Like most retail organizations, Bloomingdale’s relied on a handful of standard training approaches—awareness posters, classroom training, LMSs, and pre-shift morning rallies—which weren’t doing the job. (Let’s face it: Safe work practices aren’t exactly a topic that gets people excited.) And, like virtually every large retail chain, the company found it hard to provide consistent store-to-store training, let alone figure out which associates understood the information and knew how to apply it correctly. But, by boosting associate knowledge to help associates take the right actions on the job, the company has been able to reduce safety incidents and save big bucks in the process.   Read the full article in Learning Solutions Magazine. IMPORTANT NOTE: Readers must sign up for a free subscription on Learning Solutions magazine to read this entire article as well as a wealth of other great content. Written by Chad McIntosh. The post Bloomingdale’s Saves Millions Through Revolutionary Approach to Employee Training appeared first on Axonify.

We’ve got some REALLY BIG news to share with you today. The kind of knock-your-socks-off news that’s revolutionizing the way organizations think about employee knowledge and use it to impact the bottom line. But before we "let the cat out of the bag," so to speak, here’s a bit of background first. In last week’s blog, we told you about the employee knowledge crisis that’s happening in every industry, across the globe. As a quick refresher, employees are overwhelmed with what they need to know on the job. Traditional eLearning offerings haven’t helped employees digest the volume of content they need to know, let alone help them to retain it or apply it on the job. So, employees don’t have the knowledge they need to take the right actions at work. All this rolls up into an inability to perform at their best, which can lead to things like increased safety incidents, inadequate customer service or poor decisions that cost the company a ton of money. The problem is that there hasn’t been a solution to this growing problem… until now! Today, we’re thrilled to tell you that we’ve stood up to this challenge. We’ve worked our butts off to enhance our existing solution (which, by the way, we thought was pretty amazing already). But now, it’s even MORE AMAZING! We’ve launched the world’s first and only Employee Knowledge Platform, designed to help organizations solve the growing employee knowledge crisis. In short, we’re just making corporate learning a whole lot smarter. Want to know more? Check out these links: News Release: Axonify Launches Enhanced Platform to Solve Employee Knowledge Problem <link to news release> Article: Axonify aims to shake up employee training with micro learning & gamification Looking forward to helping you start a learning revolution at your organization! Written by Laura Martin The post Axonify Pushes Beyond the Boundaries of eLearning appeared first on Axonify.

Think about the biggest challenges you’re facing in your organization. Maybe your sales team isn’t closing deals. Maybe your store associates aren’t demonstrating your high standards of customer service. Maybe your employees aren’t following policies and procedures and are making mistakes that are putting your business at risk. Maybe you’re struggling to keep associates safe on the job. Or maybe it’s something as significant as driving an organizational or cultural transformation that requires each and every employee across the business to be on the same page in a way that is quick, easy and sustainable. If you think hard, the common denominator for each of these challenges is knowledge. From top to bottom, what each employee knows or doesn’t know has an exponential impact on the overall success of your company. When employees don’t have the right knowledge, expecting them to be top performers (or even average performers) just isn’t realistic. Organizations thought the learning problem was solved when LMS solutions became ubiquitous. What has become very clear today is that just because there’s a simple way to deliver information, doesn’t mean employees are actually digesting, remembering or using it on the job. In fact the opposite is true. Learning is only the first step in the knowledge equation. And the fact that it’s only about delivery means it hasn’t been able to translate into performance—at the individual and the corporate level. How do we move past this conversation and finally address the true knowledge problem? Working with our customers, who are a combination of business leaders and learning visionaries, we’ve figured it out. We’ve just introduced the world’s first Employee Knowledge platform—a solution that pushes way beyond traditional eLearning and creates a new category. It’s a solution that’s 100% committed to solving the employee knowledge problem. Knowledge delivery, acquisition, sustainment, sharing, application, measurement and a direct correlation to business objectives. By leveraging our award-winning microlearning solution along with our innovative knowledge-on-demand offering, employees now have a path to everything they need in their heads and at their fingertips in a way that’s fun, fast, personalized and sustainable. But we haven’t stopped there. Our platform provides a way to measure everything from knowledge growth to behavior through to business outcomes. Corporate learning just got a whole lot smarter. Just ask organizations like Walmart, Toyota, Johnson & Johnson, John Hancock and Bloomingdale’s. With the Axonify Employee Knowledge Platform, they’ve completely changed the way they power their people with knowledge to drive real results.   Written by Carol Leaman. The post Axonify Solves the Employee Knowledge Problem appeared first on Axonify.

