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Podcast 33: Training ROI in Action – With Ajay Pangarkar

WELCOME TO EPISODE 33 OF THE TALENTED LEARNING SHOW

To find out more about this podcast series or to see the full collection of episodes visit The Talented Learning Show main page.

EPISODE 33 – TOPIC SUMMARY AND GUEST:

If you want to communicate with business leaders about the value of learning programs or technology, training ROI can be a powerful tool. But if you’re not entirely sure what that term means, today’s podcast is for you.

No one I know is more uniquely qualified or passionate about this topic than Ajay Pangarkar, CTDP, FCPA, FCMA. For years, he’s been helping L&D practitioners develop the financial acumen they need to work effectively with decision-makers.

Ajay is an accomplished author, instructor and consultant with credentials in both finance and learning. And today, he shares some of his most useful advice and examples with us.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

Every learning practitioner can benefit from understanding business and financial fundamentals – regardless of whether your programs serve internal or external audiences.

It’s not necessary for learning specialists to be experts in corporate finance. But basic knowledge can give you the competence and confidence to work more effectively.

As other organizational functions rely more heavily on data analysis to inform their decisions and improve their impact, expectations for increased business fluency in L&D are also on the rise.

Q&A HIGHLIGHTS:

We both focus on the intersection of business and learning, but we come at it from different angles. What led you down this path?

Like many people of a certain generation, I got into training by accident. Originally, I wanted to go into investment banking. So I went to university and studied finance and accounting. Then to my dismay, they told me I was too old to get into currency trading.

So I started a small business training company where I taught startup management teams how to understand business concepts in finance, accounting and marketing. That’s when I pursued a CPA designation here in Canada.

Now fast forward 20-plus years. I was so involved in training, I decided to get a graduate degree in adult education.

I see…

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Around that same time, the training ROI movement started ramping up. So I started reading all the books I could find on this topic. And I could see that it was leading people down a bad path because it didn’t communicate ROI in terms that business leaders want.

How so?

When L&D people spoke with business leaders about training ROI, there were clearly two different mindsets and two different languages. So I decided to focus on the truth as a foundation for training ROI. And that foundation is based on finance and accounting rules that business leaders know.

As you can imagine, this has been controversial. But my goal isn’t to make L&D practitioners look bad. I want them to have more credibility by helping them communicate more effectively with leaders.

I was part of that ROI movement, where we were taught to position learning systems purchases through the lens of training ROI. Why was that approach wrong?

Let’s start with the widespread misunderstanding about return on investment as a concept. The term ROI refers to the DuPont model of ROI analysis. It’s a specific calculation that’s widely used by business and accounting people.

However, many of us use ROI generically when we’re simply asking, “What should we expect from this?”

Got it.

Yet for decades L&D had been desperate to gain more business credibility. That’s because leaders tended to think of it as a necessary evil. “Why do we need this, anyway?” Their budgets were always cut first because learning is intangible. You don’t see direct results.

So when training ROI arrived, it almost became a little magic pill for L&D.

Yep.

Here’s a quick analogy. I was a nerd in school. But I wanted to fit in with the cool kids, so I would listen to their conversations, trying pick-up on terms they used.

One day, I decided to chime-in by using one of their terms and they all looked at me like I was an idiot. Right?

So think of L&D as that nerd in the schoolyard, trying to fit in with the cool-kid business leaders. L&D people have picked up on the term ROI. But despite good intentions, they’ve been using it incorrectly.

So how did this training ROI misunderstanding start?

First, business people have been formally programmed to think of ROI as a literal, specific calculation. It’s not a figurative term.

Right.

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Second, training and development – as a service activity – is seen as a cost by accounting and finance people. But L&D practitioners take this the wrong way – as if cost is a four-letter word.

I want to help people realize that speaking of training as a cost center is not an insult. It’s a way to categorize how budgeted funds are allocated. It’s also a way to measure cost center performance. Because organizations basically have three centers.

What are they?

A profit center, an investment center and a cost center.

And as an activity, training is a cost. It’s an expense. It’s a line-item for a specific reporting period. It can’t be measured in the long-term.

Sure, over the years if you train people well, you’ll see progress in the value of your business. But three years from now, can we say that an employee’s performance improvement is the direct result of a specific training experience? Perhaps it is. But can we actually prove it? No.

So you can’t prove training ROI in this case. Even though it’s a valid investment in people, it’s not a tangible investment.

Makes sense…

You also mentioned something about technology. Here’s where it gets a little convoluted. Even when companies make tangible investments, the balance sheet of the financial statement won’t include a line item for learning.

Maybe that should change. Actually, I’m a proponent of accounting for knowledge because most of today’s successful businesses are knowledge-based organizations.

But the balance sheet is old-fashioned. So you won’t see any type of knowledge accountability there. But you will see the value of the tangible investment – the property, plant and equipment. That’s anything tangible.

Mmhmm…

As you know, L&D often purchases expensive systems like LMSs and devices like laptops or tablets for many people. Those major purchases are capital investments and the expense is measured in the true tangible accounting sense of ROI. Because you can document it on a balance sheet, you can see the value each investment adds over time.

So how does that shape the business case for a major purchase like an LMS?

When you build a business case for learning, you’ll have two components:

The expense activity – Meaning I trained employees in a particular situation. That is not part of ROI. That’s an expense.

The technology used – This includes dedicated training and reporting software like an LMS, or hardware like a tablet that delivers content. These are tangible, so their value to the organization can be tracked.

People need to understand how to distinguish these two components from a financial perspective. Now, of course, L&D specialists don’t need to be financial experts. But they should be financially literate. They need some basic understanding. And they need to partner with the right people in their organization like the CFO, so they can work together to build a proper business case for learning.

So how does L&D prove its worth, if you can’t do it through classic ROI methods?

Well, we’re not alone in this, John. Other business functions are support mechanisms, too. One of them is marketing. Another is finance. And there’s HR. These are all intangible to the organization.

What can we learn from them?

Marketing is a good example. Marketing professionals discovered several decades ago that they could spend millions on an ad campaign, but couldn’t necessarily translate that into revenue growth.

Super Bowl commercials are a good analogy. Companies drop $10 million for a Super Bowl spot. But did one ad convince you to buy a bag of Doritos at a store the next day? Can we prove that direct connection? No.

Agreed.

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So what did marketing do? Marketing found technology. Now tracking software captures data about every detail of our online behavior. There are metrics that indicate how a specific marketing activity changes behavior.

Doritos can now analyze this data in detail and create a strategy that helps focus their advertising expenses so they can convince target customers to buy more. This makes it tangible.

Okay…

L&D does the same thing, right? Let’s say you completed a training course and you become more effective at your job. But can I tie that new knowledge in your head to your improved performance? Like the Doritos ad with no data, chances are there’s a connection, but there’s no proof.

We’re trying to make a tangible connection in L&D, but we’re maybe about 10 years behind marketing – not in technology but in our thinking.

We’re using learning systems to figure out how we can track an individual’s progress over time. And the best LMSs are tied into major enterprise systems, which tie into performance management frameworks. These frameworks are driven by senior leadership and they have all the key performance targets and metrics. Everything in there cascades down through the organization.

So at the end of the day, if I train employees to perform better in ways that roll-up through key performance metrics, it should result in more business revenue and profitability, depending on what I’m trying to accomplish.

Could you share an example?

Sure. I love Starbucks. Not just their coffee, but the way they go about serving you the coffee.

The next time you go to Starbucks, think about what happens after you order. First of all, Starbucks already lists custom coffees on its menu, so you can easily pick what you want. But there’s always someone in line ahead of you who wants to customize it even further. That’s fine.

But what’s remarkable is that whatever you order, three minutes later, that coffee will be at the end of the counter for you to pick up, exactly as you want it.

That should impress you for several reasons. First of all, learning technology helps make sure that every barista is skilled enough to make each custom coffee as intended. But it also helps baristas learn how to further customize every coffee, so you get it precisely the way you want it.

Yep.

OK, let’s say you’re not yet impressed. Think about this. At any Starbucks, anywhere in the world, you can order the same coffee, and you know it will be exactly the same, every single time. That’s got to blow your mind.

I’m sold.

OK. So if you believe L&D isn’t getting any credibility, think about Starbucks. That company sees the power of organizational learning. They see the power of equipping baristas with the knowledge and skill to deliver consistent quality every time. And that commitment has led Starbucks to record revenues.

But this is not just about what employees learn. If you tell me how much someone has learned only by looking at test results, that’s not a performance outcome.

Learning needs to help someone improve something they do on the job that leads to a meaningful business result. “Learning is about doing – not about learning.” If I could create a bumper sticker, that would be mine.

It seems to me that extended enterprise learning is closer to the level of sophistication that marketing has achieved than employee-focused training. Do you see that?

I think we may be segregating individual things to measure, when in reality, an organization is made of parts that work together as a whole. It’s not one thing or another. It’s all the elements.

Hmmm…

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Here’s an example. A number of years ago, we worked with Apple’s Worldwide Customer Support Center, also known as AppleCare. At one point Consumer Reports told Steve Jobs, “You don’t even fall in the top 10 of the best customer service companies in the world. People complain about Apple.”

So Steve Jobs decided they we’re going to become number one worldwide – not just with products, but with customer service.

Now, other companies would probably deploy a customer service training program to all employees and hope something sticks. Spray and pray, right?

Sure.

Okay, Apple didn’t do that. Instead they had a fantastic L&D team that decided it was imperative to first analyze and identify support staff weaknesses. How did they do that? They conducted very precise skills gap assessments.

So they did what other L&D professionals do – but backwards. We usually do testing after we do training, but they did testing up-front to benchmark 8000 employees, worldwide.

They deployed these assessments through their intranet – quizzes, exams and tests that employees were asked to complete during their downtime. And in an era before big data, they drove all this data into their servers, so the L&D team could conduct a comprehensive analysis of all the responses.

Wow!

So let’s say Ajay is an AppleCare employee who’s on a call with someone who wants to connect an iPhone to a MacBook. His exam responses show that he lacks sufficient knowledge to help the customer with that need.

Apple can choose to deploy the best resource to help Ajay with that topic. It could be coaching or a tutorial – whatever would offer an immediate fix. But it doesn’t stop there. Apple actually continues to test Ajay iteratively – identifying the right resources to help improve his performance over time.

At the peak of this program, Apple was gathering data from 1.5-2 million tests a year to inform the analysis and content recommendations for its 8000 employees.

Impressive.

Now, Apple isn’t perfect. But I’ve found that AppleCare representatives almost always solve my problems to my satisfaction. And that speaks about the value of knowledge and learning in that organization.

However, that’s not an easy fix. And in my experience, L&D practitioners often want a quick fix. It’s not necessarily their fault. It’s just that they’re under a lot of pressure. But it’s important to push back. We need to look at the process more holistically.

I know you say it’s smart to take a step back and first consider the bigger business picture. I agree. Remember, L&D is a business activity. We’re an internal support activity that exists to help grow a business.

In that respect, we’re just like marketing or HR or finance. So we shouldn’t forget to push back and say, “First of all, we need to understand your objectives and how they tie-in with the business…”

So let’s say you’re assessing a client’s needs. How do you know if that organization has business acumen? What are the telltale signs…?

…For complete answers to this question and more LISTEN TO THE FULL 30-MINUTE PODCAST!

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How to Scale Customer Education Beyond the Classroom

Struggling to train more customers without bringing your team to its knees? How can you expand your reach and add more value in a profitable way? Learn from experts in this virtual roundtable!

Join our Lead Analyst John Leh as he talks with customer success experts Brittany Tamul, of ArrowStream and Barry Kelly of Thought Industries as they share strategies from high-growth companies. You’ll learn:

How to build an effective blended learning ecosystem

Guideline for optimizing your content mix

Strategies for educating customers at each stage in the relationship

Tips for choosing a technology foundation that adapts to fluctuating needs

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Looking for a learning platform that truly fits your organization’s needs? We’re here to help! Submit the form below to schedule a free preliminary consultation at your convenience.

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cecillewhite · 5 years ago

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Are You Overlooking Today’s Hottest Corporate Learning Trend?

Perhaps it’s just me. But I’m beginning to think that an astonishing number of L&D practitioners aren’t paying attention to today’s most promising organizational learning trend. And here’s why…

A Top Learning Trend Hidden in Plain Sight?

Every January, it’s the same story. We’re bombarded with “learning trend” headlines from all corners of the industry. So by the end of the month, our heads are swimming in a flood of forecasts.

I understand the appeal. New and popular stuff can be compelling. Even our own Lead Analyst, John Leh, gets in on the action with annual learning trends commentary of his own. And year after year, those posts zoom straight to the top of our site’s traffic charts.

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However, this year’s wave of learning trend articles seems more tsunami-like than ever. Maybe it’s because we’re entering a new decade. Or maybe it’s because so many information sources are tracking so many interesting learning tools, technologies and techniques.

Whatever the reason, processing all those opinions can be mind-numbing. That’s why it helps to focus on a small cross-section of industry experts.

For example, one of my favorite resources is the annual “L&D Global Sentiment Survey” from Donald H. Taylor, Chair of The Learning Performance Institute.

It started in 2014 as a simple one-question blog poll: “What will be hot in L&D this year?” Although the survey’s simple structure has remained the same, participation has grown dramatically over the years. And along the way, Donald’s analysis has become a must-read barometer for learning professionals all over the planet.

Where in the World is Extended Enterprise Learning?

The 2019 learning trend “hot list” was based on responses from more than 2000 people in 92 countries. As always, the results revealed that learning professionals remain focused on a variety of legitimate issues and opportunities.

SEE THE FULL 2019 L&D TRENDS SURVEY REPORT

No surprises there. But here’s what concerns me…

Extended enterprise learning was nowhere to be found on the L&D “hot” list in 2019 – or in any prior year. It’s also missing from this year’s list of suggested answers.

And I can’t help wondering why.

After all, learning practitioners are widely known for saying they want to consult more deeply with business leaders, align with strategic objectives and even earn a seat at the executive table. Plus, it’s no secret that today’s organizations are obsessed with improving customer experience in the hope of establishing a competitive advantage. Yet serving external audiences still doesn’t seem to be a priority for L&D.

Do learning professionals think of customers, channel partners and other external audiences as “ugly stepchildren”? Or is some other factor suppressing widespread enthusiasm for extended enterprise learning?

Last March, we sought answers directly from the source. Here’s what Donald Taylor said in a Talented Learning Show podcast interview:

JOHN LEH: I’m curious how much interest you see in extended enterprise learning?

DONALD TAYLOR: It’s not a big topic right now. I’d say the U.S. leads in this because of its scale. It’s a huge country with one language and one currency. Large U.S. companies may be dealing with tens of thousands of customers, compared with only thousands at large U.K. companies.

The need for U.S. companies to reach so many customers from a distance has led to a lot of innovation in the “e” space – elearning, ecommerce and so on. If U.S. companies can gain a competitive advantage by getting extended enterprise learning right, the cost can be worthwhile.

And once the rest of the world sees how it’s being done, we’ll pick up on it and start to implement it.

JOHN LEH: Interesting…

DONALD TAYLOR: It is actually being done outside the U.S. now. For example, hardware stores in the U.K. don’t want their sales staff tied-up describing how things work, so they try to make that information widely available for self-service customer learning.

But something with the kind of sophistication you describe isn’t yet “hot” in the rest of the world. It surged for a while in the 2000s and is just starting to come back now. It’s definitely one to watch and I’m looking forward to seeing it…

JOHN LEH: Yes. I think it would be good to add to your learning trend survey. But I’m a bit biased…

Maybe I should include extended enterprise learning on the list next year? We’ll see.

Extended Enterprise Learning – Not Just for Big Companies Anymore

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I see what Donald was suggesting. Apparently, learning practitioners tend to equate extended enterprise solutions with massive corporations and big budgets.

This was certainly true in the past. But digital innovation has turned that equation on its head. For example, some of the most dynamic LMS market growth is happening in customer education.

A decade ago, the upfront cost of developing, coordinating, delivering and supporting traditional classroom training for customers was far too steep for many organizations. But now, even tiny companies operating on shoestring budgets can set-up successful customer education portals, thanks to inexpensive high-speed internet connections, widespread mobile device access, cloud-based learning systems, adaptive content and other technology breakthroughs.

