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At Ziiva, we offer more than a comprehensive, tailor-fit Learning Management System. We are always seeking ways to enrich your company culture and improve the online learning experience that you offer to your students, employees, customers, or users.


How an LMS helps you sell your content

Posted by susan reuter on Fri, Aug 18, 2017

Two people using Prosperity LMS to sell content

You’ve created the content. Now comes the next step—getting it online and selling. If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you dread getting bogged down with administrative tasks. 

And getting bogged down is easy. There’s always a meeting, a phone call, or a crisis. According to a survey from The Alternative Board, average entrepreneurs spend more than two thirds of their time working on day-to-day tasks and less than one third working on business goals and strategy.

A Learning Management System (LMS) helps you change this ratio and focus on what you do best—training. All you have to do is upload the content.

We’ve broken it down into five ways an LMS can help you sell: 

1. Gets your content online

Entrepreneur describes an LMS as a software platform that “delivers, manages, and tracks results, and generates reports for online courses and training programs.” 

This means your ideas, concepts, and content get online—fast. This allows you to reach more prospective students and train more people in more places. 

Whether you sell courses to 50-person startups or you manage certification training for 50,000 association members, an LMS helps you tackle that first step—getting your content organized and online. 

2. Offers flexible pricing

In addition to customizing the function of an LMS, many also allow you to customize the course pricing. This allows you to use the pricing system that makes sense for you. 

Do you offer a single course or test for one-time customers? Are you selling a six-month certification program where people log in regularly to complete assignments? Are you always flooded with inquiries in January? 

A flexible LMS, moreover, will charge you based on the pricing model you need, and the volume and behavior of your customers. You should not have to pay more for a program that’s designed to fit another business.

Here are some example pricing options:
  • Prepaid course codes
  • Pay-as-you-go
  • Base hosting fee + price per student
  • Support bundles
  • Packaged pricing bundles

3. Provides support for your customers

So you have your content online and you’ve chosen an LMS that works for your business. Now what?

Customers and potential students will have questions. Technical issues will arise. And in order to be successful, you’ll need the time and resources to quickly respond.

According to a 2016 Forrester survey, 63 percent of companies prioritized investing in new technology to improve customer experience. Your LMS can be this technology.

An LMS partner can handle the student support for you, saving you time and money. Many programs have built-in email clients to broadcast messages to students and potential customers. They can also automatically alert students about additional courses and approaching certification deadlines.

4. Collects valuable data

At each customer interaction, an LMS collects data. Did the student create an account, but fail to sign up for a class? Did a potential customer spend time researching your program, but abandon the shopping cart?

 This information gives insight about your students and potential customers. The students who create accounts but don’t add courses can become your prospect list—you already know they are interested. By tracking the learning performance, you can determine if the course needs updating. If you’re struggling for enrollments, you can reshape your content or remarket the course. 

eLearning Industry identifies five types of LMS data to extract:
  • Completion rates
  • Learner performance and progress
  • Assessment scores
  • Learner surveys
  • Peer-based feedback

5. Accommodates your business requirements

So what happens if you’re offering a certification program, but the requirements change? What if you have customers in different states with different requirements? 

Some LMSs can automatically track certifications that vary by state and industry—lifting the burden of compliance monitoring. These areas could include criminal records, credit checks, medical records, and professional licensing.

Using automated alert and email systems, an LMS can notify customers of these changes and impose deadlines for ensuring they are met. 



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Let's get started
If your goal is selling courses and content, an LMS may be the perfect tool to automate tedious administrative tasks, increasing your efficiency and success.

To help you get started, we have created a checklist to help you prioritize your needs and desires, so you can navigate the hundreds of LMS choices and find what fits you best. This checklist is intended to be personalized to YOU, not a particular LMS.

Get the LMS Checklist

Topics: lms, e learning software, training, computer based training, web based training





LMS Implementations: Four corporate learning lessons from NASCAR

Posted by susan reuter on Fri, Jul 30, 2010

Nascar, lms

The LMS is at the starting line, the crowd is pumped, the flag drops and it’s off to the races.

Hold on just a second.

Employee training shouldn’t be a street race. It’s not sound business to jump into the shiniest hot-rod in the parking lot, find a reasonably straight stretch of blacktop and go hurtling off into the night, racing to meet your corporate eLearning goals without any thought to what lurks around the corner.

It’s better to steal a page from NASCAR and take a more methodical, professional approach to training development. Figure out where you want to go, find out who’s going to be in your way, and use the best equipment you can to get across the line first.

Here are four lessons for employee development from the world of racing:

Know the course

Professional racers don’t show up at the track and hit the gas, first they study the ins and outs of the course. You need to do the same. How long will the training take? How many people will be involved? Have you scheduled your pit stops effectively? Are there any quirks you need to account for that are particular to this course?