On Wednesday, November 18, 2015, I traveled to New York City to meet with Bloomingdale’s, one of Axonify’s customers. That same day, ISIS followed up their attacks on Paris with a threat against New York City targets, one of which was Times Square. Obviously, this threat was taken very seriously by Bloomingdale’s. The company is a New York City icon. It’s Midtown Manhattan location is the number 5 top tourist attraction in the city, housing incredibly high-value merchandise, and literally thousands of staff and customers at any given time. The next morning, I participated in focus groups with Bloomingdale’s staff. We had a roundtable conversation about how the Axonify Employee Knowledge Platform made them feel safer at work. Earlier that morning, all Bloomingdale’s Associates had received Active Shooter Training delivered through their Axonify daily microlearning session. Specifically, staff received refresher training (or in some cases learned for the first time) about what to do if a person came into the store with a gun and opened fire on employees and customers. The response to this training was overwhelmingly positive. Many employees said things like: "Now I don’t have to think about it. I just know what I would need to do in a situation like that." Given the world we live in these days, I thought this was a powerful example of how Axonify can enable employees to take the right actions at work—In this case, actions that could save lives. When the threat was received on Wednesday night, Bloomingdale’s VP of Loss Prevention and Risk Management, Chad McIntosh, took immediate action. Based on conversations he had with some federal agencies, he decided to make the Active Shooter Training a top priority. Because Axonify allows learning content to be prioritized, Bloomingdale’s was able to categorize this training as the most important, which meant it overtook all other training. Regardless of the learning that was scheduled to be delivered to each employee via Axonify, as of Wednesday night, anyone logging into the Axonify Employee Knowledge Platform would first receive the Active Shooter Training. Employees were already thinking about the threat, so by immediately delivering training, Bloomingdale’s was able to calm their fears and help them understand what to do. In this case, Axonify also acted as a primary communications channel, while also providing the appropriate learning.  A large percentage of Bloomingdale’s employees—in areas such as warehousing, stocking, cleaning and maintenance—don’t have email or company phones. But they do have access to Axonify via departmental PCs, POS terminals or even their own smartphones. So Axonify became an ideal method to get this critical information to them quickly. The Active Shooter Training, and the ability for the company to ramp it up literally overnight, helped ensure employees knew Bloomingdale’s was concerned about their safety and wanted to give them the practical knowledge they needed to help keep them safe. It also helped employees feel more comfortable in knowing how to react in a situation like that.  When people are afraid, information can empower them. How does Axonify help empower your employees with knowledge?  Why not share your story with us.   Written by Greg Boyd. The post How Bloomingdale’s delivers instant active shooter training to associates in wake of looming terrorist threat appeared first on Axonify.

Forty years ago my five siblings and I took mandatory turns to act as my Dad’s remote control.  It was the time of indentured human remotes and random flipping or recording programs hadn’t been invented.  Television was a planned event using the weekly TV Guide in a religious, ritual fashion led by our patriarch. "It’s time to change the channel," he would announce and we would all argue about who was up. Well it’s time to change the channel again but not the TV channel -your external sales and distribution channel.  No, I don’t mean get a new channel. I mean change the behavior of your channel with training and certification to drive measurable business results. Ironically, while many corporations strive to change the behavior with learning technology, still more continue to send out indentured human trainers for point-in-time sessions as they have for decades.  Every time I encounter an organization relying primarily on trainers, I can almost here Dad saying "Channel 3 please." At least we all moved on with TVs.   What Is An External Channel? The channel can go by many names including partners, value added resellers, franchises, dealers, distributors, retailers and agents to name a few.  The external channel is the [...] The post It’s Time to Change the Channel appeared first on Talented Learning.

I’ve been researching the global LMS market place for over 15 years -first as an LMS sales guy for 13 years and now as the lead learning technology analyst at Talented Learning.  In the last 20 months, I have personally reviewed 92 LMS solutions and I have a whole list I’m trying to get to. I’m not talking about a cursory website drive-by review either.  I spend a lot of time with each vendor and learn about their business and industry focus, customers, history and success stories before I ever take a look at the product.  In many cases, I even interview their customers about how they are using training and technology for their business. For my paying day job, I help LMS buyers define what they really need and then help find the best LMS for them. I’ve taken a good chunk of all that data, effort and experience and built it into Talented Learning’s fall webinar series.  We’ve  created 5 new webinars on all things LMS and extended enterprise.  I think all are extremely interesting, engaging and insightful, but I could be biased.  We’re ending the series with the 1st Annual Talented Learning LMS Vendors Awards Ceremony. I hope to see you [...] The post 5 New Extended Enterprise LMS Webinars this Fall! appeared first on Talented Learning.