We see this every day in case studies from a variety of vendors who focus on customer-facing business needs. For example:

Solutions that support customer onboarding and ongoing education – such as Learndot, LearnUpon, Northpass, Skilljar and Thought Industries.

Online instructional business platforms – such as Kajabi, LearnDash, LearningCart, LearnPress, LearnWorlds, LifterLMS, Teachable and Thinkific.

All of these solutions are proven and reliable. But what makes them particularly viable is their ability to scale with demand. In fact, many even offer free “getting started” levels of service.

Because these systems are nearly risk-free to try, they’re opening the door to millions of subject-matter experts and small businesses that otherwise could never offer training to their prospects or customers. So again, I can’t help wondering why this trend isn’t top-of-mind among L&D professionals.

Will Extended Enterprise Learning Ever Break Through?

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Perhaps I’m preaching to the choir. After all, if you follow Talented Learning, you’re probably already delivering some form of extended enterprise learning – or at least it’s on your radar.

But what will it take for members of the broader L&D community to agree that essentially, every organization is an extended enterprise? When will they recognize that educating external audiences is strategically important? And when will they see that, as instructional specialists, they’re uniquely qualified to create measurable business value this way?

It’s disappointing to see that extended enterprise opportunities still aren’t visible on the L&D radar. But given the surge of momentum in this segment of the LMS landscape, I believe training for customers, channel partners and other external audiences will soon receive the recognition it deserves.

Awareness Starts Here and Now

Extended enterprise learning may still be L&D’s best-kept secret. But no matter what surveys say, it is clearly on the rise. We see impressive results every day. And we think you deserve to see what’s possible, too.

That’s why we’ll be publishing new case studies this year that illustrate what extended enterprise education is accomplishing in the real world. We hope these stories will inform and inspire you as you chart a course for your organization. So stay tuned!

SPECIAL NOTE: Do you have a story that would help others learn how to succeed at extended enterprise education? Please tell me about it in an email. We look forward to hearing from you and sharing your experiences. Thanks!

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How to Scale Customer Education Beyond the Classroom

Are you struggling to train more customers without bringing your team to its knees? How can you expand your reach and add more value in a profitable way? Learn from experts in this virtual roundtable!

How to build an effective blended learning ecosystem

Guideline for optimizing your content mix

Strategies for educating customers at each stage in the relationship

Tips for choosing a technology foundation that adapts to fluctuating needs

Need Proven LMS Selection Guidance?

Looking for a learning platform that truly fits your organization’s needs? We’re here to help! Submit the form below to schedule a free preliminary consultation at your convenience.

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cecillewhite · 5 years ago

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How to Measure Customer Value (And Why It Matters)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Because extended enterprise learning involves multiple disciplines, we sometimes ask other experts to share their insights with our readers. Today we feature advice about customer value metrics from Laura Patterson, President of VisionEdge Marketing.

Laura is widely recognized as an authority in marketing measurement and performance, content management, marketing operations and data analytics. Business-minded learning professionals will find her guidance practical, relevant and useful.

For several years, I’ve been exploring the concept of marketers as “value creators.” The C-suite considers these individuals indispensable because they excel at proving how their marketing initiatives contribute to business impact.

But what exactly does it mean to create value? And how can you reflect this in customer-focused metrics?

The Power of Value Creation

Every business is based on the principle of value creation. In essence, we create value whenever we deliver a product or service that provides utility to others, and in turn generates additional economic return for our organization.

In his classic Marakon Commentary, Ken Favaro explains why putting value creation first is such an important strategy:

“Understanding where, how and why value is created within your company and your markets is the best, most objective way to identify which of your activities and assets are distinctive enough to provide a platform for sustainable and profitable growth.”

Why Value Creators Put Customers First

As Favaro frames it, value creation is more than calculating the optimal price customers will pay for a good or service you offer. And it’s not just about reducing costs or increasing productivity. Rather, it’s about attracting incremental customer revenue streams by delivering something entirely new or improving something in a compelling way.

This distinction is important because it underscores the fact that value creation is determined by your customers – not your company.

People purchase a product or service only when they perceive that they will benefit from the transaction. Therefore, it’s essential to understand what your customers value most. Usually, this extends beyond core product features, functionality and price point.

Keenly understanding what customers value is a characteristic that distinguishes “marketers as value creators” from their counterparts. These professionals continuously prioritize product and process innovation that customers will find relevant, important and useful.

How can you join the ranks of these value creators? Start by calibrating the value you currently deliver to customers. Then identify what you can do differently to add more value.

Below are tips for a successful analysis…

The Psychology of Customer Value

Organizations everywhere can benefit from measuring value creation.

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Most business leaders have come to accept that customers drive shareholder value. So it’s not surprising that customer metrics are featured in many CEO scorecards. But which customer metrics matter most?

If we work from the perspective that value is determined by the customer and that value creation is derived from customer relationships, then it makes sense to consider customer relationship value as a key metric.

Not to be confused with customer lifetime value (LTV) – which reflects the net present value of a relationship over its entire lifespan – customer relationship value measures whether each interaction moves a relationship forward or backward.

Factors that Influence Customer Value

Viewing the customer as a primary driver of shareholder value naturally leads to a variety of underlying questions about customer mix, defection rates, relative profitability of each segment, average new customer acquisition costs and more.

Often, marketing isn’t prepared to answer these questions. That’s because we tend to emphasize front-end performance indicators (such as new lead volumes or campaign conversion rates), rather than focusing on the depth and longevity of existing customer relationships,

It may seem obvious that valuable customers tend to buy more frequently, buy in larger volumes and buy more products over time. But it’s important to quantify these behaviors in a specific way.

Exploring these four questions can help you develop a useful customer value metric:

Which of our existing customers buy repeatedly – and how often do they buy?

How can we segment customers by frequency, volume and variety of products purchased?

What is our customer defection rate?

How do customers rank in their likelihood to buy again?

Answering these questions will likely require extra research and data analysis. However, the effort is worthwhile because it helps you make better decisions about investments (like training and support) that can help you improve customer relationships.

Creating a Customer Value Metric: 3 Variables

To apply customer relationship value as a key leading indicator, you’ll need access to relevant data points. Typically, organizations focus on these underlying metrics:

Revenue per customer

Profit per segment

Customer lifetime value

Satisfaction (as it relates to repurchase intent)

To make this data more meaningful, consider these three variables:

The set of all interactions between your customers and your company

The cost of each of these interactions

The direction and distance in which a relationship moves forward or backward in response to each interaction

Creating a Customer Value Index: 7 Variables

For next-level insight, it’s worth developing a customer value index. This is a type of composite measure that summarizes and rank-orders specific variables in a way that represents a general dimension (in this case, customer value).

Essentially, an index is an accumulation of scores from a variety of individual items. This is helpful because it lets you evaluate these elements in a systematic and consistent way.

By indexing customer value data, you can compare the relative attractiveness of customer relationships in an “apples-to-apples” fashion. This can be particularly helpful when deciding which individual customers or segments are worthwhile targets for additional investment.

When creating your customer value index, consider incorporating these 7 variables into your formula:

Total number of purchases over the customer’s lifetime

Average purchase value

Purchase frequency

Number of products/services purchased

Time between each purchase

Number of referrals generated

Length of customer relationship

There are several ways to combine these variables in a customer value index. The simplest approach is to define a standard method for “adding up” the values for each variable. Then establish an index score.

This means you’ll need a common way to “rate” each variable. For example, you may choose a 1-10 scale, with 1 = lowest score and 10 = highest score.

Next, for each of these scores, specify a multiplier based on the relative “weight” of each variable. For example, you may choose a multiplier scale of 1-5, with 1 = lowest weight and 5 = highest weight.

Once you establish your indexing model, you can transform data from each customer into a standardized score. Customers whose scores rank above the index “average” are considered higher value, while conversely, below-average scores represent lower-value customers.

Now you’re ready for the next-level performance metric – customer asset value.

Creating a Customer Asset Value Score: 5 Variables

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Like any financial asset, it’s vital to understand the value of customer relationships in terms of the future profit they’re expected to generate. This is why customer asset value is so useful.

By subtracting related costs from projected future profits, you can determine the net asset value of an individual customer or set of customers. And if you can increase any of these expected profit streams, you’ll add new net value to your business.

Of course, no company has unlimited funds for marketing, service or support. That’s why it’s important to focus and prioritize customer-related investments. Scoring customer asset value is an excellent way to differentiate customers, so you can determine which ones represent the highest potential return.

Multiple variables can help you create an objective, reliable customer asset value score. Start with these five:

Current revenue streams

Purchase frequency and recency

Referral rates

Share of wallet (% of category spending that you capture, relative to competitors)

Potential future revenue

After calculating asset value for all customers, you can map their scores on a multi-tiered scale and then prioritize your resources, accordingly. In addition, you can use these scores to build a profile of your “ideal” customer.

Fundamentally, this analysis indicates an organization’s effectiveness at creating customer value. That’s why it’s helpful to put this metric at the heart of your customer value measurement strategy, no matter how small or large your customer base may be.

For more ideas about how to develop and apply metrics that will help you improve the business impact of your extended enterprise training programs, see related posts and other resources at VisionEdge.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This has been adapted, with permission, from a post published on the VisionEdge Marketing blog.

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How to Cultivate Sustainable Business Growth Through Customer Education

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What exactly does it take to build a successful customer education program that naturally grows hand-in-hand, along with your business?

How can you win executive approval for this approach?

Join our Lead Analyst John Leh as he talks with customer education experts Khalid Shaikh of DataStax and Bill Cushard of Learndot about customer training models that make a lasting business impact.

You’ll get practical advice based on real-world examples, including:

How to understand and evaluate scalable customer training models

Must-have elements for a winning business case

How to weigh costs and benefits accurately

Common mistakes and best practices for sustainable growth

Lessons learned from real-world programs

Success metrics that matter most – and why

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Podcast 32: Building a Customer Education Business Case – With Bill Cushard of Learndot

WELCOME TO EPISODE 32 OF THE TALENTED LEARNING SHOW

To find out more about this podcast series or to see the full collection of episodes visit The Talented Learning Show main page.

EPISODE 32 – TOPIC SUMMARY AND GUEST:

If you’re a fan of Talented Learning, you know I’m obsessed with customer education. It’s not just because it’s the hottest segment of the extended enterprise learning market, but because it’s a fascinating specialty that blends marketing, instructional design and business strategy.

And if you share my enthusiasm for customer education, you’ll want to listen to every word of advice from today’s guest, Bill Cushard, General Manager of Learndot by ServiceRocket.

Bill is one of the few people in the world who truly has a finger on the pulse of customer education. With more than 160 episodes of his own podcast, Helping Sells, he is one of the best-known experts in this field. And today, Bill and I examine what it takes to develop a successful customer education business case.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

Customer training is unique – not just because it targets external audiences who participate at their discretion – but also because its business impact is relatively easy to measure.

When building a case for customer training, it’s important to recognize that data is never perfect or complete. The best models are based on assumptions that are continuously tested and adjusted over time.

The process of developing a customer education business case may seem intimidating or tedious. But it’s well worth the effort, because this is the most effective way to boost leadership confidence in your team, your mission and your methods.

Q&A HIGHLIGHTS:

Before we dig into today’s topic, could you tell us how you got involved with customer education?

My career started at eTrade, where I talked with customers about how to manage their stocks. This was in the late ’90s boom times and they were expanding rapidly. One day, they asked if one of us would teach new hires a class in investment basics. I volunteered to do it and I’ve been involved with training ever since.

What led you to customer education, specifically?

I focused on employee L&D for the first 10-12 years. But eventually, I lost interest in being considered business “overhead.” I also wanted to be closer to customers, so I started moving toward customer-facing training, where people pay to learn.

That’s where the action is…

Yeah. For example, I worked on elearning projects for customers at Accenture. Also, I was Chief Learning Officer at The Knowland Group, a hotel software company, where I developed customer training. Eventually, I joined ServiceRocket in 2013, where I focus on helping software companies improve and sell their customer training.

So now, I don’t have to worry about Kirkpatrick’s 4 levels of employee training evaluation. Instead, I evaluate training with invoices. That’s it.

Fantastic!

Yep. My life is simple.

As one of the world’s few customer education experts, how would you describe the state of the industry? Is growth still accelerating? What do you see ahead?

I specialize in the software industry, so that’s what I know best. And in this industry, open source companies are the customer education leaders, in my opinion. There are several reasons why:

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• When software is free, you have to make money with services. And training is a service. At open source companies, a customer training person is often an early hire and customer education becomes one of their first sources of revenue.

• Open source companies typically develop highly innovative technologies. In that situation, customer training doubles as marketing. They hire a fancy developer as an evangelist who also teaches the class. Fanboys sign-up to learn from these rockstars, then they walk away with your t-shirts and spread the word about your brand.

Interesting points…

In other words, to build market momentum, open source companies lead with training. For customer success, they need product adoption and that’s a direct result of education.

Are there enough open source software companies to influence the direction of customer education, overall?

If you search Crunchbase for enterprise SaaS and cloud software vendors – and maybe even on-premise – you might find 5000 total companies in the world. Open source vendors are only a subset of that niche, with maybe hundreds of companies.

Mm hmm…

I’m generalizing, but many SaaS companies tend to treat training like an afterthought because they want to be scalable from the beginning. For example, they don’t even have enterprise sales teams. They want everything to be self-service.

Think of Dropbox. A company like that is certainly not likely to hire a training team and pay money for a learning management system. Instead, they’ll just post some help files online, produce some videos and that’s all they do to “train” customers. Because their business model is self-service. Right?

Well…

At least until General Motors wants an enterprise-wide license. GM will say, “When are you going to send someone to train us?” And vendor team members will look at one another and say, “Us? Are you crazy?”

Yep!

So generally, there are two camps. One camp includes open source software companies like MongoDB, which may lead with training because it’s a service they can monetize. And if it’s 2009, who knows what MongoDB is? So they have to educate the market.

Meanwhile in the other camp, you have SaaS companies that want to lead with training – if they offer it. But training is going to be free because it’s part of the service. After all, service is the second “s” in SaaS.

Eventually, these two worlds meet in the middle.

One reason why customer education is so attractive is that it is highly measurable. You can quantify progress. What do you think are the most important customer education metrics?

It helps to map metrics to stages in the training management process. Here are three key metrics:

1) Enrollments When you launch a training course, you need to know who intends to show up. So you track registrations or sign-ups or completions. Any of those will work.

Of course, if your strategy is video-first, and you deliver through YouTube and embedded online clips, you don’t really know who’s consuming your content. You just see clicks. But if you build-in some kind of registration capability, you can start seeing who signs up and who shows up.

2) Contacts Created You’ll also want to know when new people are signing up for training. Of course, this doesn’t apply if you gate all your training content and give access only your active customers. I think that’s usually a mistake, by the way. But you need to know when new people are signing up.

3) Sales Did someone buy the course you’re offering? Of course, if you don’t actually sell training, you won’t need to track transaction volume or value. But otherwise, this is critical.

I would ignore all of the Hotjar heatmaps, and click-through data and drill-down analysis about “How long did someone spend on slide 17 of a 19-slide video?” That’s important when you’re optimizing a mature customer training program. But at the outset, keep it simple.

Are people signing up? Are they participating in training? And are they paying for it?

Agree. That will get you out-of-the-gate. What about the next stage? What if people want to know which new contacts lead to renewals or incremental sales or complementary sales?

Yeah, those are phase two metrics, where you want tie training to an outcome, and you have to define that outcome precisely. Are they renewing more? Are they upgrading more? Are they buying more product?

Frankly, I think very few software companies are actually doing this. And if someone could solve this problem – which we’re working on – it would be a big deal for the customer education market.

Absolutely.

Think of it this way. We help customer training professionals measure and analyze their program impact in a simple manual way, so they know how to do it themselves. Because working with databases and data scientists and business intelligence analysts is difficult and expensive. Plus, customer education teams usually have to wait in line for access to data experts, because software companies have other priorities.

Would you briefly walk through this DIY approach?

Sure. You’re’ going to create several lists, so you’ll need a spreadsheet or even just a pencil and paper.

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1) Make a list of customers that took training over a specific period of time. It can be last month, last quarter or last year. Just pick a timeframe that works for you. Let’s say you’ve trained 50 customers in the last 6 months. Enter this list on a spreadsheet in column A.

