDN, stage/testing environments, GSA, global scalability, load-balancing, high concurrency, PCI, security audits, rapid disaster recovery and 99.99% (or higher) availability?  If so, make the vendors aware in the first communication to weed out the weak.  Serious vendors won’t be shy talking about and proving their SLA (service level agreement) and track record.   Tip #3 — Define LMS Pro Services Requirements There are currently 3 types of LMS vendors out there.  Those that provide no services, those that provide core implementation and launch services and those that provide full service business consulting.  A big mistake buyers make is buying a full service LMS and try to skimp on the services.  Conversely, expecting help and guidance, but buying a "free trial" cloud LMS isn’t any better.  Just like dating, it is best to stay in your league.  Here are some questions to ask yourself: Is this your inaugural LMS effort?  Many extended enterprise initiatives start small and grow through measurable success.  If this is your first effort, you don’t need to worry about all the bells and whistles.  You need to attract users, have content and make the match.  With the evolution of the true cloud LMSs, buyers can create a trial site in minutes and eventually this turns into a paying live site when the trial ends.  Higher end vendors offer free proof of concept sites which is essentially a free trial or sandbox tailored to the exact business need at hand. Is this a replacement LMS effort?  If you have an LMS and want to buy a new one, migrate your training history and content and recreate (improve) your HRIS, ERP, AMS, Single Sign On integrations and train your administrators, you need to look for vendors that have a defined implementation process with an assigned project team - not just one "business consultant" helping when you ask.  Typically, none of the free trial LMSs provide this level of support. Is the LMS purchase mission critical?  All LMS purchases are important but some are business mission critical especially in the association, channel and customer space.  The LMS in these instances is a core business tool, success is mandatory and a full service business consulting LMS partner is needed.  These type of LMS providers help with business case development, strategy, social marketing, ROI measurement, 24/7 end user support services, localization services, integration services, ongoing improvement services and content development in addition to typical implementation services.   Conclusion I sold high-end LMSs successfully for over 13 years and generated over $50,000,000 of LMS license and service revenues.  I now help LMS buyers buy LMSs.  In my experience with both sides of the equation, training for a business or extended enterprise LMS buyers that know the above information have the best chance of navigating the stormy seas of 600 vendors and finding the right LMS for them. Thanks for reading!   Learn How to Find the Right Extended Enterprise LMS for You Free Webinar — August 28th, 2015 - 12:00pm-1:00pm EST - Register Now! Join John Leh, CEO & Lead Analyst at Talented Learning and Tamer Ali, President of Digital Ignite for this exciting, informative and fast paced session that will outline: Best uses of extended enterprise training Why training as a business is different than training employees Key features needed to attract users and sell content Tips to defining your extended enterprise requirements What to look for in extended enterprise LMS vendors Real-life case studies demonstrating some of the latest user attraction and engagement techniques If you are focused on attracting new users, building a community, selling content and being a profit center in your organization, this webinar is a must attend event for you! Register now even if you can’t attend at this time and we will send you a link to the recording of the session as well as our research paper on this topic. The post 3 Tips to Finding the Best Extended Enterprise LMS for You appeared first on Talented Learning.

