Elearning blog: Learning re-imagined

Get the biggest bang for your training dollars – spend your money where it’s needed

The need or request for training can come from many avenues—from solving key business problems— to the employee themselves. Wherever the initial spark has come from, the next step is to identify what training method would produce results cost effectively.

Identify your business needs. For example:

• Highly skilled workforce
• Performance improvement
• Greater customer satisfaction
• Improved results
• Better looking bottom line
• Sustainability and/or growth

If your initial goal is to have a highly skilled workforce, you need to ensure employees have the knowledge to do their jobs effectively and efficiently. In the world of employee training, this means focusing our resources on finding the best training products that align with that need.

This is especially true in the Small to Medium Size Business (SMB) sector where margins are tight and training budgets are limited. Ensuring the SMB executive is driving performance with every dollar spend is crucial to the company’s success and often survival.

Much like when sending employees out to a boot camp, or local college, it’s the quality of the course content and result that’s of interest rather than how well equipped the facility is. Identify what’s going to have the biggest impact on the result: the content. Then worry about how to deliver it. Thankfully Skillsoft has been able to take this into account by providing comprehensive content and a user-focused learning management system (LMS).

Skillsoft addresses this need for SMBs with knowledge products tailored to the specific needs of all levels of employee from the new graduates to leaders. Skillsoft KnowledgeCenters, Skillsoft Leadership Advantage™ and Skillsoft Professional Advantage™ have all been designed to get the right training to where it’s needed fast.

For more information on Skillsoft’s SMB solutions, please visit: http://skillsoft.com/solutions/small-to-medium_business.asp

2012 Skillsoft Perspectives Australia – It just keeps getting better!

By Tim Hildreth, Director, Product Marketing, Skillsoft

2012 Skillsoft Perspectives Australia will mark my third trip to Australia to update Skillsoft Perspectives attendees on our strategic content and product direction for the year. And while each trip has had its highlights (2010 was my first trip “down under” ever, during my 2011 travels, I finally saw a kangaroo!), I can honestly say that this year is the year I’m most excited about. Not only is Skillsoft Perspectives Australia going to be bigger this year, but the news we have to share is bigger.

I’m being joined this year by my colleague, Stephanie Pyle, and we are going to introduce the audience to the all new Skillport® 8.0, a revolutionary cloud-based learning experience that can help improve organizational agility. Skillport 8 puts the user at the center of the experience and allows learners develop their skills in an attractive and intuitive environment. Skillport 8 is more visual, more intuitive, and more learner centric than we’ve ever seen before. It marries formal and informal, social and mobile into a rich, unified learning experience.  It delivers when, where and how people want to learn. In doing so, it transforms web-based learning from a solitary event to a richer community based experience with strong cross-generational appeal. 

2012 Skillsoft Perspectives London

Forget the Olympic fanfare − Perspectives 2012 was the event on everyone’s lips in London on 12 July.

Bigger and better than ever before, more than 200 HR, training, L&D and IT delegates flocked to the capital for Skillsoft’s annual customer event. Skillport® 8, Skillsoft’s groundbreaking cloud-based LMS platform, proved a big hit and more than half of the attendees got hands-on with product demos of the social learning environment.

Customers on the day certainly thought the new interface was a breath of fresh air, and learning leaders are eagerly awaiting the scheduled release later in the year. Attendees loved Skillport 8’s crisp, clean appearance and were thrilled with the new recommendation feature, which introduces the most positive aspect of social networking to an elearning platform for the very first time.

Speakers at the event were among the top ten most influential in the UK, including David MacLeod, chair of the Taskforce on Employee Engagement, who reminded businesses they are in charge of their own destinies and that engaged workforces can achieve so much more. Another popular speaker with the crowd, David Fairhurst, Chief People Officer, McDonald’s, told attendees that employees are likely to stay with a business that invests in their future.

Expanding leadership and learning around the clock

Skillsoft customer the Odawa Casino Resort needed to ensure that learning opportunities were available to all employees, not simply those who worked first shift. Odawa also wanted to support performance management through relevant learning options. To fulfill that need, Odawa Casino chose a Skillsoft Select package containing a blend of courses on leadership development, performance management, communication skills, customer service and more. By utilizing the Skillport® LMS, Odawa employees could access learning regardless whether it was day or night. 

In the program’s first year, Odawa was able to develop consistency in leadership and improve performance across all areas of the organization.

Designing Skillport® 8: notes from the trenches

By Stephanie Pyle

At the 2012 Skillsoft Perspectives conference, we unveiled an advanced look at our upcoming Skillport® 8 release. Skillport 8 brings together all formats of learning content, integrating books, courses and videos in the same library, giving the user a single, seamless experience. To support users on-the-go, Skillport 8 is cross-platform and cross-device – it works as well on a tablet as on a desktop. Many customers asked how we arrived at such a dramatic (and effective) design. There’s a story there and we’re pleased to share it.