2) Make a list of customers that did not take training during the same timeframe. Enter them in column C on your spreadsheet.

3) Now for columns B and D, pick the outcome you want. Maybe you want to focus on opportunity size or deal size for each customer account.

You can find this in a CRM like Salesforce. This number is indisputable. Even if it changes, you know the value was $50,000 for X users of whatever software application they bought. So find the corresponding deal size for each account and enter those numbers in columns B and D.

4) Now you can calculate the average deal size for both columns of customers. Let’s say that among customers who took training, the average deal size is $10,000, but it’s only $5000 for those who didn’t take training.

Maybe a statistician would laugh and tell us that’s not very scientific. But you have to start somewhere and anyone can do this exercise.

Agreed.

So if you see a difference in average deal size, you need to decide if it’s a good difference. That’s a judgment call.

But you could take your spreadsheet to a data analyst and ask for a more informed interpretation. Chances are, the data scientist will offer more guidance. It may be, “There’s a better way to do this – let me help you.” That’s progress.

Right.

At least you can start looking for a difference on your own. If you don’t see it, a difference may not be there. Or perhaps it’s there, but your data just doesn’t show it. That’s possible. Or you might wonder if the training, itself, is effective. Or maybe the customers who took the training were already good at whatever skill the training was designed to teach.

Now you’ve generated all kinds of reasons to do further analysis, right?

Also, you’re not limited to columns B and D. You can look at other account characteristics like days sales outstanding or the number of opportunities. You can even combine multiple factors to see where training makes more impact.

Totally right. But here’s a mistake people make with analytics like this. Often they want to tie training to an outcome, but they aren’t precise enough about how they define that outcome.

So they may want to include 10 different columns, each with a different metric. The numbers themselves may or may not be accurate. But the metrics they choose should be clear and specific. Because precision matters.

So let’s say a quick analysis reveals that deal size is 5x larger for trained customers who also have obtained certification. Excellent! But when you tell senior management, they say, “Put it in a business case.” Building a customer education business case scares many training professionals…

Yeah, customers ask us all the time, “Can you help me do that?”

Been there…

OK, let’s run with your example. We see that trained customers have 5x higher deal size, so we immediately conclude that we should do more training. How do you develop the business case?

First, state your hypothesis. It should be a question. For example, “If more customers take training, will average deal size increase?” You start with a premise like this because you have some data to support it.

Next, establish a related goal. Again, precision matters. Obviously, the goal here is to increase customer deal size. But it could be different. For example, it could be getting more customers to take training, because that could lead to having more customers with a higher deal size. It doesn’t really matter which concept you prefer, as long as it’s precise.

Sure.

So let’s say your goal for 2020 is to double the number of 2019 customers who completed training. And in this case, a customer is an account. So that’s a total of 50 x 2 = 100 additional accounts. Or you may want to focus on increasing training among individual users within accounts, because that can make a bigger impact on your business.

Makes sense.

The next part of your business case should be that ROI-investment-payback thing. So you say, “If we get those extra 2x accounts to take training, we think the average increase in deal size will be $10,000. So 100 accounts x $10,000 = $1 million total increase.

Or say you want to increase aveage deal size from $5000 to $7000. So now you have an increase in dollar amount going through the system. That’s your hypothesis, and hopefully you can beat it. But that’s your plan. Your goal is to move the “return” part of the ROI calculation – to increase deal size by $2000 on average.

Okay. For this $2000 increase in average deal size, what next?

Do the math. Look at what will drive that extra $2000 per account. Obviously we have to do more training. So we’re going to have to do something more to produce those results. But maybe we don’t have enough technology or people or content to make that happen.

So you must decide what you’ll need spend to achieve your goal. Say you’re prepared to spend half of the incremental return – in this case $1,000 per account – to achieve your ROI of $2000 more per account.

Or you might say you want to invest $1900 per account. However, your CEO pushes back and says you don’t get any additional budget. So you have to figure out how to increase training participation without spending more money. Fine. $0 investment. You’ll use free software and hire a contractor from Upwork.

Good luck with that!

Right. It could happen. And the final step in the business case has three parts:

A clear action plan

A staffing model

A fairly detailed forecast

Could you briefly walk us through those elements?

Sure. First, outline specifically everything you must do to execute your plan.

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For example, say your strategy to train an extra 2000 customers depends on making more educational videos. However, you don’t have a video authoring tool.

So your plan starts with buying that software. You may also need to hire an instructional designer with video expertise. And so on…

Got it…

Next, build a staffing model. It’s a huge mistake to simply tell your boss, “We’re busy. We need to hire somebody.” If you want support, you’ll need to identify who, when and why new resources must be added to achieve your goal.

For instance, when will you need to add an instructional designer to ensure that new content is ready to roll-out in September? And if you’re expanding live training, when will you need an additional classroom instructor?

You know the volume of training required, so you can work backward to map-out the resources you’ll need over time. This is the same way sales executives and call center managers develop hiring plans for business expansion. Even an estimate is helpful.

Right…

And the final step is the forecast, which is the demand part of your staffing model. This needs to reflect your expected training growth rate.

So, if you’re currently training 5000 customers a year, that’s 400 a month. To reach your new annual goal, you’ll need to add more customers, incrementally, each month. And as that growth volume cascades through the schedule, you can predict when new content, instructors and other resources must be in place.

How do you map content to this customer education business case? How do you choose the best content mix for your target ROI?

That’s where your spreadsheet model gets complicated. Actually, each row represents a different content approach. For example, if one row is a certification exam, who’s going to write the exam? That takes time, so you need to insert it.

As your program grows over time, you’re creating new content, whether it’s video or instructor-led or other content. Plus, you’ll need to account for maintenance of existing content, over time. It’s important to track each separately, so you can look at how each contributes to your goals.

So the model is continuously changing?

Periodically, you’ll need to evaluate and adjust your forecast. It’s important to remember that these models aren’t perfect. However, they should give you some basis for prediction and a reference point for conversations you need to have with your management team.

A strong business case also helps you to plan, so you’ll know with some certainty what you need to do in June of 2020, for example.

You’ll have to make a lot of assumptions. But guess what? That’s what math is.

And how often should you check your roadmap?

You’ve got to look at it regularly. I’d say at least monthly, because forecasting is typically based on monthly business cycles.

Is that when you should tweak it?

Right. Be prepared to adjust your spreadsheet a bit as you move forward, because it’s a model. It’s intended to shift along with your circumstances.

For example, you might find that you can buy courses must faster than your model originally estimated. Or much slower. Or maybe it’s March and you didn’t lock-in that second instructional design hire you expected in February.

So to keep the model up-to-date, you’ll need to redo your whole cascade down into the formulas through the rest of the year. Because when you change the variables, other things need to change.

Makes sense. So do you recommend any templates or tools to help organizations plug-in these numbers and manage this process…?

…For complete answers to this question and more…LISTEN TO THE FULL 30-MINUTE PODCAST NOW!

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How to Cultivate Sustainable Business Growth Through Customer Education

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What exactly does it take to build a successful customer education program that naturally grows hand-in-hand, along with your business?

How can you win executive approval for this approach?

Join our Lead Analyst John Leh as he talks with customer education experts Khalid Shaikh of DataStax and Bill Cushard of Learndot about customer training models that make a lasting business impact.

You’ll get practical advice based on real-world examples, including:

How to understand and evaluate scalable customer training models

Must-have elements for a winning business case

How to weigh costs and benefits accurately

Common mistakes and best practices for sustainable growth

Lessons learned from real-world programs

Success metrics that matter most – and why

Need Proven LMS Selection Guidance?

Looking for a learning platform that truly fits your organization’s needs? We’re here to help! Submit the form below to schedule a free preliminary consultation at your convenience.

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2020 LMS Trends: An Analyst’s Extended Enterprise Learning Predictions

New year. New decade. No better time to step back and look at the big picture. And today’s learning systems market definitely gives us plenty to consider. But which 2020 LMS trends really deserve your attention?

Based on my work as an independent advisor to learning tech buyers and sellers, I’ve outlined 16 key extended enterprise learning trends and related predictions.

Certainly, other factors are shaping the extended enterprise landscape – and we’ll dig into those as the year unfolds. But now, let’s start with the issues and opportubities at the top of my watch list…

2020 Extended Enterprise LMS Predictions

1) Industry Consolidation Rolls On

Ever since cloud technology burst onto the scene a decade ago, hundreds of new learning solutions have entered the market. These are mostly “specialist” platforms. They differentiate themselves not only through innovative functionality, but also industry-specific expertise, integration capabilities, professional services, accessible pricing and other unique characteristics.

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For years, fresh variations on an LMS theme have been popping up in every imaginable niche. But the industry’s unbridled expansion started to lose steam a couple of years ago, when vendors began seeking growth through acquisition.

This consolidation trend remained front-and-center in 2019, with M&A headlines like these:

Absorb Software Acquires Extended Enterprise LMS Provider, eLogic Learning

Absorb Software Acquires Torch LMS

Absorb Software Acquires Cloud-Based Learning Tech Company, ePath Learning

Access Group Acquires Unicorn, UK’s Leader in Learning Technology Solutions

Besomebody Acquires Pixelbug to Add AI, AR and VR to Its Skills Training Products

Bridgepoint Education Acquires Coding Bootcamp Fullstack Academy

CompTIA Acquires Assessment, Certification and Training Company, Metacog

Degreed Acquires Adepto to Add Skills Insights to Learning Platform

EdCast Acquires Leapest, Online Marketplace for Corporate Training

Engagedly Acquires eMentoring Solution Provider, Management Mentors

Instructure Acquires Portfolium to Build Stronger Ties Between Students and Employers

Learning Pool Acquires HT2 Labs, Maker of Learning Locker LRS and Curator LXP

Surgent Expands into Healthcare Professional Education Market Through Acquisition of PharmCon

Thoma Bravo Acquires Instructure, Maker of Canvas and Bridge LMS Platforms

Thompson Reuters Acquire HighQ Legal Collaboration Platform

Transforce Buys The CDL School, The Nation’s Premier Commercial Truck Driving School

Wiley Acquires Knewton, a Provider of Affordable Courseware and Adaptive Learning Technology

2020 LMS TRENDS PREDICTION Despite ongoing consolidation, the learning systems market as a whole will continue to grow at a rapid pace. And as vendors focus more heavily on gaining market share dominance, buyers should prepare for further M&A confusion, uncertainty and disruption.

Service continuity is always a top LMS purchasing concern. But now, selecting the right partner with longevity is more important than ever.

2) Talent Management LMS Platforms Struggle With Extended Enterprise

Old-guard talent management LMS providers are in a quandary. You know the names – Cornerstone, Oracle, Saba Software, SAP SuccessFactors, SumTotal Systems and Workday. They offer powerful employee learning management systems that are integrated with broader talent management suites.

In comparison to specialized extended enterprise solutions, these vendors rarely (if ever) spend R&D dollars on pure extended enterprise innovation. And it shows.

Old-guard LMSs do compete for extended enterprise opportunities, and sometimes they win. But success is limited mostly to highly complex scenarios where organizations must serve both employees and external audiences, and advanced HR/compliance functionality is mandatory.

On the other hand, these systems are often considered too powerful, costly and unfocused for pure extended enterprise deployments, or for SMBs that need to serve employees and external audiences with a single LMS.

2020 LMS TRENDS PREDICTION Talent-suite LMS vendors will continue to get their extended enterprise clocks cleaned while they struggle to land a diminishing number of large-scale employee-focused opportunities.

3) Specialists and Cloud LMS Vendors Win the Extended Enterprise Race

Which specialized LMS vendors are stealing thunder from big-name talent-suite LMS vendors? Good question.

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Strong contenders include pure-play extended enterprise solutions like BlueVolt, Community Brands, Learndot, NetExam, Skilljar and Thought Industries. But because these platforms are designed specifically for external audiences, they may be too limited for some scenarios.

This is why we see increasing interest in cloud LMS platforms that are flexible enough to support any type of enterprise-class solution – internal, external or a combination of audiences. Leaders in this category include Absorb, Adobe, Docebo, LearnUpon, Litmos and TalentLMS.

These vendors (and many more) offer modern, turn-key solutions that are highly engaging, affordable and scalable. So when LMS buyers compare these solutions with talent-suite platforms, the choice is easy.

2020 LMS TRENDS PREDICTION This year, talent-suite LMS vendors will still focus on employee-specific business needs, while the rest of the LMS industry feasts on an abundance of extended enterprise opportunities.

4) Customer Education Remains a Golden Ticket

Try to name a corporation without customers. Good luck! That’s why customer education is such a hot segment of the extended enterprise universe.

Training now plays an essential role in attracting new prospects, converting them to customers, empowering them to use products successfully, convincing them to increase product use over time and encouraging them to become brand advocates.

It’s a fact that educated customers are more profitable customers. Training is proven to reduce churn, increase retention and improve satisfaction. So, what business wouldn’t want to achieve measurable benefits like these?

2020 LMS TRENDS PREDICTION Corporations that don’t invest in customer education will lose many of those customers to competitors who make education a priority.

5) The Association LMS Segment Becomes Even More Distinct

For years I’ve said that associations are a unique LMS segment. Now, winning business from professional associations is difficult for generalist cloud LMS providers and impossible for talent-suite vendors.

That’s because innovative continuing education specialists are leading the way. For example, BenchPrep, Blue Sky eLearn, Community Brands, EthosCE, WBT Systems and Web Courseworks have made significant inroads in this segment.

All of these vendors bring tremendous domain expertise, along with support for certifications and blended learning experiences, integration with association management systems, B2C and B2B ecommerce capabilities and pricing strategies designed specifically for non-profit organizations.

2020 LMS TRENDS PREDICTION The association LMS segment will become more clearly defined, as consolidation continues to narrow the number of vendors in this space.

6) B2B Commerce is an LMS Innovation Hot Spot – With Good Reason

When we began analyzing this market six years ago, many vendors thought they could create the perfect extended enterprise solution by adding a shopping cart and content pricing to their existing employee-focused LMS. Times have changed!

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Now, LMS buyers expect sophisticated B2B capabilities for bulk content sales to resellers, corporate partners, customers or corporate association members.

Bulk sales functionality is important because content development costs are fixed. It makes strong economic sense to package and sell every piece of content in as many ways as possible before they become dated.

To support this strategy, ecommerce-savvy LMS vendors now incorporate automation that makes it easy to create branded customer sites, populate them with pre-purchased content and promote relevant selections to users with CRM and marketing automation integrations.

They also deliver content instantly through advanced transactional capabilities such as pre-assigned tokens. In addition, visual dashboards now make it easy for administrators to monitor individual and aggregate training progress, licensing usage and even ROI.

2020 LMS TRENDS PREDICTION As training businesses strive to squeeze even more “juice” from every piece of content, ecommerce LMS providers will further enhance and automate their platforms in useful new ways.

7) Training and Marketing Lines Blur Further

Way back in early 2014, I noted that extended enterprise training professionals are a hybrid breed. I called them “instructional marketers.”

Since then, the overlap between instructional specialists and marketing professionals has become even more pronounced, and the need for cross-disciplinary training can no longer be ignored.

This kind of cross-training isn’t formally available from universities or employers, so individuals need to educate themselves. Fortunately, it’s not too hard. I did it.

Start by developing strategic know-how in market segmentation, competitive analysis, customer journey mapping, content marketing and product positioning. You’ll find excellent guidance from sources like Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, along with online courses from sites like Coursera, Digital Marketing Institute and LinkedIn.

It’s equally important to develop hands-on skill with top digital marketing tools. Leading vendors typically offer free training to all. Examples include:

Customer relationship management systems (Hubspot, Infusionsoft, Salesforce)

Email and campaign management platforms (Constant Contact, Drip, MailChimp)

SEO and pay-per-click ad management tools (Google Analytics, SEMrush, WordStream)

Data integration software (Automate.io, IFTTT, Tray.io, Zapier)

2020 LMS TRENDS PREDICTION If instructional specialists don’t embrace the marketing side of learning strategy, marketing folks who gain instructional design and content expertise will move the ball forward. It’s not a question of if, but when. And progress is already past due.

8) Integration, Integration, Integration

For successful business results, extended enterprise learning platforms must be integrated with an organization’s broader tech stack. Integrations are critical because they ensure that an LMS seamlessly “snaps” into your ecosystem so it can leverage available data and functionality.

