E-learning Can Help Companies Boost Productivity by 50 Percent

First there was e-mail, then e-commerce and then e-trading - now we have e-learning. Despite being in a somewhat shaky state of affairs - with some e-vendors consolidating or merging - the industry is here to stay and ready for a take-off, particularly here in this country. America has become quite a fertile and lucrative ground for companies offering this type of support, representing 65 percent of the world's e-learning market and $2 billion annually. Industry scribes forecast that by 2003, e-learning in this country will be a $12 billion market.

"What kind of technological environment will emerge from e-learning? Well, from a technology perspective, we are going to change how we deliver content to people," says Heather O'Mara, president of JonesKnowledge.com (Denver, CO) - an e-learning vendor. "That will be a big advantage to companies that are growing and constantly hiring new employees."

But what are the advantages in having e-learning at your fingertips? Well, several software companies recently found that by using e-learning to give their sales force bits of information on new software development (as opposed to the A to Z approach of instruction), they were able to cut six weeks off the time it took to get their products marketed. Now their sales reps can solve problems on the spot. The best way found to maximize employee memory retention is to present the information in small chunks. Since employees remember 70 percent of what they see, hear and do, interactive e-learning programs have become great corporate tools.

As we all know, the faster a company gets its products and information into a customer's hands, the bigger the impact on its profit margins. Statistics show that for every dollar spent on training, companies reap a $30 boost in productivity. Surprisingly, e-learning costs are low, but the biggest stumbling block in setting one up is the initial start-up costs for the technology and the needed development time. Industry folks say it can cost anywhere from between $40,000 to $100,000 to hire an all-service vendor to create an online class. But what kind of a team is necessary to develop e-learning at your office? At a minimum, interested companies should make room for:

• A project manager capable of dealing with diverse workstyles and personalities.
• An instructor familiar with computer-delivered instruction.
• A graphic artist.
• A subject matter expert.
• A web master for maintaining the program on the server.
• Someone who can get funding for e-learning from management.

• Convenience: Users can proceed through a training program at their own pace and their own place with access to training at any time and only as much as they need.
• Ease of updating: If changes need to be made in the program after the original implementation, they can be made on the server, which stores the program and every employee worldwide can have access and update. The employee can access the latest new product specs from any other server worldwide for an on-the-fly update whenever the program is run.
• Travel cost and time savings: There are no travel costs for bringing remote employees to a centralized workshop because the Web is available from the desktop. The actual time required for training by the computer averages 50 percent that of instructor-led training, lowering costs even further.
• Rapidly changing technology: Because - in a nutshell - changes require more training.

Trends Shaping E-Learning

"What's good for many companies is that e-learning can be done pretty much anytime and anywhere," says Ellen Willen, director of marketing for Quelsys, Inc. (Norwalk, CT) - an e-learning supplier. "If you compare it to traditional classroom training, the time and expense to organize these sessions and pull sales people in from the field takes a tremendous amount of time and energy. The same thing can be accomplished in just 30 minutes and delivered to your entire sales staff instead of to those located on site or those on a conference call."

Going Global

"This is where e-learning has a strong advantage over traditional courses because it can seamlessly and immediately train thousands of employees," says Pete Goettner, CEO of DigitalThink (San Francisco, CA) - an e-learning vendor. Emphasizing e-learning's global impact, Goettner pointed to DigitalThink's work in helping train more than 40,000 GE employees worldwide in four different languages in various company functions. "Today's new economy shows us that companies are no longer bound by geographies and that to be competitive, companies must react and think globally."