"Using technology to manage and deliver learning through enterprise e-learning applications is critical to meeting the challenges of today's fast-paced, quickly changing digital world."

LMSs Are of No Real Consequence

Developing, delivering, and managing learning is really no big deal. We've been doing it for years. What's all the fuss about?

LMSs Are Critical Business Applications

In today's highly competitive world, learning is one of the major ways of generating true competitive advantage. The difference between an organization "making history" and "being history" is its ability to create, deliver, and manage learning enterprise-wide.

Opening Statement

It is often said that there are only two things you can be sure of in life: death and taxes. Well, in today's world, I think you have to add three more things to that list -- change, technology, and learning.

Change is a constant. What is different, however, is the scope and pace. Technology is no longer just a nice-to-have; it is integral to and indispensable in all aspects of our lives. When information is ubiquitous and knowledge is power, then learning -- at the employee, manager, executive, and organizational levels -- is a requirement for establishing and maintaining true competitive advantage.

Organizations are therefore gearing up their learning practices to meet this challenge. They are striving to make learning more personalized and customized, more tailored to the individual and the work. As a result, they are investing in an ever-growing mix of learning activities and methods: formal and informal, instructor-led and technology-enabled, "on the fly" and "on the job." In order to gain the true benefit from this investment, organizations must not only be able to consistently deliver learning, capture and compile relevant related data, and prepare reports, they must also have a means of turning that data into useful information.

Today most organizations lack a technology-enabled centralized repository for collecting and maintaining learning content, records, tracking, and results. They do not have the ability to deliver learning consistently and efficiently across business units and geographies. Nor do they have the ability to manage all of the details associated with the delivery of these learning activities. There is a lack of visibility into the big picture, which leads to duplication of effort, overspending, and inefficiencies, often ending in uncertainty as to the effectiveness of the learning as well as its alignment with business goals.

Learning management systems (LMSs) and learning content management systems (LCMSs) are increasingly being looked at as important enterprise e-learning applications that can meet these needs. LMSs are being used to deliver, manage, track, record, and report on instructor-led and online learning activities. Meanwhile, LCMSs are being implemented to enable multiple developers to create learning activities and allow the organization to store, reuse, manage, and deliver learning content from a central repository or database. These two systems are designed to work in concert, although an organization can choose to implement either one of them independently of the other.

An organization's evolution toward utilizing the LMS/LCMS as a true enterprise e-learning application typically involves four stages:

• Stage 1 -- automating the administrative processes that surround instructor-led training. The goal here is to use technology for simple process efficiency to drive cost savings.
  
  
• Stage 2 -- using the LMS/LCMS as a platform for e-learning. Most organizations have as their goal in this stage providing more learning to more people at a lower cost. The focus is on the delivery and management of off-the-shelf and custom e-learning courses, as well as blended learning programs that combine online and instructor-led activities.
  
  
• Stage 3 -- implementing and managing the LMS/LCMS as an enterprise-wide application. In this stage, organizations strive to align the LMS/LCMS with the objectives of the business at a more strategic level. There is an increased focus on integrating with HR and other business applications, consolidating the data, and using business analytics. In terms of content, the goal is to find ways to link learning activities to competencies and to ensure the learning is job-related and on-demand (i.e., just-in-time, just-what's-needed). In some cases, organizations recognize that the traditional concept of courses -- whether instructor-led or online -- must be complemented by new learning approaches such as blogs and wikis, podcasting and videocasting, communities of practice and social networks, mobile learning and other forms of online performance support, and coaching and mentoring.
  
  
• Stage 4 -- integrating the full range of HR development applications and processes within one application, including but not limited to recruiting and hiring, managing competencies and job profiles, performance planning and management, learning and development, and succession planning. These systems are now being called "integrated talent management systems," as they represent the strategic use of technology to manage not just learning, but also the organization's greatest resource, its people.

Reflecting the fact that most organizations are currently in the earliest of these stages, recent research by both Bersin & Associates [1] and the e-Learning Guild [2] shows that the top benefits organizations report from their LMSs/LCMSs today are:

• Tracking and reporting
  
  
• Facilitating the e-learning strategy (e.g., delivering e-learning courses)
  
  
• Managing enterprise-wide initiatives
  
  
• Improving efficiency
  
  
• Ensuring regulatory compliance
  
  
• Reducing training costs
  
  

LMS/LCMS applications represent change to an organization. Even though, initially, the LMS/LCMS may only be delivering the same content with the same instructor in an e-learning format, it still is a change. Employees who associate "learning" with getting time away from their desks and work, spending time with colleagues, and having an instructor present may resent having to learn "from a computer." Trainers who feel valued for their platform skills may worry that they will be replaced "by a computer." Managers who have always controlled access to training and information by knowing who was in what class and when may feel undermined when their employees can learn anytime, anywhere. And the organization as a whole, used to separate departments exercising control over information, often feels threatened by the centralization of not only records and reporting, but also content and curriculum.