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However, integrations are not created equal. Generally, there are two approaches:

• Custom integrations These are designed and built on top of whatever APIs an LMS vendor makes available with its platform. They come with initial set-up costs and ongoing maintenance fees.

• Productized integrations Increasingly popular, these pre-built connectors are available as standard LMS functionality. They’re activated simply by entering a code from the target application. Common examples include:

Marketing automation

Customer relationship management

Customer service management

Data integration software

Virtual classrooms

Ecommerce platforms

Learning record store

Content authoring

Gamification

Proctoring

Finance

Fulfillment systems

SEO

2020 LMS TRENDS PREDICTION Adoption of productized integrations will accelerate rapidly as organizations abandon the concept of custom integrations.

9) Skills and Competencies are Back Again

Skills and competencies management is the training industry’s “white whale.” For the entire 25 years I’ve worked in this industry, we’ve been chasing this elusive beast, with little success.

The concept sounds promising enough:

Assign appropriate skills to each job role in your organization.

Create relevant training content for each role, so employees can develop the necessary competencies to perform effectively.

Include evaluation tools so employees and their managers, peers and customers can rate their performance.

Add robust reporting to track individual and collective progress.

For decades, talent-suite platforms have offered this kind of functionality. But most organizations never even touch these features. Why?

Developing an accurate skill profile for every role takes a tremendous amount of time and effort. Plus, mapping and updating training content for each of those skills is even more time-consuming and difficult. As a result, few projects ever even get off the ground. And those that do often implode from their own weight.

At last, however, we’re seeing several promising breakthroughs on this front:

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Rather than relying on individual employers to create and manage their own skills models, solution providers like CrossKnowledge, Degreed, LinkedIn and Schoox are predefining competency frameworks and mapping their training content to these models.

Also, associations are leading the way with targeted industry skills models, so members can manage their professional development throughout each stage in their careers.

2020 LMS TRENDS PREDICTION Both of these innovative approaches to skills and competencies will be more widely embraced, as employers abandon their DIY obsession of yesteryear in favor of more highly leveraged solutions.

10) Open Source Gains Legitimacy in Extended Enterprise Learning

Over the years, open source has become associated with strength in the academic LMS space. But this perception is rapidly changing, as platforms like Totara, Moodle Workplace and Open edX make a serious dent in the corporate extended enterprise marketplace.

Why? Because these systems are robust, highly flexible and generally provide high-end capabilities for a lower total cost of ownership than many commercial systems. Plus, they’re configured, deployed and supported by partners who offer specialized expertise in every imaginable market niche. Examples include eThink Education, Extension Engine, Kineo, MindQuest Learning, Raytheon Professional Services, Remote Learner and Synegen.

Open source is particularly attractive for extended enterprise scenarios because licensing fees are usually non-existent. In other words, a training business can scale rapidly without incurring any incremental licensing costs. This means that more of the budget can be invested in content and marketing that move a business forward.

2020 LMS TRENDS PREDICTION Look for much broader adoption of open source as a backbone for large-scale, corporate extended enterprise learning solutions, as decision-makers recognize the benefits of this approach.

11) Differentiation Matters More Than Vendors Think

As an analyst, I’ve personally seen hundreds of learning systems demos. And as a recovering LMS sales guy, I constantly wonder why vendors choose not to lead with their unique strengths. The answer may sound surprising, but too many vendors don’t accurately recognize their key differentiators!

It’s not easy for any vendor to calibrate others’ capabilities accurately. The market is confusing, life is busy and public information is often incomplete or outdated. As a result, vendors are more in-the-dark than you (and they) would think.

In presentations, I always ask vendors to describe the business problem they solve and the kind of customers who gain the most value from their systems. Yet too often, these discussions focus on “me too” features, while discounting capabilities that distinguish their platforms. For example, nearly every vendor emphasizes its modern user interface and instant access to content (minimal clicks), even though this kind of functionality is now commonplace.

Perhaps they’re too close to see what seems obvious to me.

2020 LMS TRENDS PREDICTION Buyers and sellers, alike, will increasingly turn to independent research sources for help in understanding the dynamics of the LMS landscape and the position of individual vendors. Fortunately, that means job security for me.

12) The Learning Experience Platform Niche Remains Visible But Limited

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Learning experience platforms (LXP) like Degreed, EdCast, Filtered, Fuse, Percipio and Valamis have made quite a splash. An LXP is a powerful aggregation tool that provides a single point of access to relevant content from various systems. This has tremendous value in organizations with multiple learning systems and other content sources.

LXPs have definitely taught clunky LMSs a valuable lesson about how to up their game in user interface design and content personalization. They’ve rekindled interest in skills development and real-time performance support.

But it’s important to understand that an LXP is not an LMS. For example, LXPs don’t manage compliance, training assignments or scheduling deadlines.

What’s the bottom line for buyers? Most modern cloud LMS platforms now include LXP-level functionality. So if you have only one LMS, adding a third-party application is probably overkill. And if you’re purchasing your first learning system of any type, you’re likely to need a full LMS.

However, if you have multiple employee LMSs and other content sources (as many larger organizations do), an LXP is a must-have.

2020 LMS TRENDS PREDICTION Extended enterprise interest in standalone LXPs will fade, as LMS platforms further improve their experience design and personalization functionality, and as talent-suite vendors enhance their front-end and integration capabilities.

13) AI Is Still On Its Way, But Don’t Wait Up

Most vendors I interview claim that their products include some level of machine learning or artificial intelligence. However, I’ve found that these capabilities are still fairly limited.

On the backend, reporting and analytics automation is where AI is making the most progress. And in terms of user experience, AI-powered content recommendations are improving learning engagement.

For example, suggested content can reflect a user’s professional interests, training history and progress, media preferences and preferences of a user’s peers. Even data from external systems (like a CRM) can be factored into the mix.

Although these advances are promising, vendors remain slow to discuss their AI “special sauce” in detail. Plus, it’s still impossible to see AI or ML at work when evaluating an LMS platform, because sufficient data is never available in a sales environment. Convenient!

2020 LMS TRENDS PREDICTION Artificial intelligence and machine learning will increasingly influence learning content and systems. However, I recommend that buyers proceed with caution, because truly “intelligent” LMS capabilities are more on the theoretical bleeding edge than in the mainstream.

14) xAPI May Never Arrive

I’ve helped more than 60 organizations complete a thorough learning system selection process. Almost every one of those organizations said they wanted an xAPI-compliant LMS.

My reply is always the same. “Great. How are you using xAPI now?”

Then I wait to hear buyers say, “We aren’t using it yet, because we don’t have an xAPI-compliant system.” Right. This leads to my next question: “So how do you plan to use xAPI in the future?”

The answer is invariably some form of the following: “We have no idea. But if it finally arrives, we don’t want to miss it.”

Folks, don’t hold your breath. xAPI won’t be mainstream anytime soon (if ever). But that doesn’t mean you can’t measure and analyze learning behavior, anyway. Here’s why:

The big promise of xAPI is that it tracks specific informal learning activities and associates those activities with individual users. For example, did John Q. Learner read a book, visit a website, download a white paper or attend a tradeshow?

Well, guess what? The business world already has systems that track all that. They’re called CRMs. They don’t use xAPI – and they never will.

2020 LMS TRENDS PREDICTION HR and L&D professionals who focus on employee training will continue to wait for the xAPI train to arrive. Meanwhile, extended enterprise learning systems will double-down on CRM integration.

15) LTI Gains Traction as an Extended Enterprise Standard

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If you’re still concerned about xAPI, you’ll be glad to know there’s another much more promising standard in town. It’s called LTI (learning tools interoperability).

LTI is actually an academic LMS data standard that is starting to make inroads in corporate environments.

Basically LTI is like SCORM, but it doesn’t require content to reside on the same server as an LMS. This gives B2B content sellers the opportunity to maintain content in a central location, and serve it on-demand to any LTI-compliant LMS upon request.

For training content providers, this approach is logistically far superior to sending a file to customers who must load it on their LMS and then update it on an ongoing basis. SCORM offers a workaround to this file-sharing problem through cross-domain “stub” files. However, LTI is a much cleaner solution.

2020 LMS TRENDS PREDICTION Corporate reliance upon the LTI standard will eventully surpass xAPI usage.

16) Full-Tilt Learning Experiences Come Closer

Not long ago, video content and mobile-responsive design were at the leading edge of learning experience design. Now they’re the norm. So what’s next?

We all want richer digital experiences. And just as learning platform innovators took cues from online consumer sites a decade ago, it’s vital to keep rising to user’s expectations. But which next-level advances will add value? Keep an eye on these three:

• Mixed Reality Experiential learning supported by AR (augmented reality), VR (virtual reality) or MR (mixed reality) is not just an extension of today’s video content. It involves a much deeper level of engagement – immersive, real-time and interactive in ways that on-demand or streaming video, alone, can’t touch.

Early applications are proving to be highly valuable, particularly in medical education, manufacturing, aviation and other high-risk environments.

• Natural Language Processing Consumers are already driving a massive wave of conversational computing adoption. (Hey Google, Alexa and Siri!) The failure of many first-generation business chatbots demonstrated the limitations of voice-driven automation. However, early lessons learned have led to a resurgence of improved applications.

For extended enterprise training providers, the potential upside is significant. By overcoming the design complexities of screen readers and digital keyboards, conversational computing technology can make learning experiences far more accessible to a much broader market.

• 5G connectivity 5G is one of today’s hottest technology trends – and with good reason. Imagine how nearly instant online response time will transform not just training experiences, but every aspect of our lives! 5G isn’t expected to be widely available for several years. But once it does kick-in, significant return on investment won’t be far behind.

How should you prepare? Smart companies are starting to think ahead by outlining goals, strategies, concepts and pilot programs that can be tested as infrastructure upgrades become available.

2020 LMS TRENDS PREDICTION Few organizations will take the time and energy now to consider the future implications of very early-stage emerging technologies. But these forward-thinking organizations will be better prepared to adjust and gain first-mover advantage when the time is right.

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How to Cultivate Sustainable Business Growth Through Customer Education

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What exactly does it take to build a successful customer education program that naturally grows hand-in-hand, along with your business?

How can you win executive approval for this approach?

Join our Lead Analyst John Leh as he talks with customer education experts Khalid Shaikh of DataStax and Bill Cushard of Learndot about customer training models that make a lasting business impact.

You’ll get practical advice based on real-world examples, including:

How to understand and evaluate scalable customer training models

Must-have elements for a winning business case

How to weigh costs and benefits accurately

Common mistakes and best practices for sustainable growth

Lessons learned from real-world programs

Success metrics that matter most – and why

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cecillewhite · 5 years ago

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Talented Learning’s Greatest Hits – 2019 Edition

It’s hard to believe another year has come and gone, let alone another decade!

I’m not one to dwell on the past. But I do believe the past can inform the future. So before we move on, I invite you to join me in revisiting this year’s most popular topics in extended enterprise learning.

What Topics Were Most Popular in Extended Enterprise Learning?

The world is likely to remember 2019 for dramatic political plot twists, news headlines and cultural trends. But I’m more interested in top takeaways from business-minded learning professionals.

What mattered most to you? We think your content choices are excellent indicators.

If you follow Talented Learning, you know we share information and advice through multiple channels. In addition to publishing weekly blog posts, we also produce monthly webinars and regular podcast interviews with experts from across the extended enterprise learning realm.

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Which topics drew the most attention this year? Below, we’ve listed top contenders from each of our three content channels. There’s also a bonus section featuring our all-time most popular posts.

We hope you’ll find this “greatest hits” list useful as you frame next-steps in your organization’s learning strategy.

And as you look for forward-thinking guidance in 2020, stay tuned for more from us in the coming weeks and months!

Top 3 Podcasts of 2019

Two years ago, we launched our podcast series, “The Talented Learning Show“ for convenient access to one-on-one conversations with leading learning technology innovators and practitioners. Of the 15 episodes we produced this year, these three sessions attracted the most listeners:

#3 Interpreting Global eLearning Trends – with Donald H. Taylor

Every year, one of the world’s best-known organizational learning experts, Donald H. Taylor publishes an analysis of his Global L&D Sentiment Survey – a must-read for anyone who cares about the direction of corporate learning technology adoption.

In this interview, Don drills down on highlights from the 2019 results. He also looks at key trends revealed by this research and discusses the implications for learning organizations around the world.

#2 Why Corporations Choose Open Source Learning Systems – with Brian Carlson

Numbers don’t lie. And they’re definitely telling us that open source learning platforms like Moodle and Totara are wildly popular, compared to commercial solutions. But what exactly is driving this success? And why is open source gaining momentum as a foundation for extended enterprise learning?

Listen as Brian Carlson, CEO of eThink Education, explains. Brian is a pioneer in open source learning solutions who has been involved with this movement almost from its inception nearly 20 years ago.

#1 What Makes Microlearning Work – with Karl Kapp

Microlearning is a popular buzzword. But what exactly does it mean? Why is it a valuable methodology? And how can learning professionals develop truly effective microlearning experiences?

Author, professor and perpetual fan favorite, Dr. Karl Kapp, makes it easy to understand in this free-wheeling Q&A session.

Top 3 Webinars of 2019

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As soon as we finish our monthly live webinar events, we post the recordings in the Talented Learning Center – a free library of low-hype, high-value, on-demand resources.

All sessions are designed for business-minded training professionals who want to use learning systems more effectively.

To sample our webinars, try three of this year’s most popular sessions:

#3 How to Spark High-Impact Skills Development

In today’s economy, how can organizations attract and retain the best talent? Find out how to build a competitive edge with a culture of continuous learning that lasts. Join skills development experts as they share proven methodologies and discuss real-world successes.

#2 Association Learning Tech Innovation: Reality vs. Hype

Digital breakthroughs like AI, VR and AR are capturing headlines and imaginations everywhere. But what do innovative technologies mean for continuing education providers operating in the real world? Take a closer look from the front lines of the association learning solutions space.

#1 Bridging the Learning Analytics Gap

Educational content providers have long sought better ways to link learning behavior with business performance. But even with today’s most innovative measurement tools, decision-makers struggle to find enough time and expertise to generate useful insights.

How can you bridge this critical gap? Learn how a guided services approach is making a measurable difference.

Top 3 Blog Posts of 2019

Blogging was our first form of outreach – and our commitment to this blog remains stronger than ever. When people like you take time to read and respond to our posts, it helps us better understand how learning technology actually fits into the business world. Interestingly, two of these posts were actually published before 2019. Regardless, here are this year’s most popular topics:

#3 Best Customer Education Blogs – 25 Must-Reads for Learning Professionals

Companies everywhere are striving to gain a competitive edge by improving their customer experience. As a result, interest in customer education is skyrocketing.

But with so many voices in the burgeoning customer learning space, where should you look for credible advice about strategies, technologies and business practices? Check our collection of resources from some of the best minds in the industry!

#2 Customer Training Pricing and Packaging – What’s the Best Strategy?

Customer education is all the rage – and with good reason. But successful programs depend on effective pricing and packaging.

What kind of model works best with your particular product or service? And how much should you charge for optimal results? Read this post to understand and compare popular approaches.

#1 Top Learning Systems Trends 2019 – An Extended Enterprise Market Guide

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Hands-down, every year our most popular posts focus on top learning technology trends.

Although we don’t pretend to forecast the future, we do share first-hand observations about factors that are shaping the extended enterprise learning market. And we do it with a fiercely independent perspective.

As you prepare for the year ahead, consider the key trends we outlined early in 2019. How many of these are already influencing the learning experiences you offer? And going forward, what kind of role should they play?

BONUS: Top Blog Posts of All Time

With 6 years of blogging under our belts, which posts have attracted the most attention? These are our readers’ perennial favorites:

#3 Will You Sell More Continuing Education With an LMS?

With today’s red-hot employment market driving demand for reskilling and upskilling, continuing education is on fire. But what kind of systems should continuing education providers choose to support lifelong skills development?

Find out what you should expect in a CEU-focused LMS, and why an employee-oriented learning platform isn’t likely to be your best bet.

#2 Define Your LMS Requirements Like a Pro

The best way to find a learning system that works for your organization is to start with a strong set of requirements. As consultants, we’ve seen far too many situations where buyers neglected this step, with disastrous results.

