Dive deep

I was staunchly opposed to the exponential advancement of the internet. I like writing letters and telephones with cords and paper books, so all of the e-this and i-that and smart-thingamabobs seemed excessive and trivial to me. But one late and stormy night, when the lullaby of background-noise-Netflix cocooned me into a dreamy state of lethargy, I decided to peruse the internet for “things.” And I found so many. On one ordinary Saturday evening at midnight, on my couch, in my pajamas, I ordered two books, socks, a blender, and vitamins. I was ecstatic – and it was all thanks to this happy little contraption called “eCommerce.”

What is eCommerce?

eCommerce is the process of conducting a business transaction online – and online business is booming. Magnates like Amazon are raking in billions of dollars in revenue each year (roughly 100,000 of that is probably from me), but even modest businesses are seeing a huge benefit in utilizing online commerce.

How Can eCommerce Benefit Training Providers?

In the same way eCommerce benefits goods-based businesses, it can benefit you, my friend. Using eCommerce can boost an increase in your revenue, help you reach a wider customer base, and enable a you to sell training anytime, anywhere – even while you’re sipping a mojito on Santa Maria beach (send a girl an invite, okay?).

So, then what?

• Put your current content online – live sessions, webinars, online training, assessments, training materials
• Build your training catalog, including a training calendar if you have classroom training
• Determine your pricing – how do you want customers to buy? Subscription? a la carte? bundles and packages?
• Set up your shopping cart, payment gateway, and merchant account
• Start selling!

Does this sound a little complicated? Too good to be true? Luckily, it’s neither. But it can help to have a feature-rich platform backed by an experienced team. We’ve worked with trainers from sole proprietors to large corporations, helping them transition into the wonderful world of eCommerce. Let’s chat about where you see your training going and what we can do to help.

Here's a previous post about how a learning management system can help you sell your training, and here is our calendar if you are chomping at the bit to get started.

“Gentlemen, start your blenders!” 

That’s what I say when I order a smoothie.  Alright, you got me, no, it isn’t. But wouldn’t that be a fun thing to say? Blending stuff is just fun in general: smoothies, paint, friend groups. You take separate things, mix ‘em together, and then you end up with a new, exciting, beautiful – maybe even delicious (I really want a smoothie, okay?) – outcome.

In terms of learning, the idea of blending is also fun, exciting, and beneficial. It’s an excellent way to keep your learners engaged. It is also helpful to those learners that might thrive with alternative methods of instruction. Offering blended learning can make your training more effective, increase retention, and provide flexibility and supplementation to your users.

So, how can you utilize blended learning in tandem with your LMS?

• Add online quizzes or “knowledge checks” throughout training – it doesn’t have to be serious or graded. It can simply break up the monotony of extended periods of learning and also help reinforce the material
  
  
• Provide self-paced reading assignments before a class so participants can be better prepared and more engaged in your live-session training
  
  
• Have workshop follow-up assignments or checklist evaluations to gauge the application or retention of the learning
  
  
• Schedule refresher webinars every three or six months to reinforce key objectives
  
  
• Take advantage of multiple formats of learning to accommodate all types of learning styles

You’ve got all the ingredients: your content, knowledge bank, webinars, videos, whitepapers, and outstanding instructors. Let Prosperity LMS be your blender. We will take your great training, toss it together (gently and carefully), and serve a stellar learning experience for your users. 

Ask us anything or set up a little tête-à-tête -- we love chatting. 

One of the biggest reasons people look for a learning management system (or LMS for you tech-jargon lovers out there) is their need for quick, efficient, set-it-and-forget-it reporting.

Whether it’s because their boss asked to see which employees are up-to-date on training and compliance, there’s a looming audit on the horizon, or they just had an audit (and got a few dings for missing vital information), having reports readily available is crucial to staying on top of things.

Prosperity LMS has four central types of reporting, and those four types contain myriad ways to customize and adapt reports even further to meet the unique needs of each client.

• Interactive dashboards are a quick way to see who has missed a training deadline, who is or is not in compliance, and what training is upcoming for all active employees. This type of report is always shown in real time and is the perfect tool to get an overview of the company’s overall training and compliance.
  
  
• Matrix reports are highly visual, and are a great way of showing different relationships between things -- making them a prompt, straightforward way of seeing the specific data you want to see. As with all matrices, these types of reports are laid out in a grid of rows and columns, with different colored dots or pie chart pieces denoting whether something has been completed or not, as well as the level of completion. For example, one might want to see an overview of program completion statuses by company, then by job title, then by completion/expiration data. Like all of our reports, these can be customized to fit your needs, and they give us the most flexibility to provide your data exactly the way you want it displayed.
  
  
• Ad hoc is a funny little phrase that sounds like it should be followed by "Gesundheit!” but really, it’s just Latin, translating directly to “for this.” This type of report is used when an admin or supervisor has a specific inquiry that needs addressing – their question being the driving force to run a report “for this.” We have a list of common things clients want to know. Once a supervisor selects the ad hoc report to run, he can filter his search to give him the exact data he’s looking for, and then choose how he’d like the data grouped once it’s collected. Bonus: you can export ad hoc reporting data directly to Excel or your favorite business intelligence (BI) tool.
  