By Gauri Reyes, frequent contributor to the Daily Mindflash blog Online training is an effective way to arm your partners and value-added resellers with knowledge. It’s scalable—you can train thousands at once while retaining your own corporate brand in the training materials. A highly trained, extended sales force can increase your revenue through increased sales of your products and services. And, you can sell your online training courses themselves to your partners and resellers, should you choose to do so. When creating an online training program for your partners and resellers, consider the following topics:   Convey the Company Culture Your partners and resellers are effectively an extension of your sales force. As they are often in front of your end customers and are effectively representing your products and services, expose them to your company culture, norms, behaviors, values, beliefs, and vision. The more you align your culture with theirs, at least when it comes to reselling your products and services, the more you can ensure a unified, positive experience to the end customer.   Opportunity Registration & Dispute Resolution If you work with multiple resellers, your resellers could potentially compete for the same opportunity with the same end customer. Avoid sticky issues and reduce inter-reseller conflict by covering topics related to how to register customer opportunities, rules of engagement, and how to resolve disputes when two or more partners claim the right to call upon a customer.   Ask for a Performance Make partners prove that they’re ready to go in front of your customers. You can stipulate that partners complete a minimum set of courses, or a series, before they are allowed to resell your products/services. You can set up training-based certifications and accreditation to give them the official stamp of approval that they’re qualified to sell for you. Also, consider asking your partners to complete a "homework assignment" to prove that they’re ready to hit the ground running. For example, ask a partner to present a product pitch to you (via video, for example) to prove their sales-readiness.   Position Top-Producers as SMEs If you have certified or named partners who have shown loyalty and dedication to your company by achieving a target sales number or other goal, consider positioning them as the "in team" as part of your reseller rewards structure. Beyond providing wholesale discounts, financial rewards or other perks, ask these top-producers to be your subject matter experts (SMEs) for other resellers. And, when possible, ask these SMEs to create additional online training modules for you, to add to your repertoire of reseller training content.   Ping Partners on their Training Needs What do your partners want to better understand about your product/service? What do they need from you in order to effectively partner with you? What existing training content needs to be updated to reflect the rapidly changing marketplace? In addition to phone, email and face-to-face conversations, utilize your LMS as another method to gather feedback. Incorporate online quizzes and surveys in your online training and open up two-way communication through online collaboration tools to ensure that you are creating compelling training content and supporting your partners’ ability to sell your product and services.   What are the best LMS solutions for channel, partner and resellers?   Find out at the 1st Annual Talented Learning LMS Awards Ceremony on October 21st @ 12:00pm EDT !  Don’t miss it!   Reduce Churn Rate Process efficiency is imperative, both internally and externally. Look for ways to streamline communication and reduce the need for lengthy conversations, questions, and problem-solving sessions. Comb through the list of frequently asked questions by partners and resellers and create training content that addresses all questions. Provide clear instructions on who to call when, how to escalate issues, how/who to engage for specific types of questions, and where to find needed information on your website. Weave all these points into engaging, informative training and you’ve got a module that addresses a true business need.   Promos, Incentives, Offers…Compliance Ideally, online training will be completed by every one of your partners or resellers, resulting in 100% compliance. Promotions, incentives, offers and other perks help towards increasing training completion rates. Consider adding a training module that covers these perks (formal online certifications, continuing professional education credits, prizes, giveaways, rewards, volume discounts, etc.) to ensure that all your partners are aware of the rewards of completing (and learning) your online training offerings.   Positioning and Messaging Conveying your product positioning and messaging to your partners is required. Create training content that covers what to say (who to target, etc.) to successfully sell your products and services, and what not to say (who not to target, etc.). Likely, this type of training will require frequent updates, so work content upgrades into your program plan.   Your Products and Services Sensational training on your specific products and services is the crux of any partner or reseller training program. Product training is often the most boringly-delivered training content of all. But, without real product knowledge, at least functionally if not technically, partners or resellers will not be able to consistently deliver effective sales presentations in the field. Pull out all the stops to create unforgettable online training on your products and services.   Reduce, Reuse, Recycle—Create a "Green" Training Program Part of the value-add of online training is the ability to reuse content. If you view your partners and resellers as an extension of your workforce, chances are that a significant portion of your online training for your internal employees can be repurposed for your partners and resellers. Conversely, partner and reseller training (training on products, internal escalation paths and dispute resolution, and company culture, as examples) could be reused for internal employees. Also, portions of your partner and reseller training might be appropriate for your end customers. If you’ve created excellent training content for one group, maximize your benefits by repurposing that content for other groups. What topics do you find invaluable in your training programs for partners and resellers? What order would you list the topics (from least to most conventional use of training for these groups)?  Use comments below.   4 New Talented Learning webinars on all things extended enterprise starting 8/28 - check them out! The post 9 Must-Consider Topics When Designing Partner or Reseller Training appeared first on Talented Learning.