Requirements definition isn’t complex, but it does take a desire to understand your learning audiences and related use cases. This guide walks you through each phase in the process.

#1 The 3 Licensing Models of an LMS (or Any Enterprise Software)

Interestingly, our most popular post of all time was a smash hit right out of the gate in April of 2014. Since then, it has continued to attract more daily activity than any other post we’ve published.

Why has software licensing intelligence attracted so much attention? Here’s our theory: We were among the first independent sources of information about learning systems pricing issues and trends, and six years later we remain committed to that agenda.

We believe it’s important to educate the market about how to make informed technology choices, and pricing transparency is key to software selection success. Readers seem to agree.

Conclusion

The first 6 years at Talented Learning have coincided with an exciting and eventful phase in the evolution of learning systems. But as 2020 begins, we feel like we’re only getting started!

We hope you’re as eager as we are to explore these popular topics in extended enterprise learning even more deeply in the future. We promise to show up with more boots-on-the-ground blogs, webinars, product reviews, podcasts and reports to help you create business value from extended enterprise learning.

If you want to see us cover additional topics, contact us anytime with suggestions or feedback. We’re always interested in ideas that help us serve you better.

Thanks for reading!

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LMS Selection Step-by-Step

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With hundreds of learning systems available today, finding the right LMS for your unique extended enterprise needs can be tricky. But with so much at stake for, it’s worth the extra effort.

What exactly should you do to choose the best solution?

Walk step-by-step through a real-world example with John Leh, CEO and Lead Analyst at Talented Learning. You’ll learn:

How to develop a relevant business case and success metrics

Methods for researching and defining use cases and requirements

When to issue an RFP (or not)

Tips for creating a viable LMS shortlist

How to make the most of vendor demos and proof-of-concept projects

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cecillewhite · 6 years ago

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Is Open Source Ready for Extended Enterprise Learning?

You may know me as an independent learning systems consultant. But I’m also a recovering LMS sales guy.

Six years ago I pivoted after 14 years on the front lines with two major commercial LMS vendors. I learned a lot during those years. I also developed some strong opinions. And frankly, several of those biases deserve a second look in light of today’s market.

Open source software is a great example. 10 years ago we would occasionally cross paths with corporate LMS buyers who were evaluating commercial systems side-by-side with open source platforms. We’d snicker and say, “If you’re considering both types of systems, one of us is in the wrong place – and it’s probably us!”

Sounds smug. It was.

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But we were trained to believe that if any corporation expressed interest in an open source LMS, the buyer was probably uninformed, unserious, seeking a cheap fix or some combination of those.

Times have changed.

Early open source learning systems were viable for academic applications. But corporations found it difficult to shoehorn open source into their infrastructure – especially for extended enterprise learning.

Now, there are multiple reasons to seriously consider open source for corporate extended enterprise needs. To learn more, let’s dig deeper…

What is Corporate Extended Enterprise Learning, Anyway?

“Corporate extended enterprise learning” is essentially any instructional program a business offers to non-employee audiences. That can include any combination of:

Customers and prospects

Sales channel partners, distributors and retailers

Franchisees

Suppliers and developers

Contractors

The general public

Sometimes corporations deploy a single extended enterprise LMS to serve external audiences and employees, alike. But more often, multiple learning systems are deployed over time, to support various audiences and business initiatives. This is particularly common when an organization’s structure and decision-making are decentralized.

5 Defining Extended Enterprise Attributes

Although extended enterprise learning initiatives are all different, they share important common ground, especially these characteristics:

1) Voluntary Learners – Because extended enterprise learners aren’t employees, you can’t force them to use your LMS. Instead, you need to invest extra effort to attract, engage and retain participants.

Companies often consider extended enterprise education an opportunity for brand differentiation, so they try to out-perform others by continuously improving the learning experience.

2) Audience Size – Only a few hundred corporations in the world have more than 100,000 employees to train. On the other hand, tens of thousands of organizations serve more than 100,000 external learners. (Vendors: Read that market size statistic again and let it sink in.)

Because extended enterprise audiences are potentially vast and variable, buyers need a scalable licensing structure.

3) Extensive Integrations – Employee-focused learning systems integrate with HRIS platforms and single sign-on software. But extended enterprise deployments typically integrate with numerous other systems and tools, including customer relationship management, marketing automation, ecommerce, content management, customer support and more.

4) Measurability – Because extended enterprise learning programs are driven by specific business objectives, metrics are integral to their success. To prove the impact of learning, organizations need to tie educational experiences to sales, revenue, customer satisfaction, time-to-value and countless other metrics.

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This means that robust analytics capabilities are vital. It also means that buyers often develop a business case to justify their LMS purchase.

5) Business-Specific Expertise – Extended enterprise LMS buyers want to buy from vendors who understand the domain and have a roster of successful clients with similar use cases. This assures them that the system is viable and the roadmap will remain focused on extended enterprise needs, going forward.

Using these requirements (and others) as a baseline, hundreds of vendors are now actively competing to claim a slice of this extended enterprise LMS market opportunity.

Historically, commercial software vendors dominated this segment. But increasingly, open source learning systems are making noteworthy inroads – and with good reason.

How Well Do Open Source Learning Systems Meet Extended Enterprise Needs?

Is open source right for every extended enterprise application? No. Do open platforms offer advantages over commercial systems? Certainly – sometimes.

Let’s look at how open source learning platforms stack up, based on the extended enterprise attributes we outlined above:

1) Voluntary Learners – Open source solutions are highly configurable at the user interface level, with thousands of community-built plugins. This gives organizations the flexibility to create “one-of-a-kind” applications that appeal to specific users in ways that many commercial providers can’t match.

2) Audience Size – Core open source LMS licensing costs are zero (or minimal). Because corporations invest much less in licensing, they can invest much more in educational content, learner experience optimization, systems integration and program marketing.

3) Extensive Integrations – Open source LMSs offer strong APIs and pre-built connectors to a diverse array of other applications. This is ideal for organizations that want to enhance and extend their LMS by easily snapping it into a broader, more complex business technology ecosystem.

4) Measurability – Open source solutions have robust reporting capabilities that support a variety of extended enterprise use cases. Third-party plug-ins add more extensive business-focused analytics for organizations with specialized measurement needs.

5) Business-Specific Expertise – Open source learning systems are configured, deployed and maintained by third-party service providers. Since there are no license revenues, these organizations compete by adding value through the quality of their services. Many are extended enterprise experts with a strong track record.

Open Source vs. Commercial Learning Systems: What’s the Difference?

Don’t commercial and open source LMSs solve the same challenges? Yes, they do – but differently.

In fact, for any given extended enterprise scenario, open source approaches can yield substantially more business value. That’s why open-source LMSs should be included in the evaluation process.

Here are some key differences that can swing buying decisions in one direction or another:

Cost At lower audience levels (for example, 1,000 or 10,000 learners per year), open source and commercial software costs are comparable. But as the number of learners increases (especially at 50,000-100,000 learners per year or more), the total cost of ownership for an open source LMS is always significantly lower than a commercial solution.

Custom Needs Generally, it’s wise to avoid customization unless you have no other choice.

Commercial solutions are configurable – meaning buyers can adjust LMS functionality only with predetermined settings provided by the vendor. (Think of checkboxes with multiple options.) Beyond that, modifications are available only as core product features in a future product release. In other words, one-off customer changes (customizations) aren’t part of the commercial software playbook.

In contrast, open source solutions are fully customizable, with all the related advantages and disadvantages (such as the burden of ongoing technical and maintenance costs). Although customization isn’t advisable for small-scale projects, it can be useful for large, strategically important deployments.

Service Requirements With commercial systems, buyers are generally responsible for configuration and deployment, with vendors providing only minor proactive or reactive help. Large employee-focused LMS vendors can provide more hands-on professional service, but this comes at a steep incremental cost beyond license fees.

In contrast, open source solutions are typically configured and deployed by providers that offer clients whatever level of attention they want and need. Because LMS licensing comes at no/low cost, nearly every budget can afford a service provider.

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Simple Core Requirements Many extended enterprise LMS clients are buying for the first or second time. Their needs aren’t complicated – yet.

These buyers are usually happy to structure their training business to conform to the capabilities of their chosen LMS. And they usually prefer commercial solutions.

My opinion? The more extensive and complex your LMS requirements are, the more attractive open source becomes.

Top Open Source LMS Platforms

Multiple open-source learning systems are available. These are the most notable choices for extended enterprise applications:

Moodle – The most popular LMS in the world, Moodle boasts over 175 million users across 100,000 deployments. Originally built with academic needs in mind, Moodle has been expanding into corporate and continuing education environments.

Totara – Built as an independent fork of the Moodle code base, Totara was originally designed specifically for workplace learning. In recent years, Totara has expanded rapidly into the extended enterprise space, with applications for associations, non-profit organizations, government entities as well as businesses.

Moodle Workplace – Introduced earlier in 2019, this platform is Moodle’s new answer to Totara’s success in the corporate learning market. Moodle Workplace looks promising, with multi-tenant support and other functionality that makes it a viable contender for corporate extended enterprise implementations.

Open edX – This massively scalable open authoring tool and LMS comes with its own large, supportive community. It is built on the same platform that powers edX.org‘s popular online courses. This system is used extensively in higher education and employee training, and is now making inroads in the extended enterprise space.

Open Source Service Providers

Independent professional services providers are critical to the success of open source LMS platforms. Hundreds and hundreds of open source development specialists operate today, representing every geographic location and extended enterprise use case you can imagine.

I’ve personally worked with a variety of these organizations, including eThink Education, Extension Engine, Kineo, MindQuest Learning, Raytheon Professional Services, Remote Learner and Synegen. Each brings unique strengths to the table.

Which Commercial LMS Platforms Compare?

On the commercial side of the corporate extended enterprise space, you’ll find no lack of options. The companies listed below are just a taste of the vendors worth considering:

Extended Enterprise Specialists These are pure extended enterprise solutions, designed exclusively to support external audiences. For example, BlueVolt, NetExam, Learndot, Skilljar and Thought Industries.

Cloud LMS Vendors Easy to procure, deploy and maintain, cloud LMSs are a good choice for serving extended enterprise audiences, employees or a combination of learner types. Popular examples include Absorb, Docebo and SAP Litmos.

Employee-Focused LMS Vendors These are big, well-known platforms that focus primarily on employee onboarding and compliance training. But these systems are also able to support large-scale, global extended enterprise initiatives. Recognized names in this group include Cornerstone, Saba and SumTotal.

Conclusion

As a new decade begins in 2020, some representatives from commercial LMS providers may still be holding their noses when they talk about open source.

But those vendors aren’t blind. They see how the market is shifting and they know just how powerful open source competitors can be in the right situation.

Large-scale, high-stakes extended enterprise education is certainly one of those scenarios. And as more organizations find success with open source learning solutions, the extended enterprise door is ready to swing open, even wider.

Thanks for reading!

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The Hidden Value of Open Source

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Until recently, most open-source learning solutions served the academic market. Not anymore. Now, corporations big and small are leveraging the unique strengths of open source to deliver world-class learning solutions at an affordable price.

Do the advantages of open source make sense for your organization?

Join John Leh, Lead Analyst at Talented Learning, as he hosts a roundtable discussion with Randy Jones, VP of Business Development at eThink Education and Laura Kiley, Channel Partner Manager at GO1.

You’ll get practical advice and insights, including:

Business and educational benefits of open source

Anatomy of an open source learning system

Examples of successful solutions

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Role of content in employee and extended enterprise solutions

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cecillewhite · 6 years ago

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Need to Calculate LMS ROI? Here’s How Business Leaders Do The Math

EDITOR’S NOTE: Because extended enterprise learning involves multiple disciplines, we sometimes ask other experts to share their insights. Today we feature advice from Ajay Pangarkar, CTDP, FCPA, FCMA and President of CentralKnowledge. Ajay is an award-winning blogger, author and LinkedIn online course instructor who helps learning practitioners develop the financial acumen they need to align training initiatives with key business objectives.

Why is LMS ROI Analysis Important?

If you’re responsible for organizational learning, you’re probably planning new or improved instructional programs for the coming year. To make this happen, you’re likely to need new hardware, software and various other resources. But how do you decide what to spend?

Many people would say, “If it’s in the budget, just buy it.” And this could work for insignificant or inexpensive items like training materials or related office supplies.

However, modern learning experiences usually require significant technology purchases. For example, you may need to invest in a learning management system (LMS), applications for certification tracking, ecommerce and collaboration, as well as content authoring tools.

Big-ticket items like these are considered capital investments. They must be pre-approved by business leaders and financial specialists who use standardized methods to justify technology purchases. Below, we’ll examine two key approaches:

Cost-benefit and break-even analysis

Net present value (NPV) analysis.

Two Ways to Evaluate LMS ROI

Method 1: Cost-Benefit/Break-Even Analysis

At first glance, results-oriented learning programs are considered a cost. But leaders will also consider them an investment – if you frame the benefits appropriately. Consider this simple scenario:

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ABC Company sells productivity software for $200 per user. ABC just released a new version with additional features. The cost to produce this application is $120 per unit and the sales volume is 4000 units per year.

Mary is ABC’s president. She believes a new elearning course could help marketing and sales teams increase sales by at least 700 units in the first year without causing any work disruptions.

You expect this course to cost $60,000 – including equipment, technology, content development and design. In addition, ABC must account for $200,000 per year in existing learning-related fixed costs.

Before approving the course, Mary asks you to provide a financial assessment to prove that this endeavor makes business sense.

Should ABC Company Invest in a New Course?

Many training practitioners would say, “Yes, certainly it makes sense.” This conclusion is based on the assumption that an elearning investment of $60,000 will incrementally increase sales by $140,000 (700 units x $200 per unit), so ABC will gain $80,000.

But this is only part of the story for business leaders, because they also compare the difference between current and projected sales and costs.

In this case, at the current sales level of 4000 units, ABC earns $120,000 in operating income (column 1 below). But after including the $60,000 new elearning fixed cost and expected sales increase (column 2 below), it’s clear that ABC would actually lose $4,000.

ABC Cost-Benefit Analysis By The Numbers

Because the new elearning course would decrease operating income to $116,000, Mary won’t support the decision to move forward.

At this point, many learning practitioners would sell their souls to convince Mary she should sign-off anyway, because training always makes sense. Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but learning doesn’t always make good business sense.

It’s true that by rejecting the elearning initiative, ABC won’t gain 700 units in additional sales. However, the company won’t incur the additional $60,000 in elearning fixed costs, either.

Worst-case, the current profit level will remain unchanged. Sales might even grow, given the new functionality available in ABC’s latest release.

What Could Change Mary’s Mind?

To win support for the elearning course, you could:

Work with sales and marketing teams to increase sales by 50 units or

Find a way to reduce elearning development costs by $4,000.

Either of these actions will create a “break-even” outcome. Of course, ideally, leaders aim higher than break-even. They’re looking for profitable outcomes.

In this case, profitability mean increasing sales by more than 50 units and/or reducing costs by more than $4,000. As a learning professional, you don’t control sales performance. But you can control elearning costs.

Recommended Course of Action

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To reduce the fixed cost of developing the new course, take time to review all of the elements – from related technology to content development.

Next, identify what’s absolutely essential to create and deploy the course. These are your “must-have” requirements. Others are only “nice-to-haves.”

Unless you can convince Mary that “nice-to-have” items will yield tangible business benefits, the budget won’t increase. And without an increased budget, you’ll need to let go of those non-essentials.

Method 2: Net Present Value (NPV) Analysis

I once worked with a major pharmaceutical company on a new prescription drug launch. Educating the sales team and the medical community about the appropriate use of this drug was vital.

Management expected a 15% ROI from this product and 15 years of revenue growth. Most of the internal costs – including training – were expected to occur during the first 3 years. The remaining costs were expected to level-off over the product’s lifecycle.

These inputs guided our learning investment decisions. Leaders call this “capital budgeting.” It’s based on a classic ROI concept called Net Present Value (NPV). NPV analysis considers the value of an activity’s so-called discounted cash flows over its lifespan, based upon an expected rate of return.

The Net Present Value Equation

In other words, NPV is the difference between a project’s present value for every year of cash inflows (typically from revenue or savings), and the present value for every year of cash outflows (usually expenses) that support the project.

