I have worked in the Learning and Development arena for long enough now to know that when the commercial going gets tough L&D gets squeezed and however wrong that may feel, we have to learn to work with it. Over the past 8 years as the appetite for working online has grown many of our customers are beginning to get real benefits through focusing on the business issues, and I would venture to say, that important though it is, soft skills training is not going to give you a short term payback.

So how do we impact short term on the bottom line? Well we can consider three key areas:

· Sales specific Online Modules
· Learning Bytes
· Sales Project Wikis

I would differentiate these in that I would categorise online modules as complete learning modules with tracking, scoring, bookmarking etc. the sort of thing you may be used to seeing in conventional online systems. Learning Bytes would be more short term disposable learning pieces that take less than 10 minutes to complete, may or may not be trackable and would have a short “shelf life”. Finally Sales Project Wikis are wikis that can be used to build commitment to a campaign or specific initiative. By building commitment with the sales force this way there is a much higher likelihood of achieving sales success.

Sales Specific Online Modules

Online modules give you the chance to position a product or a product range and the easiest way to look at them is as replacing face-to-face training sessions. They may form part of a wider curriculum or stand alone, but either way they would be assigned to learners and tracked as part of the learner’s personal development plan. Taking the learner anywhere from 20 to 60 minutes to complete, the module may have pre and post assessment and will allow the learner to re-visit or browse the module as many times as he or she likes. A Nereus based academy will also allow you to track the training of stakeholders outside your own organisation such as re-sellers or distributors through a specific external facing part of your academy.

The module below is a good example of where one of our customers has chosen to focus on selling the product rather than the usual features and benefits overview, you may have to think a little laterally to match this with your own products, but the principles are the same.

Click on the image to see a demo

Learning Bytes

The second option we can look at are what we have come to call Learning Bytes. These are much smaller learning objects with a shorter shelf life and would typically take a learner less than 10 minutes to complete. They may relate to a specific promotion or a short campaign and could work either within the LMS or outside it. Either way Learning Bytes are tracked and understanding is checked through quiz questions. Learning Bytes are quick and easy to produce and can be refreshed on a regular basis as a campaign progresses.

Sales Project Wikis

Project Wikis are a relatively new innovation which leverage wiki technology to promote collaboration in sales approaches and planning. The example below is a pre-launch trial, but show how external sales teams can work jointly on initiatives and give feedback to a central project or campaign coordinator on how a specific initiative is going down. Wikis enable users to add to, edit or comment on the central document so experienced sales people can add their views on the relevance of proposed approaches, offers or incentives.

Sales Wiki  

Manage, map and publicise success against learning

Finally but not least in order to build confidence in future investment it’s important to track learning against sales performance and celebrate the successes. When we’re working with our customers we always emphasise the communication elements as much as the technical input, newsletters and other online news items all help to encourage usage. Websites aim for an attribute known as stickiness – and the same applies to a Learning Zone.

Like any new initiative the success of an online learning project is all about building momentum, and whilst the culture change required of an organisation to truly integrate learning is a marathon it is possible to score points on the interim sprints!

I often get asked how e-learning is changing within the Building Materials sector and where is it all heading. One thing is for sure is that the hunger for online information and education is growing, and as the hunger grows the need for more closely customised solutions increases. Understanding how the market works is a key part of how we are able to create those custom solutions, for example we are currently working on three separate projects all of which are aimed at raising the skill and knowledge level of the critical Branch Manager Group within our merchant customers.

Embedding a deep understanding of margin control and working capital is at the centre of two online programmes we are currently working on and the third project is centred on building a learning network to enable the knowledge and experience of the best practitioners to be shared by newer, less experienced individuals. Of the 100+ hours of industry learning we now deliver the quantity of commercial (as opposed to technical) content is up to around 20% and continuing to rise as our customers realise the value we can add in promoting new or value adding products; again this is a sign that the online environment is maturing.