Use the best tools and technology available

Even the driver who finishes last – or crashes and burns – is an elite member of their profession, the best of the best. Sure, raw talent, guts and luck are important, but the machines themselves play a crucial role in who wins and who loses. Does your learning management system meet the needs of your learners? Do you have the eLearning software and hardware to go the distance? Is it easy to handle? Does it give your pit crew the data it needs to make effective assessments?

Have a capable pit crew

There’s a crew of unsung heroes behind any driver. Without them, the wheels will come off – literally. When it comes to computer-based training, you need a strong pit crew, as well. From the course developer to the administrator to the trainer to the back-end IT muscle to the vendor support, every link in the chain must be able to participate as needed.

Have fun

Drivers love what they do. It’s more than a job to them, it’s who they are. That may be asking too much of someone doing compliance training, but that doesn’t mean training still can’t be fun (or at least not un-fun). Make sure your online training provides a positive user experience.

OK, with these lessons in mind, now it’s time to wave the green flag: Ready, set, learn!

Topics: lms, employee training, corporate learning, e learning software, learning management system, training development, employee development, computer based training, corporate e learning, online training





Client profile: Abreon uses LMS as a change-management tool

Posted by susan reuter on Fri, Jul 16, 2010

Change is difficult.

Change is scary.

Change is painful.

Change, done for the right reasons, can be transformative. And profitable.

Abreon is in the business of change management, helping organizations of all sizes – including some Fortune 500 companies – with technology adoption, corporate learning, organizational change and healthcare transformation.

In most cases, eLearning software plays a major role.

“Ninety-nine percent of all projects have an eLearning component,” said Fred Nolte, Abreon’s director of education practice. He noted that eLearning is a cost-effective solution for many change-management efforts.

“We customize, we do blended solutions for clients,” Nolte said. “Any time you are doing a technical change or business process change you need to educate workers and have a good education strategy.”

“We do an awful lot of eLearning for places that don’t have an LMS,” Nolte added.

The learning management system that Abreon uses to meet its wide-ranging needs is Ziiva Prosperity LMS.

Nolte has used Prosperity to customize eLearning programs for several employee training efforts, including enterprise resource planning (ERP) and electronic health records (EHR) projects.

Dealing with multiple clients with multiple needs, Abreon needs an LMS platform that can be easily customized. Turn-around time is also an issue. “People wait until the last minute to think about training end users,” Nolte said. “The challenge is to have a system that can be rapidly deployed to meet their needs.”

Through a strategic partnership between Ziiva and Abreon’s parent company, Prosperity’s html-based eLearning software is used to quickly create unique, easy-to-use Web-based training sites that have the branded looked and feel of the client, including company-specific URLS. “From the standpoint of end user perspective, they see (the LMS interface) as their company,” said Nolte.

That flexibility is one of Prosperity’s best features, said Nolte. “The flexibility – how quickly we can load things and get them up and running, along with the support that Ziiva provides on the back end.”

Nolte said the partnership with Ziiva has been “very successful” for Abreon.

Although Abreon uses Prosperity for short-duration change-management projects, Nolte – who has worked with other learning management systems in the past – believes it can be a long-term solution for a business because of its ease of use and flexibility.

“It’s pretty straightforward in the way it functions,” Nolte said, noting that his clients’ needs vary. “Some customers want eLearning, some want certificates, e-mails – all that capability resides within Prosperity.”

From an end-user perspective, he’s had no complaints. In fact, one recent client is now looking at using Prosperity as its corporate LMS.

“Everybody likes it,” said Nolte.

That’s a good thing, because while change can be painful, an LMS shouldn’t make it any more difficult.

Topics: lms, employee training, corporate learning, e learning software, learning management system, learning management, web based training





Client profile: Prosperity LMS takes air ambulance company to new heights

Posted by susan reuter on Mon, May 17, 2010
Simple geography has always been a training challenge for Phoenix-based PHI Air Medical Group, which flies out of nearly 50 bases in 11 states.

The company, a full-service air ambulance provider that serves more than 30,000 patients each year, needs to ensure that its employees - nurses, paramedics, respiratory technicians and pilots - are not only current on their mandatory certification training, but also have the opportunity to increase their skills with programs that incorporate industry-wide best practices. Up until a couple years ago, that meant training coordinators assigned to each state had to travel extensively to run face-to-face sessions; in addition, employees sometimes had to travel up to three or four hours - on the company's dime - to attend a class. The situation was costing PHI Air Medical time and money.

Mike Harmon, PHI Air Medical's Manager of Clinical Education Standards, began looking at learning management systems as a possible way to provide web-based training for the company's geographically diverse staff.

Among the elearning software he looked at was Ziiva's Prosperity Corporate LMS, which had the features he needed - SCORM compliant, able to run detailed reports, strong customer support - at a very competitive price. "I was looking for something I could sell to administration," Harmon said. "Not knowing how much we would be able to save from an LMS, cost was a factor."

Since implementing Prosperity - first for medical staff, and then for pilots - PHI Air Medical has saved between $300,000 and $400,000 in training-related costs while increasing employee development opportunities available to its staff. The company also has been able to cut three days from what was once was a two-week, on-site new employee training program in Phoenix, which provides additional ongoing savings.