There are hundreds of LMS vendors in the world.  Many are generalists that build comprehensive and confusing LMS products that can manage the learning for any type of user population including employees and the extended enterprise audiences.   The rest of the LMS vendors are specialists in a particular industry or business application of learning.  I’ve found that buyers who buy an LMS for their employees are content with the generalist LMSs.  Conversely, buyers of extended enterprise solutions are very picky.  These buyers tend not to be HR/training specialists but rather professionals from marketing, sales, operations or customer support. These training for business buyers focus on the business problem, solution and measuring the results.  They are not interested in asking permission from HR to use the employee LMS.  If they are tasked to train and certify new channel partners, customers or prospects, they want a solution and more importantly a partner that is experienced in doing exactly - and in many cases - only that.  If they want to sell content and drive revenue, they almost never consider a vendor with tons of talent management and compliance features. In the last 21 months at Talented Learning, we’ve been heads down studying the LMS industry.  We have conducted in-depth reviews of almost 100 vendors, helped dozens [...] The post Top 10 Channel LMS Solutions in the World appeared first on Talented Learning.

I’ve been collecting extended enterprise case studies from the global LMS community for almost two years.  I’m surprised by how few vendors take the time to tell their customers’ extended enterprise learning stories.  I really have to scour vendor sites and comb through an agonizing amount of employee LMS stories to find the gems I’m looking for.    A page full of client logos isn’t the same thing nor is a testimonial sentence on the website.  Many vendors try to pull off  "blinded" case studies where they talk all the great things they have achieved for an unnamed client.  I won’t even read these as I have no idea if they are fiction. I want facts.  Buyers want facts.  Together we are seeking extended enterprise stories with real clients experiencing a demonstrable return on investment.  Personally, I think case studies are the best possible sales tool because they help buyers self-educate as well as illustrate vendor credibility with similar clients solving identical business challenges.  So kudos to the 15 vendors I’ve identified who are doing a good job telling stories.  It means they are doing a great job with their clients or their clients wouldn’t be willing to be a public reference. Channel, Partner and Supplier Learning How [...] The post 15 LMS Vendors - 15 Channel LMS Case Studies appeared first on Talented Learning.

Five years ago, only large, rich associations could afford the substantial investment of purchasing and deploying an LMS and online content.  With the advent of the cloud and software-as-a-service business model, association LMS solutions are no longer cost prohibitive or complex. As a result, associations of all sizes are adopting learning technology at an alarming rate and some of the most exciting LMS advancements are happening in the association LMS space.  In my review of almost a hundred LMS solutions in the last couple of years, I’ve found 20 LMS vendors who focus on association solutions. An association LMS is special kind of LMS.  Association LMS systems are similar to employee LMSs but have richer features sets to attract voluntary learners and members, build a community, integrate with an AMS and sell complex continuing education.  Many employee LMS vendors think and say that they are also good for associations but they are wrong. Register for the "Top 10 Features of Association LMS Webinar" to learn what LMS features associations really need to drive content revenue. World’s Best Association LMS Case Studies Below are links to 12 diverse association LMS case studies from 12 different LMS vendors.  If you read through these studies, you will find that these associations [...] The post World’s Best Association LMS Case Studies appeared first on Talented Learning.

There are over 80,000 professional associations in the U.S. alone.  Each of these organizations is involved in providing education opportunities as a member benefit or incremental revenue stream.  Historically, the association content medium was live presentations at annual trade shows or physical books, but over the last five years, due to the emergence of the cloud and SaaS business model, virtual classrooms, online learning and mobile learning ecommerce has exploded. The foundation of the association training business is the Learning Management System (LMS).  Not a traditional employee LMS, but an association LMS.  The two are very different and associations waste a lot of time evaluating the former.  Employee LMSs are geared towards compliance and HR issues, but association LMSs are about making money. Associations’ training for business focus requires enhanced LMS professional services and functionality to attract and engage learners, sell content, manage complex continuing education and uniquely integrate into the association technological and business process ecosystem.  Register for our upcoming "Top 10 Features of Association LMS Webinar" to learn more about the LMS features associations really need to drive content revenue.   Top 10 Association LMS Solutions in the World We’ve reviewed 100 LMSs in the last two years and at least 20 LMSs focus on [...] The post Top 10 Association LMS Solutions in the World appeared first on Talented Learning.

