Released on: June 5, 2008, 4:15 am

Press Release Author: Mohana Radhakrishnan

Industry: Human Resources

Press Release Summary: When sweeping budget cuts weave their way through the
organization, training is one of the first to feel the heat. But that doesn't have
to be the case. Training organizations must have the ability to eliminate waste and
embrace operational efficiency

Press Release Body: When sweeping budget cuts weave their way through the
organization, training is one of the first to feel the heat. But that doesn't have
to be the case. Training organizations must have the ability to eliminate waste and
embrace operational efficiency.

Almost every training professional is painfully aware of the ongoing struggle to
justify the value of the training organization to senior management. Training
professionals are seeking ideas and real solutions on how to take the non value-
added cost out of the business and repurpose those investments into initiatives that
create more value. This ongoing battle and debate is nothing new, but in the face of
recessionary economic pressures, the pain is more pronounced. Over the last few
months, Expertus, a global leader in fueling business growth through maximizing
training investment, has delved deeply into the subject of costs in training
organizations. Here are the nine ways to trim Learning & Training operational
expenses.

Consolidate and Centralize Learning Technologies
Invest in delivery platform management technology, authoring systems technologies,
Learning Management System (LMS) Optimize, customize or consolidate learning
technologies, every organization want to optimize, customize or consolidate learning
technologies. By reducing the number of systems and simplifying infrastructure,
there will be fewer system support requirements, less maintenance, fewer patches,
fixes and upgrades, and fewer resource requirements. In addition to fewer people and
skill sets, this all helps reduce costs. The result should be improved data success
and easier reporting.

Convert ILT to Blended or e-Learning
One of the key strategies organizations are considering is converting instructor led
training to blended or e-learning. The obvious gains here are reductions in travel,
facility, equipment, and trainer costs. However, organizations shouldn't just look
to cut costs by reproducing and converting content from ILT to e-learning. They
should also work to leverage the big benefits that e-learning provides-such as
availability, reusability and effectiveness. E-learning can be available 24/7, but
organizations don't have to deliver all of their content as classic e-learning
modules. Designed properly and broken into small, usable pieces, e-learning can be
used for time-of-need training or performance support. Organizations should consider
looking at small learning modules, even if it means just converting some of the
content to reference materials, lists, diagrams, stories, or lessons learned.
There's a great deal of value in having certain information available quickly, and
in an easily digestible form.

Optimize Learning Technology Support and Administration
This refers to the human activity surrounding a learning system namely, the
administrative work going on within the training group. Software as a service plays
an integral role here. Organizations today don't have to buy, implement and manage
learning technology, now that a growing number of LMS providers offer their software
as a hosted service. Security is not the issue today that it used to be. Because of
this, an organization's learning can be made secure as well. In addition,
organizations can consider third-party companies that host and help manage learning
systems. Today, there are organizations with teams of people dedicated to and
focused solely on LMS support. These companies are training and managing their
people to support various LMS systems. As such, they have experience with learning
domains, best practices, proven processes and IT bandwidth-experience that often is
lacking in many organizations.

Centralize Services, Not Processes
Learning systems in organization is distributed and totally inefficient. That's
because there are multiple people in multiple groups completing the same tasks or
transactions, but doing it in multiple ways. Various groups within an organization
have differences in their processes and procedures, such as registration
requirements or course description details. But often these process differences are
driven more by structures or challenges within their skill set or lack of bandwidth.
The resulting issues can be very costly, both in the short and long term.

Improve Vendor Management
Benefits are obvious if some type of vendor management program is implemented. Most
of them are accomplished by simply reducing the number of vendors that organizations
works with, but one of the key takeaways that we discovered was that a vendor
management tool was necessary in order to improve how learning professionals
interact and work with their vendors.

Optimize Learning Operations
The real keys to improving business processes are audits and documentation. A
process audit helps determine exactly how a process is being done, and how
differently each person is doing it. Once the audit is complete, it's important to
document the internal process, which makes it easier to communicate the proper steps
of each process to all necessary groups and individuals.

Reporting-Produce Less Data and More
Intelligence In terms of reporting, cost and activity measurement is valid in some
regards. But many learning leaders struggle in this area, feeling they're bringing
to the executive table data that has limited strategic value. This includes such
statistics as number of hours trained, number of people trained, and the number of
training classes held.

In most cases, the challenge that these organizations are facing is in their LMS
reporting as it is limited to just LMS data, and the various pieces of data that
they need in order to produce more valuable reports or more business intelligence
are hidden in the disconnected data sources. One strategy is to work with the
various business groups within the organization, because most of them can provide
some valuable data on their group's performance. The challenge is dealing with the
disbursement of this data within disconnected systems. There are three main options:
(1) Migrate data into a single system. (2) Build integrations to your various
systems. However, organizations often have their assessment data within some type of
assessment tool database (LMS, HRMS, etc.), and various groups might also have
performance or evaluation-type systems. The challenge is how to gather all that data
and build all those integrations. (3) Build data marts or something similar. This
means putting all data into a single database, enabling you to build reports from
there instead of tapping into various systems. Again, the key driver here is trying
to build more business intelligence and more actionable information or data beyond
just simple activity reports. This will make a world of difference when justifying a
learning program to executives.

Optimize Training Resource Utilization
This is all about optimizing the utilization of classrooms, instructors, course
materials and equipment. Based on our research and polling, it seems that a majority
of training leaders are hoping to avoid a good portion of this by converting
instructor-led training to e-learning. But as we know, there's a place in every
learning program for a certain amount of instructor-led training. Many organizations
are perplexed by this issue because it's difficult to obtain the appropriate data.
That's because they don't necessarily have the required measurements on classroom
and instructor usage, course materials, equipment, and related statistics. A key
strategy here is to build or install the appropriate technology or data links and
processes so that information can be tracked. This data can then be pulled in a more
concerted fashion, rendering it more intelligent and capable of being evaluated and
acted upon.

Run Your Training Organization like a Business
This tip basically summarizes the previous eight. It's critical to identify your
training organization's core skills and determine the true value to the company as a
whole. If your value is not found in administration services or in technology
management, then it might be a good idea to shed that work or find ways to seriously
streamline it.

In our research, administration is costing a significant portion-approximately
40%-of training budgets. Streamlining or shedding that work and redeploying a
percentage of that budget to more valuable services provides a better return on
investment to your organization and to the company as a whole. It will allow your
organization to focus truly on your core value, which in most cases is designing and
developing learning to help your company improve its performance and build a
competitive advantage.

Conclusion:
There's an ongoing demand in the training industry to do more with less. And in
times of economic challenges, the added hardship and stress placed on the training
organization is
Compounded. Cutting costs is all too often viewed as simply eliminating expenses,
when in fact a more productive approach may just be to eliminate waste, streamline
processes and embrace efficiency.



Web Site: http://www.expertus.com

Contact Details: Narrendiran
Public Relations
Phone: 9444080182
email: narrendiranp@expertus.com