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!
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Dear Friend of rapidLD,
Welcome to the introductory issue of The eLearning
Evolution (e2), a monthly newsletter published
by Rapid Learning Deployment. You're receiving this newsletter
because you've expressed interest in learning technologies. We
hope you enjoy reading this monthly publication and we hope
you refer a friend!
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ERP in eLearning - Is the Cavalry
Here? |
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 Much has been made of the entry into the Learning
Technology space by the ERP giants: "Validates the industry -
will bring some stability to the technology - ERP and
eLearning will be joined at the hip - some of the big names in
eLearning are mere fleas when compared to the major ERP
vendors". Some comments ring true. However, I would also say
that, with the current state of the market, eLearning is
looking for a savior. However, is ERP it?
From my
perspective, the ERP giants have built their applications (and
their customer base) managing high- volume,
transaction-oriented business processes. ERP systems are
designed to replace legacy systems that have similar
functions. These same systems are focused on a small group of
heavy users - finance and operations (although module
extensions, such as SCM, touch more people). In short, I do
not see that the ERP customer has much in common with the
eLearning customer.
However, I do believe that Tom
Seibel is on to something. Seibel Software has rolled out
'Employee Relationship Management' - focused on building long-
term relationships with their own employees (this system has
been utilized extensively within the Seibel organization). CRM
systems have predicated their business on developing long-term
relationships with customers. They move sales & marketing
organizations from 'events' to 'process'. They focus on
bringing more value to the business relationship. Sound
familiar? Sound like where you want to take the relationship
between your learning organization and its customers?
I do believe the Cavalry is coming but maybe from a
different direction. What to make of the ERP entry? ERP
vendors to this day do not have a stellar implementation
record ('ERP Rollout Glitches Whack Agilent's Bottom
Line, ComputerWorld, 8/20/02').
Did they show
up at Little Big Horn?
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Industry Buzzzzzz... |
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Narrrowing the Field
Well recognized
e-learning analyst, Clark Aldrich, notes "This market
desperately needs consolidation." And we believe he's
correct. What benefits will consolidation bring? Here are a
few points from his article titled "Don't Look Down"
(OnlineLearning, July 2002).
Consolidation will lead
to deeper product offerings and adoption of best
practices. Think for a moment, if the market consisted of
just a handful of Learning Management System (LMS) and
Learning Content Management System (LCMS) vendors who were
proven, reputable, and stable - companies could focus on
R&D providing more feature rich solutions, content vendors
could work with this select few to make interoperability a
reality, and best practices could
propagate.
Consolidation will lead to higher-quality
product and vendor reviews resulting in more informed decision
making. As Aldrich notes, "Credible, helpful reviews
will narrow the field of vendors considerably." The
market today is too broad. It is difficult for the average
e-learning procurer to assess the myriad of solutions in the
market with limited, un-biased information available.
"Every reviewing organization makes money off some of
the vendors they are reviewing." The cursory reviews
that are available today are quickly
outdated.
E-learning is poised to become the
"valued component of a corporation's strategy, an
investor's portfolio and a nation's GDP". The advent
of consolidation over the next year or two will only benefit
the end user.
Full
story>>
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What's COOL...What's
HOT... |
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 eProject Enterprise
Facilitating Project
Management Tasks Among Remote Project Teams
As a
consulting partnership that engages clients located around the
country and in Europe, rapidLD needed a practical, easy to
use, powerful tool to coordinate the tasks and resources
associated with running large software deployment projects. We
needed a tool that we could host internally, yet make
available to all of our clients and vendor partners so they
could actively participate in the project management process.
After detailed review of several products, rapidLD chose
eProject two years ago to facilitate the project management
process.
For every client initiative, we create a
separate project in eProject. Existing rapidLD resources and
client resources are assigned to the project and each is
assigned specific roles with certain assignable rights ranging
from view only access up to project administrator. All project
documents such as current project plans, agendas, minutes, and
technical documents are stored in the system. The document
publisher sets access rights and determines who is notified of
a document's existence. Users can view, download, lock, and
upload documents at any time and from any internet connection
browser.
eProject allows for scheduling project tasks
and appointments in the built-in calendar. Creating a task is
a simple process and priorities, start / finish date, status,
work effort, and predecessors can be defined and tracked as
needed. Scheduling appointments is a similar process and
allows for automatic email notification to selected parties.
Other features include the ability to create and
maintain discussion threads, keep track of specific
project-related issues, conduct simple on-line polls, and list
relevant bookmarks.
rapidLD finds the version control
features for document management to be extremely useful.
eProject automatically stores every version of every document
uploaded to the site. Previous versions can be reviewed or
restored with ease. eProject can be used as a central
knowledge base or repository for any information related to
the project during the deployment and as a historical record
of the project.
rapidLD gets tremendous positive
response from clients using eProject. They like the ability to
access documents, see up-to-date status estimates on important
milestones, and it gives them the ability to actively take
part in the project. Communication between our consultants and
their project team is remarkable and managing projects with
eProject is much easier.
Visit
the eProject website>>
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rapidLD Website |
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If you haven't been to our website recently, check out
the latest updates. This includes overview documents of our
Learning Consulting engagements.
More
info>>
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Consulting Tools |
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Make sure to edit your Interests to include our Monthly
Consulting Tools. Each month we will provide a link to a
valuable tool that you can use in the development of Strategy,
Vendor Selection, Deployment, or Optimization of Learning
Technology.
Simply select edit your Interests below and check
Consulting Tools in the Areas of Interest.
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