  
• The Queries module is essentially a window into your database. You can get any report in any configuration, and it can be scheduled to run as often as you need, with the results being emailed directly to you. This type of report is not as user-friendly as others, so it is something we would configure for your team. Unless, that is, you have someone who is well-versed in Structured Query Language (SQL). Otherwise, just call the training team and we will help you grab those queries!

Any of these reports can be quickly and easily accessed from an admin portal or sent to your email. Reports can be automated to run on whatever timeline best fits your needs – and you’ll get the data sent to you without you even having to think about it. We created the Prosperity LMS to make the lives of supervisors, managers, employees, and training providers easier. We try to make it even easier by providing you with ongoing support and resources so you can continue to be successful for years to come.

Have questions? Email me! kellyann@ziiva.com. Happy Reporting!

A Learning Management System (LMS) can greatly simplify the process of achieving and maintaining ISO (International Standards Organizations) certification. Prosperity LMS provides flexible and efficient solutions for manufacturers to track training, standardize processes and ensure that employees are adhering to the necessary standards and specifications, both for ISO certification and for Occupational Health and Safety Administration requirements.

If your company is exploring the benefits of ISO certification, we can work with you to craft a system that will help you get the job done at a price you can afford. 

Whatever compliance requirements you face — and in today’s world, most companies face many industry and governmental regulations that require compliance tracking and reporting — we can help you meet them.  Prosperity LMS can provide the platform you need to schedule and deliver the necessary training to your employees, track and report their progress and ensure ongoing compliance with necessary quality standards.

Ziiva offers customized solutions for your business, tailored to meet your individual needs for ISO and OSHA compliance. We can help you automate tracking, reporting and training to take the headaches out of ISO certification and OSHA compliance.

We can develop a system that will help you determine the skills required for every position in your operation and then deliver a training and assessment program to make sure employees keep and maintain the skill sets they need, while documenting everything so that you have the records you need to prove compliance or easily deal with audits.

Prosperity LMS can help you train new employees and make sure your long-time employees and supervisors have the knowledge and training they require to do their jobs as efficiently and safely as possible.  Our team will help automate your compliance training to make it as simple as possible. Reminders, scheduling, assessment, tracking and reporting can all be automated so that you can focus on your manufacturing process, not paperwork.

Our system can produce rigorous exams to assess how well your employees have absorbed the training and other necessary information and compile the reports of these assessments you need to track compliance.

ISO certification can help your company improve its processes and training, ensuring safe, efficient and quality production. If you’ve hesitated to seek such certification in the past because of the logistics involved or if you’ve achieved certification but struggled with compliance and record-keeping, Prosperity LMS may be your answer. We offer flexible billing models and have a highly experienced team that will get you up and running as quickly as possible and within your budget. 

Contact us to find out.

Finding qualified candidates is getting more difficult, and the outlook is that it will continue to be a significant problem for manufacturers.  The cost to a business is significant as positions remain unfilled and recruiting time and expense continues to increase.  A learning management system (LMS) can help human resource managers retain and develop the skilled workforce needed to succeed.

Consider these statistics from Deloitte Consulting LLP and the Manufacturing Institute in their report The Skills Gap in U.S. Manufacturing 2015 – 2025.  

• It takes 90+ days to hire a new skilled worker
• Six out of every ten open skilled production positions are currently unfilled
• By 2025 as many as 2+ million positions won’t be filled as the skilled worker shortage worsens as baby boomers retire
• 82% of manufacturing executives say the shortage will negatively impact the ability to meet customer demands, innovate and expand
• 94% of executives said the most effective response is internal employee training and development

A learning management system (LMS) is a great solution to help overwhelmed human resources staff train and develop employees. 

In addition to providing a training platform to build employee skills, an LMS can automate the administration, tracking and reporting of training and compliance certification.  A few key reasons an LMS can help include:

• A standardized onboarding program ensures new hires are oriented, trained and engaged. According to a 2018 study by Jobvite, 30% of workers quit a job in the first ninety days.  Compare that to less than 10% if the company has a well-structured onboarding program.  An LMS can help ensure new employees have the information and skills to be successful.
• Building a strong learning culture increases productivity and worker retention. Businesses that build this type of culture have 30-50% higher engagement and retention rates than those that don’t.  (David Mallon, Deloitte)
• High-performing managers create high-performing teams. Manufacturers often put too little emphasis on training supervisors, despite the fact that the quality of the boss is a key factor in both worker performance and retention.  An LMS can help you identify and train new supervisors to increase productivity and reduce liability.
• Provide the information and training workers need, when and how they need it. According to a Brandon Hall study, e-learning takes 40% to 60% less worker time when compared to a traditional classroom setting, and knowledge retention rates are higher.  An LMS makes you and your workers more efficient. 

Your best strategy is to engage and develop your current workforce.

The manufacturing skills gap is only going to increase, as will the competition for skilled workers.  Your best strategy is to engage and develop your current workforce, new hires and supervisors with a comprehensive learning and development program managed and tracked by robust learning management software.

And as Propel notes in their article on How to Solve the Manufacturing Skills Gap, never overlook your current workforce as an efficient and cost effective way to build needed skill sets.

The Prosperity LMS is built to support the needs of manufacturers, and our US-based team has the industry experience to make your training a success.   Use our calendar to schedule a brief consultation  or ask us a question.

And if you already have an LMS but still struggle with tracking employee competencies and skills, check out Skills Mark.  Prosperity Skills Mark is the simple and straightforward solution for tracking and reporting on the job training and employee competencies and skills.