When the present value of total cash inflows exceeds the present value of total cash outflows (PV Inflow > PV Outflow), NPV is positive. In this case, the investment should be approved.

In contrast, when the present value of total cash inflows is less than the present value of total cash outflows (PV Inflow < PV Outflow), NPV is negative. In this case, the investment should be rejected.

Should You Purchase This LMS?

For example, imagine you’re considering the purchase of an enterprise LMS to support employee skills development. This new LMS costs $80,000. Maintenance costs $5000 per year and the LMS will last 8 years.

The investment is expected to improve employee productivity in ways that increase cash inflow by $25,000 per year.

Your leaders expect a 15% ROI. But to inform their decision about this capital investment, they apply NPV analysis.

The immediate cash outflow for this LMS purchase is $80,000. And every year over an 8-year timeframe, improved employee productivity is expected to increase cash inflows by $25,000. During the same period, LMS maintenance will cost $5,000 per year.

This means that net annual cash inflow = $20,000 ($25,000 – $5000).

However, because this $20,000-per-year net cash inflow occurs over multiple years, the present value is actually different each year. (In other words, the $20,000 you’ll gain in Year 1 is worth more today than the $20,000 you’ll gain 8 years from now).

To determine each year’s current net cash inflow value, leaders apply an annual ROI “discounting” rate. In this example, it is 15% each year. This equalizes the yearly amounts.

In this example, NPV equals about $9,750. Because this result is a positive number, you should approve the LMS purchase.

What About The Drug Launch?

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Let’s return to the pharmaceutical example. Leaders weren’t achieving the expected level of profitability over the product’s 15-year life.

Revenue forecasts were conservative, so increasing sales to reach the profit target wasn’t a realistic option. The only choice was to re-evaluate and reduce internal costs.

Leaders recognized the importance of training in supporting compliance and legal requirements. They asked the training team to identify ways to reduce costs and/or reallocate opportunities without degrading the impact of learning activities.

As a result, we reduced overall training costs by 10%. And along with cost reductions from other internal activities, the company exceeded profitability expectations.

Speaking the Language of Business Leaders

Ultimately, you’re not responsible for determining LMS ROI. The decision rests with your organization’s leaders and finance department. But here’s how you can inform those decisions.

For any major learning technology investment, be prepared to answer these questions:

What is the initial cost?

How long will this training asset last or be used?

What are the expected operational costs?

What savings or positive financial results will this technology contribute during its life?

You’ll also want to plan training programs with measurement in mind, right from the start. For more guidance about how to do that, I invite you to check out a LinkedIn Learning course I offer: Measuring Training Effectiveness.

Final Thoughts

This brief overview of cost-benefit and NPV analysis is intended only as an introduction to what’s involved in capital investment decisions.

It’s not necessary for learning practitioners to become experts at ROI evaluation. However, awareness of the process can improve your ability to secure funding and will give you a leg-up in consulting with decision-makers.

So, in the future, whenever you need to develop a proposal to win funding for significant learning technology resources, I encourage you to work with your finance team to build a robust business case. Even if you don’t receive purchase approval, your proposals will be better aligned with business objectives and your financial acumen will definitely impress your organization’s leaders.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This post has been adapted, with permission, from posts published at eLearning Industry.

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Podcast 31: Inside Open Source Learning Systems – With eThink CEO Brian Carlson

WELCOME TO EPISODE 31 OF THE TALENTED LEARNING SHOW

To find out more about this podcast series or to see the full collection of episodes visit The Talented Learning Show main page.

EPISODE 31 – TOPIC SUMMARY AND GUEST:

The learning technology world moves so fast, it can be hard for practitioners to stay ahead of the curve. That’s why I invite innovation leaders to share updates in these 30-minute audio sprints.

For example, today we welcome a leader in the open source learning community, Brian Carlson, Co-Founder and CEO of eThink Education.

Join us as we discuss the latest developments in open source learning systems. You’ll also hear why these advances are important – especially for extended enterprise education.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

Open source learning platforms like Moodle have driven closed source LMS vendors to reduce their price points dramatically over the years.

Open source learning systems are widely used. In fact, with a whopping 176 million users, Moodle is the world’s most popular learning platform – not just among educational institutions, but associations and corporations, as well.

Professional services are a key differentiator for open source learning solution providers, particularly compared to proprietary LMS vendors.

Q&A HIGHLIGHTS:

Let’s start with a quick look at your background as a learning systems innovator…

I began my career as a teacher for two years on a small island just off the coast of Australia. It was a sustainable development position with an organization similar to the Peace Corps, and I loved it.

Then, after I returned to the States, I worked as a technical consultant for six years at a company which, through multiple acquisitions, became part of Ellucian, the largest student information system company in the world.

What prompted you to start eThink?

I’ve always been entrepreneurial in nature. And while I was at Ellucian, working with different colleges and universities, I saw open source as an interesting opportunity.

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Moodle was just emerging as an open-source learning platform, and my business partner Cheryl Patsavos and I realized we could do very well by capitalizing on that. So about 12 years ago we founded eThink as a Moodle services provider.

So you started with LMS services for the education market?

Originally, Moodle focused on higher education and K-12 markets, so we began by supporting those clients. But because Moodle is based on open source, it quickly evolved to support nonprofit, government and corporate needs – including extended enterprise applications.

So we continued to expand our services to support a business-oriented derivative of Moodle called Totara. And our Totara services have been a tremendous success.

How do you describe eThink’s mission?

Ultimately, we empower organizations to maximize their learning initiatives through fully managed solutions.

In other words, whatever an organization wants to achieve – whether the use case is internal or external, and whatever the industry may be – we configure a solution that best meets the client’s objectives. This may come from any combination of products we offer, as well as partner solutions that work with ours.

So you’re kind of like a software company, but much more, because you’re software agnostic, right? Plus you provide all the support clients need?

Yes. That’s what makes us different. We’re not the only vendor that provides open source learning solutions. But we are 100% focused on services that meet our client needs. We have to be.

That’s how we keep our client base. It’s important to be pretty unique on the services side and deliver a lot of value.

Maybe we should take a quick step back. People may know of Moodle, but they may not understand open source, in general. Could you briefly explain the concept and what it means for learning systems?

Sure, John. On a day-to-day basis, we talk to many people who are confused by this because they aren’t immersed in technology.

Open source just means that the code base is freely available on the internet, and everyone can look at it line-by-line. Also, anyone can add to the code. This community involvement is how open source software improves over time.

Got it…

Open source software is actually surprisingly common. Think of the smartphones we use. iPhones are based on Apple’s closed source mobile operating system, but Android-based phones are open source products.

Interestingly, when Apple launched the iPhone, it dominated the smartphone industry. But now only 10% of us are iPhone users, while 85% of us use Android phones. That illustrates how open source can shape a market.

Wow…

Another great example of an open platform is WordPress. Almost everyone I know runs a website on WordPress. There are closed source blogging options, but they’re not nearly as popular.

We’re one of those WordPress users at Talented Learning, but I’ve never thought much about the open source angle. So for these open source initiatives, who creates the core code?

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You know, there are books written on each open source movement. But with Moodle specifically, it started in Australia when Martin Dougiamas was working on his graduate thesis project in late 2001.

His university relied on Blackboard LMS, which was the predominant academic learning management system at the time. They had nearly 100% market share. It was absurd. Since Blackboard was the only game in town, the price points were very high.

Ouch.

So Martin decided to publish a free code base on the internet, similar to open source projects in other industries. This way, universities everywhere could apply their deep academic and technical talent to contribute various code elements.

With this public, community-driven approach, any educational institution can run a less expensive alternative to Blackboard LMS.

Sure…

Actually, Blackboard prices have come down considerably over the years because of new competition from alternatives like Moodle.

And almost every open source story I’ve seen starts with this kind of question:

“What would it look like if we had more eyeballs and more community involved in product development and made it a free project?”

Excellent.

Then for every open source effort, there are logical next-step challenges like how to maintain the core code, and how to fund staff who can make sure that the best ideas are added and there’s some quality control.

Different business models have emerged to address these administrative issues. Yet they all start in a similar way.

But Moodle’s growth, in particular, has been fascinating. It quickly became the most widely used learning management system in the world – both in academia and in the corporate space. And it’s still the leading platform.

Wow.

Most people don’t realize how popular Moodle is. But worldwide, no one else is even close. In global market share, it beats every other product by a mile – especially in certain categories.

Moodle adoption is so massive because people can easily download it for free and configure their own implementation. Or, if they need assistance, they can rely on services like ours.

On the corporate side, there’s a perception that Moodle isn’t really designed for the business market. Do you agree?

Definitely not. It’s true that Moodle was originally built for academia. And when Martin first started, he gained a lot of traction in colleges and universities. That’s where this perception comes from.

But today, if I look at our Moodle-related sales over the last two years, probably 75% of net new logos are from outside of academia. Many people find our business emphasis very surprising.

So, with such deep global market penetration, is there any direct open source competition?

Others have tried. You need to scale and you need enough contributing members for an open source effort to find its legs.

Moodle has been up and running for about 18 years, so it certainly reached the critical mass needed for success.

Makes sense.

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Over the years, a few other organizations have come and gone because they never received the amount of traction needed for a successful open source project.

They may have looked at the core Moodle code and decided to add some elements to create what’s called a fork of that code. That’s what Totara did. And no one else has done it as effectively.

Totara approached this with an eye toward extended enterprise professional development. And Totara has definitely found success.

Right.

Totara’s channel model is similar to Moodle’s. And in some cases, Totara’s offering competes with Moodle, which has led to improvement of both products. When one takes a step forward, the other tries to match or beat it, which is great for customers.

Isn’t Moodle creating its own corporate version?

You’re right. In response to Totara’s success, Moodle is creating its own corporate-focused version called Moodle Workplace.

We’ve been a big contributor to that for the last two years, while it was mostly in stealth mode. But recently, they made it public. And honestly, they’ve got some great new functionality – great UI and UX changes.

This move is important, because Moodle is already used by corporate, nonprofit and government entities for professional education. But they needed to address this more strategically by wrapping their story around it and including specific functionality to back it up.

Interesting…

Frankly, I think they’ve done a nice job. We can already see that Moodle Workplace is very competitive.

We have clients that look at all three options – Moodle, Moodle Workplace and Totara. Some say Totara is a better fit for their specific needs. Some choose Moodle and others go with Moodle Workplace.

We stay agnostic. We put the solutions in front of our clients, but we let them choose. We listen to their need set and mock-up what the functionality would look like in those scenarios. But Moodle Workplace is making things more interesting.

Today, nearly 1000 different learning systems are available. 99% of them are commercial off-the-shelf, SaaS or cloud-based systems. Why would I choose an open source LMS over those?

There are so many reasons why it makes sense to at least consider an open source solution as a finalist when selecting an LMS.

First, the business model is flipped on its head, compared to closed source solutions. We don’t own the product – the community does. In other words, a license doesn’t lock you into a specific vendor for software or service. This gives you much more control.

Great point.

Another consideration is our flexibility in manipulating code and configuring it to meet specific needs. This flexibility really shines through with integrations.

These days, most organizations need to integrate all sorts of different things with their LMS. Upfront, you may not be aware of everything you’ll need. Instead, items surface down the road. And when they do, we’re here to help you adapt.

That certainly makes sense for extended enterprise scenarios, where integrations are especially important.

Right.

So let’s talk more about cost. Open source code is free, but once you add-in professional services, does the cost advantage hold up?

Core Moodle is a free solution. But we joke that it’s more like free like a puppy than a free beer.

Obviously, if you run this “free” solution on your own servers with your own people, there’s a cost. But if we do it for you, we believe we can do it at a lower price point.

Okay…

But from a broader perspective, data from the last couple of decades shows that open source solutions like Moodle and Totara have actually forced LMS price points down as much as 90%.

It’s certainly in that ballpark for per-user-costs, compared to the early 2000s.

Impressive.

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This has forced commoditization of closed source LMS solutions. But I tend not to lead on cost alone. That’s because proprietary LMS vendors aren’t our only competitors.

We compete with other open source solution providers, as well. And that competition incentivizes us to be incredibly proactive when it comes to service.

We’re highly consultative with our clients. And our responsiveness borders on obsession.

For instance, we respond to service tickets in less than an hour. Compare that with the average response time from other vendors, which can be closer to several days. That’s significant.

Although (like most vendors) you don’t want to lead with cost, I bet it makes a big difference at scale.

Yes, a massive difference.

Sure. Because it’s not uncommon for a small company to have a lot of customers.

Yep. Some of our client sites serve over 100,000 users. Several are approaching a million users. For them, it becomes extraordinarily inexpensive. But closed source learning platforms don’t seem to scale nearly as well when it comes to price.

So, what should associations or businesses know about customization? If they modify open source code, won’t that lead to complications in the future?

That’s precisely the basis for our business model, John. I can’t tell you how often prospects say, “We want to choose you because we can customize everything.” And we say, “Nope, you don’t want to customize.”

And then you show them a better way…

Yep. Nearly 100% of our solutions do not involve customization. Instead, we focus on configuration. Because when you customize core code, you’re adding a need to re-customize after future releases. That potentially adds costs and even some management risk. We don’t do that.

Good to know.

Moodle has over 1300 free modules available. So most of the time when someone says, “Can you do this?” it’s already been done. We can find it on the open source community. Or if it isn’t available, but the value is justified, we can develop a module.

For example, we just developed a Cvent plug-in in conjunction with our client, The Ohio State University. Rather than targeting students or faculty, it’s designed for professional certification training partnerships in the nonprofit sector.

This is a great example of a situation where you should create a module rather than owning it yourself. Hundreds of organizations are likely to find it useful. Our client saw the value in developing and sharing this module because they won’t have to maintain it. This approach essentially eliminates future cost-of-ownership for them.

Nice…

That’s the open source model. It’s the power of community. More often than not, we can apply or enhance something that’s already available, rather than trying to develop it from scratch. This avoids future risk or cost.

Excellent. So, let’s say I’m shopping for an extended enterprise LMS. What are the top three reasons why I should consider open source…?

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The Hidden Value of Open Source

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Business and educational benefits of open source

Anatomy of an open source learning solution

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cecillewhite · 6 years ago

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In-House Upskilling: Is Amazon’s Strategy a Smart Move?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Because extended enterprise learning involves multiple disciplines, we sometimes ask other experts to share their insights. Today we feature advice from Daniel Newman, Principal Analyst at Futurum Research and CEO of Broadsuite Media Group. Daniel is an author, speaker, blogger and educator who works with leading technology brands to help businesses around the world embrace the benefits of digital transformation.

Is Corporate Learning Ready to Fill the Skills Gap?

For years, I’ve wondered if digital transformation would make today’s colleges and universities irrelevant. That day may be coming sooner than any of us think.

Case in point: Recently, Amazon announced that it’s investing $700 million to upskill 100,000 of its employees, so they can work more successfully in today’s fluid digital business environment. These upskilling efforts are expected to involve employees in all functional areas of the company and at all experience levels.

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This kind of commitment is bold. But here’s what’s even more impressive. Amazon isn’t sending these employees to graduate school or other external institutions.

Instead, participants will develop new knowledge and skills at the company’s own Amazon Technical Academy and Machine Learning University.

What Can Amazon’s Upskilling Plan Teach Us?

The concept seems straightforward enough. Amazon aims to make technical education more accessible by letting employees participate in relevant classes, pursue job-related apprenticeships and earn certificates that qualify them for new positions elsewhere in the company or beyond.

The scope of this initiative is huge. One in three Amazon employees will engage in upskilling to become more technically proficient in their current position – whether they’re a marketing professional, business analyst, warehouse supervisor or coding specialist.

Why is one of the world’s best-known employers making such a massive upskilling commitment? Amazon’s leaders realize that every job is essentially a technical job in today’s marketplace. The company’s future depends on the competency of its employees, and Amazon can no longer rely on other sources to train its workers effectively.

Breaking Down the Amazon Upskilling Investment

What does this new corporate learning strategy suggest about the future of work? And how is it likely to impact the rest of us?

First, let’s break it down. The $700 million Amazon upskilling investment is tied to a broader workforce initiative that includes employee benefits like a higher minimum wage ($15 per hour), 401K and parental leave. Even if the entire budget were applied to training alone, the investment would equal about $7,000 per employee – not that much, by corporate training standards.