Early on, the team went back to basics to ask ourselves just what is Skillport’s “role” in the customer relationship?  Is Skillport why they do business with Skillsoft in the first place? After much discussion, we arrived at the collective realization that though Skillport was our own passion (because we work on it every day), it is really more of a supporting player to most of our customers. For them, Skillsoft content is the driving force behind the business relationship, with Skillsoft’s service and experience sealing the deal.

Reflecting further, we realized that while the various features and functions of an LMS are important, it is the optimization of the user experience with the content that’s key. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about Skillsoft content or an organization’s proprietary content.  By focusing on the content, we’ve designed Skillport to be a richer total user experience. The visual design features a more streamlined look to allow the content to be the focus. The navigation and actions are readily apparent and intuitive because of the use of established standards and consistency within the application. Our team took the latest web design principles into consideration for Skillport 8. With mobile on the brain, we made sure it would be suitable on a tablet by optimizing it for a gestural interface.

Scottsdale – Phoenix area user group

Skillsoft recently hosted an in-person user group in the Scottsdale – Phoenix area. Eighteen customers attended, enjoying a breakfast and the opportunity to network with their peers. 

Skillsoft customer, SRP discussed where they were in the past, where they are now and where they would like to be. Their presentation entitled Delivering More Than POWER in Our Learning Program, highlighted these changes and goals relating to their learning program. SRP has been a customer for more than ten years and have consistently had a strong program with SkillChoice Complete. They recently added the Leadership Development Channel™ and Skillsoft Leadership Advanatage™ to their portfolio. SRP strives to include competency mapping, better management of custom content and to improve their executive development program with Skillsoft Leadership Advantage.

Finding a little Perspective this summer

Summer is an exciting time in the Skillsoft offices! Not only do we look forward to the long evenings and optimistically hope for sunshine – summertime also marks the arrival of our annual Perspectives event in London.

Perspectives is one of the few times of the year in which all of our customers, employees and industry experts come together under one roof to discuss our plans for the future,  talk about hot topics within the industry and listen to some of our expert speakers. 

This year’s event will be no different, and is set to feature the expertise of former cabinet member and author of The Extra Mile, David MacLeod. David, whose book explores how to engage staff in large organisations, will address key leadership principles such as the importance of employee engagement – traits which are invaluable to any business leader.

2012 Skillsoft Perspectives will also act as a launch pad for Skillsoft to introduce its new learning platform Skillport® 8 – a Learning Management System which has been heavily influenced by society’s increasing use of social media platforms in day-to-day business. 

Alongside David’s speaker slot, we will also be joined by Gill Holehouse, Systems Development Methods Manager at John Lewis Partnership. Gill will be discussing the company’s elearning strategy and how the business has benefitted from working with Skillsoft.

Do you have an elearning implementation strategy?

Implementing elearning goes far beyond installing an LMS and populating it with content. Vinolia Singh of MultiChoice South Africa has gone through three elearning implementations and discovered four components that are critical to program success.  Watch the video to see her tips:

 

On Wednesday, July 11 from 10-11am EST, Vinolia will present a webinar on Optimizing Your Elearning Strategy for Successful Implementation and Maximum ROI. Register now to ensure your elearning implementation plan covers all the bases.

2012 Skillsoft Perspectives Highlights, New Zealand – another successful event!

We’re pleased to bring you a guest post from our APAC region − Kath Greenhough, a Learning Strategist in New Zealand.

By Kath Greenhough

We have just farewelled the last of the Skillsoft New Zealand customers after our two-day Perspectives Highlights event in Auckland and Wellington on 21 and 22 June. It was great to see all of our customers
gathering together to “Motivate, Innovate, Learn” and to “Drive Value Through Learning.” 

As in previous years, we welcomed new organizations on their elearning journey. We are privileged that our customers chose to spend time with us to help develop their thinking and strategy in learning for business results and learning from each other. Attendees represented a range of industries – Manufacturing, Construction, Education, Government, Health, ICT, Telco and Financial Services.

SuccessConnect 2012 Recap

We’re pleased to bring you a guest post by Gary Hartman, a Skillsoft partner alliances manager responsible for partnership programs with LMS, Talent Management and Portal providers.

By Gary Hartman

Skillsoft enjoyed exhibiting at last week’s SuccessFactors’ North American User Group meeting, SuccessConnect 2012 in San Francisco, CA.  Many current customers stopped by the booth to say hello, discuss their current programs and talk about the various learning assets that Skillsoft offers. About one hundred Skillsoft customers use SuccessFactors Learning (formerly the Plateau LMS) − the fact that Skillsoft learning assets load, launch and track in this LMS is important to them.

Leadership training was definitely a hot topic and there was a lot of interest in Skillsoft Leadership Advantage.  The variety of learning modalities and the broad and deep coverage of leadership topics available in the Skillsoft Leadership Advantage series was very well received.