Using an enterprise e-learning application to manage and deliver learning to achieve business results requires much more than just the purchase and installation of one or more software applications. Certainly, a robust selection process and thorough configuration and installation work are necessary. Even more important is the need to ensure that there is a true understanding of the business needs of the organization and the people within it (as well as partners, suppliers, and customers, if appropriate). The organization will have to make smart and informed decisions that are aligned with its goals and fit its culture.

Opinions differ on whether LMSs/LCMSs are truly critical business applications and equally important as, for example, ERP systems or other HR systems (e.g., recruiting, succession planning). That is an interesting debate, but there is little doubt that they are quickly becoming important enterprise e-learning applications in an ever-increasing number of organizations. This month's authors discuss the emergence of LMS/LCMS applications in the enterprise from a variety of angles. Let's take a look at their different perspectives and the approaches they describe.

In our first article, Alex Hogan provides a practical approach to selecting an LMS/LCMS that is right for your organization. As Hogan observes, "Selecting the best LMS for your business can be a daunting task even for the most experienced professional." There are so many variables to consider that it's easy to overlook critical issues and make mistakes that -- since these applications touch every individual in the organization -- can have tremendous impact. Lucky for us, then, that Hogan provides a process and tools "that will give you objective, verifiable metrics with which to rank and rate vendors' platforms, functional capabilities, technical abilities, financials, customer support, and customer satisfaction, along with the steps to take and the people you need involved when selecting an LMS/LCMS for your organization."

Herbert Lee, Eric Tsui, and Brian J. Garner agree that corporate training can address the need to equip a modern workforce, but they believe an open and adaptive corporate learning concept is required. They argue that the delivery of education today through an LMS is mostly a top-down affair, based on a "one size fits all" approach. In their opinion, corporate e-learning needs to be "adaptive, productive, and scalable," and based on a bottom-up approach that empowers the whole organization to participate in the design of instructional content. This "Social LMS" will merge the concepts of folksonomy, ontology, and an open learning platform. Educational material will then be contributed by everyone and customized to each learner according to his or her profile, requiring management to rethink its corporate e-learning strategy entirely. As disseminating knowledge across the Web has become a ubiquitous activity, they envision a world in which learning becomes not an isolated event, but a daily routine.

In our next article, Margaret Martinez describes how many organizations and businesses are using open source LMSs to meet today's e-learning needs without the high cost of purchasing proprietary software and multiple per-seat or site licenses. She argues that "open source software is changing the way that LMSs will be created, sold, maintained, used, and distributed in the future." Martinez believes it is now possible for entire school districts, universities, government agencies, and businesses to have access to high-quality LMSs through free open source software. She also makes the important point that nothing is ever really "free" and that there are some risks associated with open source LMSs. Nevertheless, she concludes that "with thorough investigation, especially for larger, more critical applications, it is possible to benefit from using an open source LMS while minimizing the risk."

Last but not least, Tony Karrer's article serves to remind us that the purpose of learning in the corporate context is not learning per se, but performance improvement. A critical question to be answered, therefore, is not whether or not to use technology, but whether the proposed learning and performance solutions are going to have the real and desired impact on what matters to the organization. Karrer argues that the best way to ensure performance improvement initiatives have that impact is to "start and end with the numbers." In his article, he describes a model for metrics-driven performance improvement initiatives that is "based on providing metrics that suggest possible interventions, support the creation of action plans to improve the metrics, and track the changes in the metrics so that personnel can see their progress and continually improve." The focus is on actions that align with metrics that are already well understood and important to the company. He contends that by starting and ending with the metrics, it is possible to understand which interventions work and don't work, and therefore truly make a difference.

I think our authors would agree that using technology to manage and deliver learning through enterprise e-learning applications is critical to meeting the challenges of today's fast-paced, quickly changing digital world. However, there is confusion about how you go about selecting the right LMS/LCMS for your organization and an active debate about whether or not the mainstream applications available today are really your best choice at all. And even when you are sure you've made the "right" choice, have you really done all you should to ensure you get the return on your investment in learning? Perhaps you'll recognize your enterprise in one or more of these articles and discover some best practices that will provide the most value to you. Read on!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

REFERENCES

1. O'Leonard, Karen, and Josh Bersin. Learning Management Systems 2006: Facts, Practical Analysis, Trends and Vendor Profiles. Bersin & Associates, January 2006.

2. Wexler, Steve, Lance Dublin, Nancy Grey, Sheila Jagannathan, Tony Karrer, Margaret Martinez, Bob Mosher, Kevin Oakes, and Angela van Barneveld. 360° Report on Learning Management Systems (LMS). The eLearning Guild, April 2007.