This makes me wonder if the initiative is really as ambitious as it sounds. Or perhaps digital transformation will help individuals realize that they’re overpaying academic institutions for education that employers don’t need.

Either way, with such a low initial per-employee investment, Amazon will likely need to continue upskilling employees on a regular basis.

Will Non-Technical Workers Still Fit-In?

Amazon has made it clear that both technical and nontechnical employees will participate in training – but every job is becoming more technical. That means there will be a need to develop non-technical business competencies such as critical thinking, leadership, public speaking and other soft skills.

However, as Amazon sees it, people with soft skills will also need at least some technical acumen if they want to play a valuable role in advancing the company’s agenda.

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Of course, this is true for all of us outside of Amazon, as well. Data fluency and technical competency are essential for any organization that wants to embrace digital transformation. So employees who want to help their company leverage new technologies will need to develop technical acumen, regardless of their professional focus.

For example, consider human resources specialists. To be more effective, they should learn how to leverage automated tools and AI technology to recruit and retain employees.

Mastery of coding, itself, isn’t required. However, a new level of technical understanding is important for HR professionals who want to achieve better results.

This kind of technical comfort and capability is vital for anyone working in 2019 or beyond.

How Can Smaller Businesses Compete?

Clearly, not every company is Amazon. Many don’t have the resources to build their own on-campus technical university. But what happens when an employer can’t afford to offer this kind of upskilling benefit? And what if effective training programs aren’t available in the local community?

Let me frame those questions another way. Which employer would you choose?

A larger company where free upskilling is always available, so you can sharpen relevant skills on an ongoing basis, or

A smaller company that asks you to find your own skill development outside of the organization and pay for it yourself.

Truth be told, as digital transformation unfolds, the “haves” are separating themselves from the “have-nots.” It’s not just about having sufficient money to fund transformative efforts, but also about having the right people with the right skills.

And this need for technical acumen extends to the broader workforce at-large. For instance, demand is stronger for writers who know how to improve their content quality with apps like Grammarly, or how to increase their output with AI-powered productivity tools. Those who don’t master advanced technologies will ultimately accomplish less – and earn less – than technically savvy writers.

The same equation works for other functions. Jobs are becoming a challenge for anyone who hasn’t yet jumped on board the digital transformation skills train. That’s why employers are seeking creative solutions to close the gap.

Is In-House Upskilling Really The Answer?

Some believe Amazon’s upskilling initiative is just a bunch of hype. Cynics think it’s a PR stunt designed to get attention – which has happened. But as I said, $7,000 per employee isn’t a steep investment.

The result could be nothing more than a lot of static PowerPoint slide decks describing technical terms. On the other hand, it could lead to powerful learning experiences that revolutionize Amazon’s talent pool. Time will tell.

Meanwhile, here’s what we know: Work is changing rapidly. Future-minded employers can’t afford to sit back and expect employees to prepare themselves for the coming skills mismatch.

Universities aren’t adapting swiftly enough. And Amazon is no longer willing to wait. So in a preemptive strike, the company has committed to bridging the skills gap on its own. This may not be easy for Amazon to accomplish. But acting now to develop a future-ready workforce could be a very smart business move, indeed.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This post has been adapted, with permission, from a post published on the Futurum blog.

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Podcast 30: Learning From Customer Conferences – With Tristan Jordan and Tara Pawlak of Community Brands

WELCOME TO EPISODE 30 OF THE TALENTED LEARNING SHOW

To learn more about this podcast series or to see the full collection of episodes visit The Talented Learning Show main page.

EPISODE 30 – TOPIC SUMMARY AND GUESTS:

Today I’m thrilled to welcome two executives from Community Brands – EVP and General Manager, Tristan Jordan, and Director of Marketing, Tara Pawlak.

Tara and Tristan are joining us fresh on the heels of their annual customer conference, Xperience. With more than 1800 attendees, this is the largest forum of its kind in the association and non-profit world.

What exactly makes this conference so successful? Why does learning play such a critical role? What insights emerged from this event? And what’s ahead for association technology? We cover it all…

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

For rapidly growing companies, strong customer communication is vital – not just to help users gain value from your products, but also to keep them onboard with your evolving roadmap.

Community conferences are a powerful way to build a brand – strengthening relationships while you celebrate customer successes and explore common challenges.

This year’s Xperience conference revealed that associations have reached a pivotal point in their commitment to innovation. They realize that member interests have changed and they’re ready to transform continuing education programs, accordingly.

Q&A HIGHLIGHTS:

JOHN: First, maybe we should introduce Community Brands. With mergers and acquisitions over the last few years, a lot of people may know you by other names…

TRISTAN: Sure. Community Brands is an umbrella organization with different complementary technology products that serve common audiences – associations, nonprofits, schools and faith-based organizations. Our portfolio currently includes 59 companies.

JOHN: Impressive. I had no idea your portfolio spans 59 brands!

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TRISTAN: Yeah. It’s a broad scope – more than we expect any individual customer to digest.

However, many associations and non-profits are served by lots of disparate technology vendors. Those vendors are often under-funded and under-resourced. And historically, their products don’t integrate well.

As a result, many customers spend a tremendous amount of time, money and other resources trying to build custom implementations between disparate solutions.

That’s a headache. Plus, it doesn’t capitalize on the promise of unified data, unified reporting and a seamless customer experience when moving between systems like an AMS and an LMS.

JOHN: True…

TRISTAN: Customers deserve better. So with all these different complementary technology products, we try to bring the best in each niche under our umbrella. The goal is to offer an ecosystem of products that work seamlessly together.

And because we make these products available in a way that’s smarter, more automated and more frictionless for end-users, it’s easier for customers to expand the services we provide to them, overall.

JOHN: Makes sense.

TRISTAN: So that’s why our annual customer event is so large. It brings together a great collection of minds from across that broad, diverse ecosystem.

JOHN: No wonder your conference is so popular. So after this week’s event, are you feeling exhilarated? Exhausted? Or both?

TARA: Coming off this big event, we’re energized by everything we learned from our customers and what they learned from each other. It’s especially valuable when people make connections and share their stories and ideas in the same forum.

JOHN: No doubt…

TARA: This year, we moved the event to November, so we’ve been anxious to see how that would play-out. But it’s actually great timing, because everyone’s getting ready for next year. Planning and budgeting are in full swing and January 1st will be here before we know it.

JOHN: Yep. And the cycle begins again…

TRISTAN: I have to say that the conference preparation process is really anxiety-ridden. But watching our colleagues talk about advances we’ve all been working on for months is energizing. And seeing customers talk about how their vision is coming together is hugely rewarding.

JOHN: I bet!

TRISTAN: You know, among technology vendors, there’s a cliche about serving customers as a true partner. I think every vendor aspires to that.

But having the opportunity to see long-standing customers talk about shared goals and progress we’ve made together through the years is really amazing. Especially in today’s digital world, when we communicate online with customers all the time, being able to sit side-by-side with them builds a whole different kind of chemistry.

JOHN: Yep. There’s nothing like good old face-to-face communication. What other benefits does the conference bring to you, your customers and the association community at-large?

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TARA: Because the conference spans all of our various brands, it brings together industry executives, IT professionals, marketing specialists, membership professionals, fundraisers and event planners.

This diverse mix of interests gives attendees exposure to a rich learning and networking opportunity they can’t find elsewhere. People from very different environments can talk through similar challenges and learn from one another.

Plus, by connecting directly with our team, they can be at the forefront of product innovation.

JOHN: That networking aspect is really important. Do you just let it happen naturally? What’s your strategy?

TARA: We really want to let people network in their own style. Some people prefer a happy-hour event. Others just prefer to have one-on-one interactions in a session breakout, or through natural conversations in the hallway.

JOHN: Do you use your products to facilitate social learning?

TARA: Absolutely, we leverage our technology to encourage interaction. One popular example is a kind of badge flair concept. A lot of attendees love to check-in online and identify the various products they use. This makes it easy to find others with similar interests, and it helps them strike-up organic conversations.

JOHN: Good idea…

TRISTAN: We also have an event app called TripBuilder that we use pretty extensively. It includes a social feed for event-specific content. People can search profiles, connect with other attendees and add them to their LinkedIn network. Or they invite others to meet-up at conference activities.

But just bringing like-minded people together in one room to discuss thought-provoking, relevant topics is very effective. We strive to make sessions interactive, not just lecture format.

Also, we make sure there’s ample break time between sessions, so the conversation can continue around the water cooler or coffee stop. That’s where I see some of the best networking. It’s a kind of “conversation after the conversation,” where people actually shake hands, trade business cards and things like that…

JOHN: Sure. And do attendees with common interests tend to share best practices about how they do X, Y, or Z in an application? Does that happen?

TRISTAN: Yeah, tons of that. The nonprofit/association space is full of people who are trying to do good or support a cause or further an industry. By definition, associations are niche. They rarely compete head-to-head for the same members. So our customers are super keen to share best practices.

They actually find a lot of value and comfort in talking with peers who are facing similar challenges – whether it’s about how to make the most of a particular product, or just the pressures they face from competing with other sources of information, like social networks.

JOHN: Cool…

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TRISTAN: Actually, one association’s issues are usually the same for others. As people talk about challenges and solutions, the dialogue takes on a life of its own.

When someone has a great idea, we see lots of people taking notes as we talk through it. That’s because so many of these topics are relevant to all.

JOHN: What are the most important insights you’re taking away from this year’s conference? Anything surprising or new?

TARA: This week, we released a new study focused on member engagement and loyalty. A key finding is that 93% of association members want personalized content.

In fact, members ranked personalized continuing education course recommendations as their number one need across all career stages – early, middle and late. Yet only 13% of associations are actually delivering it.

JOHN: Wow. Big gap there…

Our technology teams have been working hard to support personalized content, so this is a good opportunity for our customers to deliver what members want. And conference attendees told us that they’re actually ready to embrace new technology so they can meet members’ expectations.

So there’s no more resistance to change. In fact, associations are really eager to bring this to life for their members. This means that personalization and the idea of a “customer of one” are here to stay.

JOHN: Seems like it took a long time for this to happen. Why do you think associations are finally embracing personalization?

TARA: I think it’s a couple of things. Definitely competing forces are coming into play. Technology advances have created other places for members to go, like LinkedIn and Lynda. Also, associations are taking a closer look at their value, and they understand that it comes from knowing their members and offering what they want.

JOHN: Great news!

Another insight from the study focuses on why members join associations. In the past we found that many people joined out of obligation. They felt it was necessary to be part of an association in their industry.

But this year, we saw a shift toward the desire for networking and continuing education. A lot of associations are starting to recognize this shift, and they’re trying to pivot their value propositions based on things that interest and engage members now.

JOHN: Any additional insights about continuing education? How about content strategies like video or microlearning or gamification?

TRISTAN: Yes. During the conference, we hosted a client council meeting, where we discussed learning products. In one exercise we asked, “What’s your big bet? What do you believe will drive the biggest impact on your learning program in the next year?”

This prompted four important takeaways:

1) Many associations are becoming more comfortable with moving traditional classroom programs online. It sounds like an obvious move, but for some associations, these classroom-based learning programs are their biggest revenue drivers. And some have been around for decades. So change does not come naturally there.

2) Programs with a clear learning path are gaining traction. Associations like using technology to assess individual knowledge, sync it with information from other learners, assign a clear path forward and prompt learners throughout their journey.

In other words, let’s say the goal is to pass a high-stakes exam where failure could mean that members can’t practice their profession. Healthcare certifications are one example.

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It’s helpful to send learners periodic messages about their progress. Those little nudges seem to be a productive way to keep people engaged with their course of study.

3) Personalized exam prep is important, particularly for high-stakes exams. Time is precious for medical practitioners and other professionals. So study guides are moving from one-size-fits-all books to more personalized education programs with prescriptive learning based on an individual’s strengths and weaknesses.

With digital technology, study guides can focus effort where a learner’s competency is lacking, so exam prep becomes much more efficient. Busy professionals like surgeons will pay a premium for this. So it represents a big revenue opportunity.

4) Just-in-time learning. This shouldn’t be a surprise, but it really jumped off the page for us. The focus isn’t on just-in-time learning to earn a credential. Rather, it’s about driving competence.

Associations want to provide a searchable library of digital knowledge assets with really low access barriers. That’s because members want to be more competent, but they don’t want to dig through hour-long courses to find 10-minutes-worth of information that helps them solve an immediate problem.

JOHN: Exciting feedback! So how do you document all of the input you receive during two fast, furious days? Is it formal or informal?

TRISTAN: Great question. It’s both formal and informal. Of course, we rely on formal surveys tied to the sessions. But this year, we also used some super cool new technologies.

For example, our employees all use our Expo Logic product. This includes a little scanner on their mobile phone, so they can point it at someone’s badge and take notes about conversations with that person. It’s a great way to capture input and ideas that happen informally over lunch or whatever.

JOHN: Nice…

TRISTAN: We also use another innovative product called PropFuel. It’s a cool “voice of the member” platform that basically lets attendees participate in micro surveys. So rather than sending out a traditional 20-question survey that people might ignore, we’ll send just one question prior to the event.

We’ll ask something like, “What’s your primary reason for attending?” They can answer in a free-form narrative. Then we use technology to analyze responses, so we can see the most common reasons, overall.

With a traditional pre-event survey, you’d never get a high response. But with this micro survey – the response rate was 51%.

JOHN: Excellent!

This kind of tool is helpful after the conference, too. For example, in the next few days, attendees will receive a follow-up question from us. Something like, “Would you recommend Xperience to a peer?” They can answer yes or no, and explain why if they wish.

So this micro survey concept of questions and answers is a great way to capture feedback over time in a frictionless, conversational way. Next month, we’ll ask, “Have you put into practice anything you learned at Xperience?” It’s an easy way to keep in touch, while gathering intelligence along the way.

JOHN: Anything else you would add, Tara?

TARA: As Tristan said, we “eat our own dog food” in that we use our technology to scan and capture information before, during and after the conference. And we consolidate that data in segments, so we can analyze it and share it effectively with everyone on our teams.

This is really important because each of us has only a limited impression of what happened at the conference. We’re all in different sessions throughout the event. So it’s super important to consolidate, interpret and share this information from a bigger-picture view.

JOHN: Fantastic. It’s one thing to host a massive forum where many different attendees can learn collaboratively. But the fact that you gather intelligence, analyze it and learn from everything that happens really takes it to a different level.

TARA: Thanks, John!

JOHN: So, imagine you’re talking with someone who wants to plan a similar conference, but they’re just starting out. What advice would you share…?

…FOR COMPLETE ANSWERS TO THIS QUESTION AND MORE, LISTEN TO THE FULL 30-MINUTE PODCAST!

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Inside the Customer Learning Lifecycle

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With countless ways to promote and package instructional content, what’s the best investment of your time and budget?

Join our Lead Analyst John Leh and Tiffany Mack, Senior Marketing Manager of Careers & Education at Community Brands, as they explore solutions. You’ll find practical ideas and real-world examples, including:

Must-have elements of a marketing-led learning strategy

Motivational techniques to engage new and existing participants

Methods for improving content quality and relevance

Tools to scale your audience reach and involvement

How to measure marketing’s impact on program performance

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Looking for a learning platform that truly fits your organization’s needs? We’re here to help! Submit the form below to schedule a free preliminary consultation at your convenience.

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cecillewhite · 6 years ago

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Content Marketing: What Every Learning Practitioner Needs to Know

Where Does Content Marketing End and Instructional Marketing Begin?

On the surface, marketing and learning may seem like separate disciplines. But if you look closer, you’ll see that these worlds are deeply intertwined. And the overlap continues to spread, as digital content channels, strategies and tools weave themselves more deeply into the fabric of modern educational experiences.

Our Lead Analyst, John Leh, says that today’s learning practitioners are more accurately described as “instructional marketers.” I couldn’t agree more. And I would add that, in this brave new world of instructional marketing, the common denominator is content. Here’s why…

For both disciplines, creating high-quality educational content is essential. But content alone is not enough. You also need to draw the right kind of people to this content, encourage them to engage with it and then lead them to a logical next step.

In other words, an instructional marketer’s mission sounds a lot like the definition of content marketing.

What Does Content Marketing Mean To You?

The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) says content marketing is:

“A strategic approach to creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable action.”

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Content marketing is so powerful because it’s about sharing educational experiences with your constituents anytime – even before they’ve established a formal relationship with your organization.

