A Note from the CEO
"I want to thank you for being part of the rapidLD Community!
We hope to provide you Value for the Time invested in our
newsletter. Each month we will bring you Informed Opinion, Industry
Views, Interesting Products, and Consulting Tools. Feel free to
write me with recommendations on areas that interest you and that
you would like featured in our newsletter!"
rapidLD provides consulting services focused in the learning
industry. Our consulting offerings evolve around four Customer
questions:
1) Where do I start? (Strategy and
Business Plan Development),
2) Who do I partner
with? (Vendor Analysis and Selection),
3) How
do I maximize my investment? (Deployment) and
4) Am I
getting the most out of my current tools?
(Optimization).
If you think that we might collaborate
on one of these topics and want more information, edit your
Interests (at the bottom of the page) and we will send you more
information.
We have seen many customers realize fabulous benefits from
learning technologies. We hope that you have that same success!
Visit our Home on the
Web!
|
| |
Dear Friend of rapidLD,
Welcome to rapidLD's October issue of The eLearning
evolution (e2). This issue focuses on two
important topics: ROI and eLearning Strategy. We hope
you enjoy reading this issue and we hope you refer a friend!
|
|
|
|
|
The True Business ROI of
Training |
| |
 Jonathan Estes
Guest Columnist
In the
training world, assessment has long been a required element of
any successful program. A robust industry has grown from the
theoretical and practical approaches to evaluation, providing
reaction surveys, test-making and grading services, and skills
assessment through both consultant services and software
tools.
However, an essential level of training
evaluation has been missing from the market: measuring the
true ROI of a company's training investment. Training
analytics provides a company with quantitative data indicating
where to deploy training to gain maximum effect as well as
actual ROI. Training analytics statistically isolates which
part of total change in business behavior is related to
training. With a financial value placed on that business
behavior, the actual ROI is calculated using a standard
investment algorithm: (Benefit - Cost) / Cost.
The
current market climate stresses the need for companies to
financially link hard-to-measure human performance improvement
interventions, especially training, to bottom line business
results.
"While many consulting and training providers
offer these services on a manual basis, we are not aware of
any other company that provides a similarly advanced
computer-based tool." WR Hambrecht & Co., June 20,
2001
"Now that we have set this standard, it has become
an expectation in our organization. We now consider it to be
equivalent to business malpractice not to know the ROI of our
initiatives." Jeff Johnson, Pioneer Hi-Bred International, a
DuPont Company.
ProCourse has deployed successfully to
Fortune 100 companies, which desire to keep their ROI reports
anonymous.
Johnathan Estes is CEO of New Course
Analytics. For more information visit www.procourse.com.
Try
ProCourse with Your Sample Data>>
|
|
|
What is the Value of
Strategy? |
| |
 If you don't know where you are going, you will
wind up someplace else.
- Yogi Berra
Roget's thesaurus defines strategy as
"A method for making, doing, or accomplishing something; a
blueprint, design, or game plan" For organizations, the
eLearning Strategy is the roadmap that defines the basis for
measuring success. It provides each person in the organization
a clear picture of how his or her involvement in an eLearning
project impacts the overall objectives of the
company.
Would you build a house without a blueprint?
Certainly not. Nor would you undertake the implementation of
any enterprise-wide system without knowing the impact to the
organization - or so you would hope. One can only look to the
past silo approaches to implementations of CRM, eProcurement,
and ERP applications that failed to look at the larger picture
and thus produced limited benefits. Does eLearning belong in
that mix?
The breadth of eLearning today is truly an
"enterprise- wide" environment. In one way or another it
touches everyone in the organization - CEO, employee,
customer, supplier and even shareholder. Yet, many businesses
evaluating eLearning technologies today overlook the
importance of taking the very first step - eLearning Strategy
creation.
Chet Zoltak, CLO of Towers Perrin notes,
"It's not about e-learning first; it's about learning
strategy first." Deb Capolarello, CLO of MetLife
emphasizes that CLOs must "make sure they tie their
learning strategies to their business strategy. Otherwise,
they'll only be the academics and the executives will tell
them that they don't need that kind of help."
The
strategy incorporates people, process, technology, and
leverages existing assets. It touches all facets of the
organization, creates a strong business case that financially
justifies the investment, and bridges the gap between
technology and business participants, project sponsors and
executive management. A learning strategy clarifies and
prioritizes the tasks at hand:
* What's
possible? Identify potential initiatives for the
organization. Very often the biggest payback is not the most
likely candidate.
* How does this relate to my
business? Determine the importance of achieving agreed
upon business objectives. Look at competitive and similar
businesses.
* Where's the payback? Evaluate
options in conjunction with benefits and costs. Both hard
dollar and soft dollar savings. Short and
long-term.
* When is this most appropriate?
Determine optimal timing. A phased implementation showing
measurable payback will support future
initiatives.
With an eLearning Roadmap - you'll know
where you're going - and get there.
|
|
|
Let's Get Personal |
| |
Did you know you can receive personalized supplements
to the eLearning evolution?
Click on edit
your interests at the bottom of this email and select
Consulting Tools within your 'Areas of Interest'. Each
month you'll automatically receive a link to a consulting tool
that can add value to your training projects. Included are
directions on how to use the tool in your business.
But Note - you only get the link if you select 'Consulting
Tools' when you 'edit your interests'. So click on edit
your interests now to 'get Personal' with rapidLD!
|
|
|
What's COOL...What's
HOT... |
| |
 Impatica for PowerPoint
A Powerful Tool
for Delivering Media-Rich PowerPoint Presentations via the
Internet
rapidLD works with many clients that rely
on PowerPoint presentations as the default method for creating
and distributing visual, online communications to support
training and education efforts. This method of distribution
can be cumbersome when large archives of presentations are
stored locally and out of reach. Converting these
presentations to HTML for Web-based delivery for either
synchronous or post-event retrieval is not practical. The
converted files are even bigger, which limits hosting and
delivery options because of bandwidth limitations. Adding
audio and video to the presentation significantly increases
the size of the presentation and calls for players and
plug-ins on both the server and client side.
Impatica
has created a desktop tool, Impatica for PowerPoint that
dramatically compresses PowerPoint presentations for efficient
Internet or e-mail delivery at low bandwidth. Audio, video,
animations, transitions and hyperlinks are preserved. Viewers
do not require PowerPoint, the ppt viewer, or any plug-in to
see and hear the presentations.
Here's a summary of
what makes Impatica for PowerPoint software unique:
*
Delivers to Java enabled devices and computers across major
operating platforms - i.e. Windows, Mac, Unix, Linux, OS/2 and
Sun Solaris
* Built-in FTP capability to upload
content
* Can be hosted on any Web or Intranet server
(http or https)
* Java offers secure, virus-free
transmission that is firewall-friendly
* Applicable to
almost any Web based communication: e-learning, online demos,
tutorials and presentations, e-mail and Web marketing,
e-commerce and corporate communications
For production
and delivery of synchronized video and PowerPoint
presentations combined with searchable text, indexed table of
contents, user navigation, VCR- like controls, and viewer
selectable bandwidth, Impatica has created Impatica
OnCue.
Both products depend on your experience with
creating PowerPoint presentations and creating and editing
sound and video files with your preferred sound and video
editing tools (like SoundForge). But the included user manuals
are user-friendly, filled with screen-shots, and describe,
step-by-step, how to create and publish your presentations.
Visit the Impatica
Website>>
|
|
|
rapidLD eLearning evolution (e2)
Overview |
| |
If you haven't been to our web site recently, check out
the latest updates, including the new eLearning evolution
(e2) overview.
More
info>>
|
| |
