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Dive deep


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.


Five Reasons Your Department Needs Its Own Learning Management System

Posted by susan reuter on Tue, Mar 23, 2010
OK, your company already has an enterprise learning managementlearning management, training costs, corporate training program system. So why would you even consider a separate training software for a project rollout in your department? Believe it or not, there a several instances where using a separate LMS could save you time and money, as well as potentially increase product sales.

Intrigued? Here are five things to take into account when weighing the costs and benefits of sticking with your enterprise training management system for your specific project or using a web-based training funded by monthly costs:

1. Training-dependent launch delays: Can you afford to wait?

You're a department manager in a Fortune 1000 company - or any large organization, for that matter. You want to deploy e-learning tools, either for staff, clients or maybe even your vendors. You've defined goals, set up a project plan, and assembled relevant subject details. You've got a tight deadline.

That's when you hit the bottleneck. Learning departments, training departments, and even IT departments have been decimated by the layoffs of the past two years. Because these departments were probably already operating at low staffing levels, their lead times are longer - much, much longer. (Chances are, companywide workforce reductions didn't take your department's project into account.)

Since training often can't be designed until a product or software implementation is near completion, it's naturally one of the last steps on a project plan. When training gets delayed, it can delay product launches or internal cost-saving software implementations, or even risk expensive compliance issues.

2. Customer training solutions: Do you want your customers to use the same LMS as your employees?

As a product manager, you might want your customers to experience the look and feel of your specific product, rather than the look and feel of the company as a whole. You may want to have customer training data separated from employee training data, keeping each statistic pure. Further, if this is an early experiment into training customers via e-learning, your internal training systems may not have adequate security to allow non-employee access.

3. Compliance: How close are you to compliance deadlines?

Government-imposed compliance deadlines frequently underestimate deployment time lines. What are the penalties and risks of non-compliance? What are the public relations and brand implications of non-compliance?

4. Temporary, quick time-frame training needs: Is the web-based training need permanent or temporary?

Training initiatives can be implemented by e-learning at rollout to quickly train large employee groups. A web-based learning management system that allows fast deployment can be cheaper than hiring consultants to implement temporary training needs into a corporate e-learning system.

5. Customization: Does your company's enterprise LMS meet your department's needs for this project?

Trying to fit a square peg in a round hole can only lead to corporate training, elearning, learning management solutionsfrustration and delays. Working directly with the provider of your department-level LMS cuts through several levels of red tape and allows you to get exactly what you want, when you want it. And because the LMS is dedicated to a specific project, it is faster and easier to handle any upgrades or updates.

    

  

Summary

When faced with one or more of the above issues, a responsible manager may be forced to consider other alternatives to their existing corporate learning system.

What if the opportunity costs or hard costs of delay override the actual cost of the web-based training solution that could prevent the delay? What implications would this have to your project, your department, your boss, or your entire company?

If the implications of delay are large, then the ROI of an alternative training development solution can quickly become significant enough to gain top management support.

A number of vendors offer web-based learning management systems that can be used as a stand-alone LMS, and can eventually interface with an enterprise solution if necessary, when learning and IT staff become available.

A stand-alone, easy to access, web-based LMS supported by a monthly subscription may not only be cost-effective, it may also provide the custom solution for your particular need.

Has anyone out there gone this route? We'd like to hear about your experiences.


Topics: lms tips, lms resources, elearning, learning management system, enterprise





Ziiva LMS Favorite Reads

Posted by susan reuter on Fri, Feb 19, 2010

Here at Ziiva, we're constantly scouring the web looking for great articles about LMS and eLearning. Here are some of our most recent favorites.

1. Learning Tools Directory 2010

Jane Hart of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies collected and organized a list of websites and tools to help you, your employees and your clients better and easier ways to learn.

2. 10 Ways to Learn in 2010

The eLearning Coach understands that in this day and age there are a slew of new and exciting ways to learn through searching Web sites and social networking sites to get right to the content that you want without having to shovel through search results that aren't relevant to you.

3. Learning Discovery - The Art of Defining Work Context

A recent post on Living in Learning's blog stresses the importance of learning and training and that it should not be crammed into such a small time frame of someone's work time.

4. Social Learning in the Enterprise in Four Minutes

The Internet Time Alliance produced a great 4 minute video about the ways that work, learning and collaboration have evolved dating back to the times of Socrates and Plato to today.

5. Get Your Audience Pumped: 30 Ways to Motivate Adult Learners

The eLearning Coach has another great article, this one about how to motivate adult learners. Sitting in a classroom or an elearning session can be both intimidating and draining so educators need to make their lessons relevant, interesting and fun.

Topics: lms tips, links, lms resources, elearning