Harmon now has more than 125 courses available online through Prosperity - 13 recurring courses that employees take annually to maintain certification, 24 more courses specifically for new hires and many more for continuing education.

Harmon is also pleased with Ziiva's reporting capabilities and ability to randomize tests, which makes it easier for the company to maintain its certification from the Commission on Accreditation of Medical Transport Services (CAMTS).

Because of the nature of its business, PHI Air Medical still conducts some site-based training, but the company has been able to maximize the face-to-face sessions by having staff do much of the prep work online. "Adult education in the medical world is scenario-based problem solving," Harmon explained. "We use Ziiva to build base-level knowledge before (the site-based training) so trainers get to spend more time on problem-solving and critical-thinking programs."

The ease and availability of online learning has also allowed the company to provide remedial education for employees who may have previously been fired because it was cost-prohibitive to send them away for individual employee training.

Although Prosperity has its own course-creation program, Harmon was more familiar creating modules using Microsoft PowerPoint and Adobe Articulate, which Ziiva's learning management system can easily accommodate. He's uploaded a number of new and existing courses that way, as well as some training videos.

Now he's looking at using Prosperity's own tools for expanding the company's online offerings, including higher-level learning, more interactive courses and more. Harmon admits that, as satisfied as he is with Prosperity, he's still only scratching the surface of what it can do.

Overall, employee feedback has been positive.

"Pretty much every course they do has a course evaluation," Harmon said. "We've probably had between 80 and 90 percent approval - fours and fives (on a five-point scale) and even the watercooler talk about it is generally pretty positive."

Things have gone so well, in fact, that PHI Air Medical's parent company replaced the LMS it was using for a larger subsidiary that provides helicopter transport for the offshore oil and gas industry with Ziiva's system. In all, PHI, Inc., has about 2,600 employees.

Down the road, Harmon is looking at making some computer-based training available at a nominal fee to local fire departments and ambulance companies in areas served by PHI Air Medical. The courses can be used by these organizations for employee certification.

When asked what he liked best about Prosperity, Harmon said the price and the ability the software gave him to "advance education opportunities and knowledge level of my staff."


Topics: lms, employee training, e learning software, learning management system, employee development, computer based training, web based training





Corporate eLearning: Save the environment (and save money)

Posted by susan reuter on Mon, Apr 19, 2010
There are lots of reasons that a learning management system may be a sensible option for your organization - cost effectiveness, consistency of employee training, convenience, measurable results, etc. - but here's one benefit you may not have considered: reducing your carbon footprint.

This isn't a brand new idea, but even two years ago it was still somewhat of a novelty.

According to Rick Nigol, blogging on BreakthrougheLearning.com in 2008, it was an "aha moment" for him when, on a consulting gig, he heard a pair of vice-presidents explaining how eLearning software would help them meet their strategic focus of becoming an environmentally sustainable company.

These days ­- despite recessionary pressures (and possibly, in some cases, as a result of them) - the idea of sustainability continues to grow.

corporate elearning, lms, training

What in it for you?

Here are some green benefits of using an LMS for computer-based training:

Stay home: eLearning is available anywhere you have employees, so travel and lodging costs associated with training - and their resulting environmental impact - are no longer an issue.

Save paper (and ink, and energy): Who needs handouts - which often need to be updated multiple times during a product rollout or large-scale training effort - when you can keep everyone on the same (virtual) page with an easy-to-update LMS? Going this route means using less energy to produce and distribute training manuals and other documentation, as well as less waste.

Green culture: Beyond using an LMS for your regular training and employee development needs, consider creating some green training modules to give your employees practical ways to reduce the company's carbon footprint in their daily activities.

Carbon offsets: If you want your business to be as carbon neutral as possible - whether out of environmental concern or simply as a pragmatic marketing decision - there are several calculators and companies out there that can help you understand what you need to do and certify the results. No matter how intense you want this effort to be, eLearning tools are one of the easiest, most obvious ways to cut your carbon footprint.

When you look at the above list, it's obvious that many of the benefits of learning management systems - such as increasing productivity through reducing travel - transcend reducing carbon emissions and can save your business time and money in other ways, as well.

 

The bottom line

We've come across some companies - mainly outside the U.S. - that are promoting the environmental benefits of eLearning as central parts of their marketing efforts.

That's all well and good, but while LMS vendors may no longer be surprised to hear customers talk about sustainability, one point Rick Nigol made two years ago still holds true: Using eLearning simply to reduce travel, while noble, isn't in the best interests of any organization.

Finding a robust eLearning system that can meet all your training needs is the real holy grail of corporate learning, and anything else is gravy.

Green gravy.


Topics: green initiatives, lms, employee training, e learning tools, corporate learning, e learning software, elearning, learning management system, learning management, elearning tools, learning management systems, learning management software, employee development, computer based training, corporate e learning