Last week, Workday announced a second half 2016 release of Workday Learning - their homegrown learning management system (LMS) that will be fully integrated into their enterprise suite of finance and HR products.    This is big news.  Change is in the air. Workday, founded by ex-PeopleSoft execs in 2005, disrupted the enterprise software industry when they built a pure cloud, affordable, easy to deploy and use, multitenant solution to compete with Oracle, SAP and the rest.  Just like Facebook or eBay all of Workday’s customers are on the exact same version of the application.  This ensures that every dollar Workday invests in research, customer support and professional services directly benefits every one of their 900 plus customers. Conversely, even though they are trying to get to all customers on their cloud, SAP and Oracle have legacy applications and customers they need to support and that dilutes their focus and limits the effectiveness of their investment.  Workday’s focused cloud approach allows them to build their own solution from the ground up faster and better than cobbling together acquired vendor solutions which is the strategy of most of their competitors. I’m a research analyst that studies the global learning technology market.  I’ve personally reviewed [...] The post Workday Announces New LMS — My Thoughts appeared first on Talented Learning.

    If you ask any sales professional in the world what Salesforce.com does, they would know even if they do not use it.  If you any ask most HR and training professionals what Salesforce does, you will get vacant stares and the occasional "Use the Salesforce, Luke" quip.  HR/Training and sales pros live in two different worlds (in a galaxy far, far, away). So what could Salesforce possibly have in common with a learning management system (LMS)?  As it turns out, a lot if you have an extended enterprise LMS.   What is Salesforce.com? Salesforce is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) software solution. Salesforce can do a wide variety of things but at its core it manages all sales operational activities and data about your prospects and customers.  It is the sales person’s and a sales organization’s daily tool and crutch.  As a sales individual, it keeps track of your territory, target accounts, contacts, sales opportunities and documents all marketing and sales interactions within those elements.  Sales leaders and company executives get macro rolled up sales performance reporting, make forecasts, manage pipelines and run their sales business real-time.   Salesforce even keeps managing the prospect after conversion to a [...] The post Salesforce.com + LMS = Measurable Training Bliss appeared first on Talented Learning.

  Selling online learning content is a huge and rapidly growing business in 2015.  Corporations, associations, universities, training companies, public institutions and individual subject matter experts are all creating and selling content on every conceivable topic. The content providers are in fierce competition with each other for learners resulting in significant industry innovation in marketing tactics, content design, user engagement and learning technology.  Plenty of reasons are driving the demand for the content, but I believe the two biggest factors are 1) Closing the gap between the world’s educational system and the skills actually needed by employers and 2) Ongoing professional continuing education.  The business of selling content, not to your own employees, but to others is called extended enterprise learning. There are two main business models for selling learning content: Business to Consumer (B2C) — Sell content to individual learners directly Business to Business (B2B) — Sell content in bulk to organization for their learners To sell online content in either model, you need an extended enterprise LMS with ecommerce capability.  Over the last 20 months I have conducted in-depth reviews of 102 LMS solutions and have found 85 that promote some level of ecommerce but there is a wide diversity of capabilities.  The biggest difference is primarily due to whether the LMS [...] The post LMS eCommerce: B2C and B2B Feature Sets appeared first on Talented Learning.

By Gauri Reyes, frequent contributor to the Daily Mindflash blog Often, we think of corporate online training as synonymous with employee development. Certainly, internal training is critical, especially in such learning areas as on-boarding, product training, leadership development, and closing. But, companies are also creatively using online training to put external groups "in the know", particularly partners/resellers/vendors and customers. A host of benefits can be reaped by consciously providing customer training, consumer education and community building opportunities through online training. Meet your customers where they are increasingly congregating—in the cloud—and consider the following focus areas for educating your customers. Leveraging Innovation Ideas Your customers can be an objective source of inspiration for innovation ideas. Consider creating training modules which are, in effect, focus group vehicles. Introduce your customers to the product ideas you are considering through online training, and leverage embedded surveys, quizzes, social media, and mobile enablement technologies to have conversations with your customers. Or, create idea-generation contests and challenges that are communicated via online training modules. An advantage of using online training as a vehicle for customer communication is that your LMS’ built-in reporting capabilities allow you to gather advanced customer data analytics that you may be unable to collect easily via [...] The post 5 Reasons to Put Your Customers "In the Know" appeared first on Talented Learning.