Also, because content marketing emphasizes ongoing interaction, you can strengthen and expand relationships over time.

But why take my word for it, when you can learn from the masters? Below are 16 excellent blog posts about various aspects of content marketing:

Strategies for Success

Managing Content Marketing Programs

Measuring and Improving Results

All are written by industry experts who’ve been leading the pack for years. I hand-picked this collection of posts because I think they’re particularly useful for anyone involved in offering educational content to customers, business partners, suppliers, association members or even employees.

I hope this advice helps you push new marketing boundaries!

Content Marketing Advice That Will Raise Your Instructional Marketing Game

STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESS

The Key to Content Marketing: Be Less Self-Centered By Shane Snow, Co-Founder, Contently (via FastCompany) In this classic thought piece, one of the most brilliant minds in the content world explains why it pays to put customer interests ahead of your own.

17 Essential Content Marketing Templates and Checklists By Michelle Linn, Co-Founder, Mantis Research (via Content Marketing Institute) Want great tools to make your efforts more efficient and effective? Try any of the free, proven resources featured in this collection.

5 Questions to Ask Customers When Creating Word-of-Mouth Strategy By Jay Baer, Founder Convince & Convert Your organization has a story to tell. But how can you make that story truly buzz-worthy? Take your cue from conversations with customers and prospects.

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How to Win at Generation Z Content Marketing By Francisco Serrano, CEO, 121Corp (via MarketingProfs) Just when you thought you had cracked the code for marketing to Millennials, along comes the next generation! Is your content ready for Gen Z primetime?

How to Use Events in Your Content Marketing Strategy By Michael Brenner, CEO Marketing Insider Group Do you think of events as a separate aspect of marketing? Think again. Here’s how you can benefit from a strategy that leverages live and online events of any size.

MANAGING CONTENT MARKETING PROGRAMS

How to Create Personas and Map Content to the Buyer Journey By Giuseppe Caltabiano, Head of Content Strategy, Contently (via NewsCred) A helpful introduction to the fundamentals – audience personas, the buyer’s journey and how they inform content development choices.

Why And How to Map Out Your Customer’s Journey By Marcia Riefer Johnston, Senior Technical Writer, Amazon (via Content Marketing Institute) Precisely what content would be worthwhile for your organization to create and share? This step-by-step guide helps you clarify and prioritize.

5 Keys to Developing a Strong Tone of Voice in Your Content Marketing By Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer MarketingProfs Too often, brands overlook brand “voice” as a differentiator. But one of the world’s best-known content experts explains why a consistent, definitive tone can make all the difference.

7 Triggers That Make People Want to Share Your Content By Jonathan Gorham, Founder, Engine Scout Digital Marketing (via Content Marketing Institute) People may read and enjoy your content. But there’s no guarantee that they’ll share it with others. Here are some smart ways to give them the “nudge” they may need to pass it on.

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How to Create the Right Amount of the Right Kind of Content By Sharon Shapiro, Sr. Content Marketing Manager, BlueCore (via MarketingProfs) How much content is enough? In a world where time and budgets aren’t endless (much less audience attention) this is an important question for every organization to address.

How to Use Supplemental Content to Get More Mileage From Big Content By Miranda Miller, Consultant, Miranda-Miller.com (via Search Engine Journal) Long-form content is gaining traction in marketing circles, for a variety of excellent reasons. But are you fully leveraging these important narratives? Here’s how embedded content and other complementary elements add even more value.

MEASURING AND IMPROVING RESULTS

Content Marketing Measurement: 37 Most (and Least) Useful Metrics By Andy Crestodina, Co-Founder & Chief Marketing Officer Orbit Media Studios What’s the best way to measure the performance of your efforts? This post is packed with ideas you can use (and some you should definitely avoid)!

Why Do Content Marketing Campaigns Fail? By Shelley Walsh, Founder, ShellShock (via SiteVisibility) Your initiatives can miss the mark for multiple reasons. This helpful podcast interview explores six of the most common issues, within the context of SEO practices and today’s rapidly changing marketing environment.

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How to Score Your Content for Long-Term Success By Lindy Roux, VP & Managing Director, Tendo Communications (via Content Marketing Institute) Do you know if your approach is working? How can you combine qualitative and quantitative measures to analyze performance, isolate issues and track overall progress? Try this “scorecard” methodology.

Are Your Personas Outdated? Know When to Revise By Kim Flaherty, User Experience Specialist Nielsen Norman Group Like the people they represent, personas are always evolving. But how often should you review personas? And how can you tell when a refresh is due? Check this guidance from a digital design expert.

The Future of Content Marketing: It’s Not What You Think By Neil Patel, Co-Founder Neil Patel Digital Any digital marketing professional can tell you that change is the only constant. But when an industry authority like Neil Patel talks about what’s ahead, it’s worth taking time to listen. In this post, Neil looks at how to achieve more with every new post you publish.

Closing Notes

Obviously, this list only scratches the surface. There’s a wealth of freely available content marketing advice. Do you have a favorite resource that isn’t included here? Who would you add to this list?

Tell me about marketing advice that has been most helpful for you as a learning professional! I look forward to hearing from you, so I can write a follow-up post focused on lessons you’ve learned and ideas you’d like to share. Thanks!

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With countless ways to promote and package instructional content, what’s the best investment of your time and budget?

Must-have elements of a marketing-led learning strategy

Motivational techniques to engage new and existing participants

Methods for improving content quality and relevance

Tools to scale your audience reach and involvement

How to measure marketing’s impact on program performance

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cecillewhite · 6 years ago

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How Can Associations Improve Member Education? Ask a Learning Tech Analyst

We’ve all heard about today’s rapidly changing workforce dynamics and the critical shortage of qualified labor. Almost daily, new statistics highlight the need for effective skills training and professional development. In this environment, you’d think associations would be bursting at the seams with participants in member education programs.

Not surprisingly, a 2018 survey of more than 1000 association members confirmed that career development is now the primary reason why most people join associations. Yet that same study also revealed several disturbing trends:

82% of respondents had participated in professional development activities during the prior 2 years. However, only 53% relied on their association for those educational experiences.

Even worse, that 53% represents a decline of 7% over the year prior, with employers stepping in to deliver a larger share of professional development. And among younger members, the one-year decline was even steeper – 11%.

So, at a time when member education programs should be thriving, many have been losing ground. How can associations reverse this trend? What will it take to engage more new and existing members in professional development?

Let’s tackle this topic in today’s “Ask Me Anything” column…

“Ask Me Anything” About Creating More Successful Member Education Programs

1) What can associations learn about member education from other sources of professional development?

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Associations may have altruistic motives, but it’s time to embrace a for-profit mentality. Why? Because commercial continuing education providers are already here, and they’re competing to win.

What sets successful providers apart? They’re digging deep with robust CRM data, marketing automation platforms and ecommerce strategies that target profitable learner segments, drive new revenue streams and maximize the lifetime value of every relationship.

2) Is a modern martech stack really necessary?

Commercial players need these tools because associations are a formidable presence in the professional development space. Most associations are naturally positioned to succeed with reinvented member education programs because they’re already widely known and respected in their industry.

With the right kind of packaging and outreach, associations can easily engage more members in educational programs. With smart marketing strategies and tools, attracting non-members is relatively easy, as well. That’s a powerful advantage.

3) What kind of return-on-investment should we expect?

Reinventing member education requires a deep, sustained commitment. But successful organizations will tell you that the payoff is more than worth the effort.

Before developing a plan, explore broader possibilities. Reach out to your members, your staff and your existing partners. Actively solicit their creative ideas. Investigate what is working elsewhere – and why. Talk with consultants who’ve helped other organizations retool their learning programs.

Whatever you do, don’t wait to make a move. The cost of inaction will be high and sales will be low!

4) How should we clarify member education needs?

Developing programs in a vacuum is a sure-fire way to miss the mark. Successful organizations engage members at every stage in the continuing education journey. They seek ongoing feedback to understand what works and what doesn’t. This includes:

Skills that members want to develop

Content they find most useful

Types of support they prefer

Keep in mind that preferences are likely to shift over the span of a member’s career. For example, early-stage professionals often want to develop knowledge and skills through certification programs. But experienced practitioners usually want to refresh or expand their skills.

Also remember that partners have a vested interest in how you shape member education. If your association works with corporations, universities or other allies to extend your program reach, these constituents can offer a unique market perspective. It’s worthwhile to capture ongoing input from them all.

After your initial intake round, prioritize the most promising ideas. Next, develop the most valuable concepts and test them on a limited basis. Then evaluate the outcomes and create a roadmap for incremental expansion.

5) We don’t have education partners yet. Should we consider it?

Partnerships are a smart way to extend your reach and add lasting value. There are many creative ways to partner. I often see associations with complementary programs teaming up to offer a broader selection of content through ecommerce sites.

I also see U.S. associations partnering with smaller, similar associations around the globe. In other words, these networks leverage the primary association’s brand, certifications and content to better serve their local members.

Also, the corporate sector is ripe for partnerships, especially with associations that are willing and able to focus on industry-specific job readiness, reskilling and upskilling.

Having business, content or reseller partners is a great way to expand reach but it does come with some administrative and managerial overhead.

6) Are credentialing programs becoming a viable alternative to higher education? What does this mean for associations?

Absolutely. In many industries, credentialing programs help professionals gain the skills and competencies they need for employment without a formal academic degree.

Employers are increasingly concerned that graduates lack skills that are critical for success in today’s world of work. Associations are equipped to bridge this skills gap, but they’re somewhat late to the game.

Nevertheless, member-based organizations can draw upon several core advantages:

A strong history of continuing education leadership

Subject matter expertise

Deep content reserves

Built-in social networking

Existing marketing engines

Brand recognition

Together, these assets can generate significant traction for a credentialing program.

7) How can our education programs appeal to younger members on a limited budget?

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Young professionals can buy continuing education content from a variety of sources. But associations are uniquely compelling because community-driven social learning is part of the association experience.

Members can interact with like-minded professionals to gain deeper understanding of their industry and career specialty. By offering live and virtual community-driven learning forums, associations can add value in meaningful ways that lower-priced standalone continuing education can’t touch.

In fact, many associations find that this kind of social learning experience is an effective membership gateway when offered to non-members on a standalone basis for free, or for a fee. This outreach strategy is commonly used to expand globally in a cost-effective manner.

8) How else are associations rethinking educational experiences?

I see many creative content strategies. Here are some notable examples:

• LEVERAGE LIVE EVENTS Many associations record speakers and sessions at conferences, chapter meetings and other events. You can upload those recordings on an LMS. Then you can add notes, PowerPoint slides and tests, so members who are unable to attend live events can earn continuing education credits at their convenience. It’s an easy and economical way to repurpose valuable content.

• ADD INTERACTIVE ENHANCEMENTS If you already produce video or podcasts, you can go a step further with integrated pop-up questions or comment tools that encourage ongoing conversations with instructors and participants. You can also include uploading capabilities, so it’s easy to share related documents, images, videos and completed assignments.

• CONVERT CONTENT TO MICROLEARNING Many professionals aren’t willing or able to travel to live conferences or sit through full-blown online courses. However, they can digest learning content in short bursts. Think about sending members a daily question or case brief via email or mobile app. By thoughtfully “chunking” content, you can reach more members on their terms, and engage them on an ongoing basis.

• MAP CONTENT TO COMPETENCY Many associations outline relevant career paths for their domain, including skills required for each step, from entry-level to senior executive. You can use this framework to guide member education and apply gamification techniques to track individual progress. As participants unlock achievements and earn badges, they’re likely to engage more deeply with your organization as well as its instructional programming.

9) Let’s talk about technology. We have a tight tech budget. Will we be able to find a high-quality learning system?

Associations of every size want to make the most of their investment in learning technology. Fortunately, viable learning platforms are available at all price points.

For example, if your organization is just starting to offer member education, you may need to bootstrap your launch and early growth. Some systems offer a licensing structure that lets you start small at a very reasonable cost. Then as you scale the program over time, you can absorb additional costs incrementally, in a sustainable way.

Bottom-line – technology costs are no longer a deal-breaker for low-budget continuing education providers.

10) When researching member education platforms, how should we narrow the field?

The possibilities are mind-boggling. More than 1000 learning platforms are available today. Some are designed exclusively for associations. Others claim that their solution works well for member education, but they haven’t established a track record in the association market.

If you have the time and budget to research all these options, you can study industry publications, read analyst websites, comb through product reviews, watch hours of pre-recorded demos, attend tradeshows and speaking directly with vendors of interest.

But that can be a lengthy and overwhelming process. Vetting every vendor is impractical. So, how can you be sure that your shortlist includes the best candidates?

That’s why we exist. As independent LMS selection consultants, we continuously evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of all vendors in the association market. It’s our business to stay ahead of the curve. So when any organization requests recommendations, we can quickly and confidently suggest the strongest options.

11) How important is finding the right vendor culture “fit”?

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Choosing the right technology solution involves more than picking functionality that works. I agree 100% that culture “fit” is a key factor if you want to forge a long-term relationship. No matter what platform you choose, you’ll need to feel comfortable with the people behind it.

This is especially important for associations because your learning solution partner is really an extension of your mission. If you believe in each other, the relationship is likely to be much more successful in the long haul.

12) What other criteria should we consider in a learning platform?

Beyond a vendor’s culture, it’s vital to evaluate a variety of additional factors, such as:

Experience with associations

Industry domain knowledge

Professional services capabilities

Customer support and

Licensing structure

Also, keep in mind that you want to choose a vendor that understands your level of learning technology expertise and wants to help expand your know-how as your learning programs grow and evolve. This is especially important for organizations with little or no prior LMS experience.

13) What mistakes do associations make when defining learning system requirements?

When selecting an LMS, it’s essential to start by documenting your requirements effectively. I see three common issues:

When organizations don’t have an existing learning platform – or they’re limping along with a substandard system – they lack perspective about what to expect from modern solutions. As a result, they struggle to identify and articulate their needs.

Many organizations are deploying specialized content and certification solutions to help drive new revenue streams. But these systems are usually complex and multi-dimensional. The learning curve is steep – especially when it involves integration with marketing automation platforms, ecommerce tools and other sophisticated applications. Requirements often reveal a lack of familiarity with these solutions.

The association LMS market has evolved into its own thriving segment of the overall learning technology landscape. Many innovative solutions are available, and their feature sets are broader and deeper than many association professionals realize.

14) How can we avoid LMS implementation surprises?

It’s hard to prepare for implementation when you don’t know what you don’t know. But defining requirements thoroughly upfront definitely reduces surprises. On the other hand, if you rush through the selection process, brace yourself for the unexpected during implementation and deployment. For example:

If you’re replacing an LMS, you should specify how to handle historical training completion data, what to do with existing content and other migration details. Otherwise, a lack of documentation opens the door to miscommunication, detours and schedule delays.

Another common point of failure is a lack of integration specifics. It’s critical to define which integrations are included, as well as the functional what, when, how and why for each integration. Otherwise, you’ll be forced to deal with these details in the heat of the implementation process. That’s a sure way to expand your project scope, cost and time to completion.

15) What else should we know about improving member education?

You should know that I want you to succeed. I hope the advice I’ve shared here is helpful. If you want more guidance, I invite you to check-out the Association LMS Buyers Companion post we recently published, because it includes links to all sorts of free resources.

And if you have additional questions, I’m always happy to schedule a preliminary phone discussion. Let’s talk.

Thanks for reading!

WHAT WOULD YOU ASK? Got more questions you want John to answer in an “Ask Me Anything” column? Submit your question here. You might be featured in a future post!

EDITOR’S NOTE: Portions of this post were inspired by interviews with The Association Learning Blog and The Membership Management Report. We appreciate their interest in our independent perspectives.

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LMS Selection Step-by-Step

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With hundreds of learning systems available today, finding the right LMS for your unique extended enterprise needs can be tricky. But with so much at stake for, it’s worth the extra effort.

How can you choose the best solution? Walk step-by-step through a real-world example with John Leh, CEO and Lead Analyst at Talented Learning. You’ll learn:

How to develop a relevant business case and success metrics

Methods for researching and defining use cases and requirements

When to issue an RFP (or not)

Tips for creating a viable LMS shortlist

How to make the most of vendor demos and proof-of-concept projects

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