LMSs didn’t die.  They evolved and today we recognize them.   Quick LMS History Corporate LMSs were invented almost 30 years ago to manage and report on the training and compliance of their employees and contractors.  They were expensive to purchase, implement, maintain, host, upgrade and replace.  Much of the investment was upfront and only the largest companies or companies with the most compliance risk exposure could afford an LMS. Every LMS tried to be all things to all types of customers in all industries.  The field of LMS competitors for the first 15 years or so was limited to an evolving 12-15 viable yet dismally average, bloated solutions. The LMS market started changing after the dot com bust in 2001.  LMS companies (and many software companies) were top heavy, poorly run organizations and the strong gobbled up the weak.  A steady flurry of acquisitions disrupted customers’ lives but never the market as a whole.  Innovation was stagnant and most LMS vendor effort was invested in stealing customers from one another. Starting around 2010, the market began changing again.  LMS and performance management companies started merging and then the big HR/talent players acquired them.   SAP acquired SuccessFactors who had acquired [...] The post 2015 Talented Learning LMS Vendor Award Recipients appeared first on Talented Learning.

Getting Started With gomo Learning Get started creating HTML5 adaptive and responsive eLearning with gomo Learning! This video will introduce you to some of the key features of gomo Learning to help you create your own beautiful multi-device content. Specifically, it covers the following topics: how to log on, how to set up a new project, how to add content and how to use our intuitive content editor, as well as how to preview and publish your project. The post Getting Started With gomo Learning appeared first on VivaeLearning: The Best Free Video Tutorials Online.

Lectora Inspire V11 Tutorial: Getting Started This Lectora Inspire V11 Tutorial presents how this easy-to-use authoring tool provides you with several options to begin creating your e-Learning courses. The post Lectora Inspire V11 Tutorial: Getting Started appeared first on VivaeLearning: The Best Free Video Tutorials Online.

Lectora Inspire V11 Tutorial: Bring Your e-Learning Courses to Life with Characters in Lectora V11 This Lectora Inspire V11 Tutorial presents how to incorporate characters in your e-Learning course and take advantage of the fifteen different character poses in Lectora V11 e-Learning software. The post Lectora Inspire V11 Tutorial: Bring Your e-Learning Courses to Life with Characters in Lectora V11 appeared first on VivaeLearning: The Best Free Video Tutorials Online.

Lectora Inspire V11 Tutorial: Adding Tests and Questions with Lectora V11 e-Learning Software This Lectora Inspire V11 Tutorial presents how to use Lectora’s various question types and tests throughout an e-Learning course to evaluate and track user scores. The post Lectora Inspire V11 Tutorial: Adding Tests and Questions with Lectora V11 e-Learning Software appeared first on VivaeLearning: The Best Free Video Tutorials Online.

Google for Education Video Tutorial: Teacher Tips- Using Docs To Track Changes And Assess Individual Students Contributions This Google for Education Video Tutorial presents how to track changes and assess user input on a collaborative piece of work in Google Docs. The post Google for Education Video Tutorial: Teacher Tips- Using Docs To Track Changes And Assess Individual Students Contributions appeared first on VivaeLearning: The Best Free Video Tutorials Online.

Google for Education Video Tutorial: Google Apps- Classroom 101 This Google for Education Video Tutorial presents an overview of how the tool works for teachers and students. In this video, you will learn how to set up classes and add students, create assignments, and review student work. The post Google for Education Video Tutorial: Google Apps- Classroom 101 appeared first on VivaeLearning: The Best Free Video Tutorials Online.

Google for Education Video Tutorial: Google Apps- Protecting Students with Google Apps for Education This Google for Education Video Tutorial presents Bram Bout, Director of Education; Jonathan Rochelle, Director of Product Management for Docs and Drive and Hank Thiele, Chief Technology Officer for District 207 in Park Ridge, IL who uses Google Apps for Education. They are discussing recent changes and answering questions. The post Google for Education Video Tutorial: Google Apps- Protecting Students with Google Apps for Education appeared first on VivaeLearning: The Best Free Video Tutorials Online.

Google for Education Video Tutorial: Google Apps for Education Vault Demo This Google for Education Video Tutorial presents an overview of Google Vault archiving and e-discovery services. The post Google for Education Video Tutorial: Google Apps for Education Vault Demo appeared first on VivaeLearning: The Best Free Video Tutorials Online.

Google for Education Video Tutorial: Google Apps- Change Management with Google Apps for Education This Google for Education Video Tutorial presents what you need to know concerning change management with Google Apps for Education. The post Google for Education Video Tutorial: Google Apps- Change Management with Google Apps for Education appeared first on VivaeLearning: The Best Free Video Tutorials Online.