2016 dts e-book

2016 DOTS Talent Solutions Pty Ltd 1

BUILDING

PRODUCTIVITY

AND

ENGAGEMENT

WITH YOUR LMS

You will learn how to develop a business case,

create a strategy and leverage your LMS for

maximum business impact in critical areas such as

engagement, productivity, culture and knowledge

retention. Brian Clark


Table of Contents

5 Ways to Get Your e-Learning Strategy Off the Ground ................................................. 3 1. Identify and clarify the key results that the successful execution of your strategy will

bring to the organisation. .......................................................................................................... 3 2. Begin your lobbying efforts early.................................................................................................... 4 3. Itemise your resource requirements clearly................................................................................... 5 4. Write a compelling business case. .................................................................................................. 6 5. Choose your project team carefully. .............................................................................................. 7

8 Steps to Create a Compelling Business Case for the Percepium LMS .................... 9 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 9 1. Diagnostic Process ........................................................................................................................ 10 2. Identify Training and Development Needs ................................................................................... 12 3. Interview Internal and External Stakeholders .............................................................................. 13 4. Map Out Existing and New Processes........................................................................................... 16 5. Measure Financial Impact ............................................................................................................. 16 6. Build Your Executive Support Team.............................................................................................. 17 7. Develop the Case .......................................................................................................................... 18 8. Project Manage the Entire Process ............................................................................................... 19

9 Ways The DOTS Percepium LMS Will Improve Your Organisation’s

Performance ......................................................................................................................... 20 1. Growth-Sustainability - Resilience ................................................................................................ 20 2. Simplify Access to Key Information .............................................................................................. 20 3. Remove/ Reduce your compliance risks ....................................................................................... 21 4. Enhance your tactical and strategic decision making ................................................................... 21 5. Plan successions easily .................................................................................................................. 22 6. Retain your organisation’s knowledge assets .............................................................................. 22 7. Capture and share best practices ................................................................................................. 22 8. Distribute information and training to your prospects and customers........................................ 23 9. Retain and develop high performance employees ....................................................................... 23

Knowledge, Innovation and Resilience Arrives for Work Every Day ....................... 24 Why is this important? .......................................................................................................................... 24 How do you retain knowledge? I am going to offer one idea here. ................................................... 24 What Next? ........................................................................................................................................... 25 What does e-learning have to do with knowledge capture? ................................................................ 25 How do you get from PowerPoint to e-Learning? ................................................................................ 25

About DOTS Talent Solutions ............................................................................................ 27


5 Ways to Get Your e-Learning Strategy Off the Ground

(strategies are only as good as their execution)

1. Identify and clarify the key results that the successful execution of your strategy will bring to the organisation.

This is the fun part of the process, however in my experience most people do not

think broadly enough when considering the results they can achieve with a

successful strategy. Keep in mind the key results also have horizons attached to

them; the results you deliver in six months will be different than those you will

achieve in twelve months. One proviso is that the evolution of your e-learning

strategy continues and is not curtailed once the obvious results have been

achieved.

There are a number of ways to get started. You can begin by starting to document

key performance, cultural, learning, engagement and other relevant indicators in

your organisation now and how these will change as a result of your strategy. For

example, you may currently take 2 weeks to properly induct new hires for a

particular level in the organisation. Your strategy objective is to reduce this to 5

days. You may have a performance review completion rate of only 71% currently,

however your strategic goal is to bump that up to over 90% in 6 months. You can

use a spreadsheet to begin to capture your before and after in a matrix format.

In a team environment, I have found mind-mapping tools to be very useful. I like

to have the map on a screen and people adding ideas in a real open brainstorming

environment. The mind map provides a perfect visual of the ideas and these can

be illustrated with relationships to other ideas using arrows and lines etc. Colours

and images add to the impact and retention of the information captured. The

mind-map can be saved in a number of formats and shared for further work. I like

to print out completed maps, laminate them and distribute them for people to

view as the strategy is developed and beyond as it is being executed.

This critical step is a combination of tangible results combined with vision. You need to

have a dream for your e-learning strategy and share that with others. The dream equals

the vision. No matter how compelling the vision, it must be communicated incessantly

to key decision makers and stakeholders throughout the organisation.


In my experience the vision has too often been restricted out of fear of rejection or risk

of failure. You and your team need to be realistic but bold. Other people need to get

excited by what your vision entails for the future of your organisation. For example, it

may be hard for people to get super excited about an improvement in compliance

reporting. They may get very excited at the prospect of being able to create personal

development plans and access online learning in interesting topics. Of course you can

have both but do not restrict your vision too much.

2. Begin your lobbying efforts early.

There is no reason to be a loner in the quest to get your e-learning strategy launched. I

recommend having a close analysis of the support network you need to get approval

for your strategy. There are a few key things to remember about this stage:

For a successful roll-out you will need a representative base of champions

across your organisation. You want to have people involved in every key

business unit and functional area. The purpose of this is to ensure you are

thinking as broadly as possible about the positive impact your strategy is going

to deliver.

Influencers are not always persons in the most obvious leadership positions. It

is important not to confuse a person’s title with their influence. There are

thought leaders, subject matter experts and influencers at all levels of the

organisation.

Remember that people will want to know “what's in it for me?” Have your

answer to this question ready when you begin speaking to people. For

example, people in finance may be interested in better reporting for training

expenditure. The sales manager will respond to her ability to deliver more

sales and product training for less cost. The operations and production

managers will see a consolidated compliance solution with one point of truth

that includes an audit trail.


The main thing is to do your homework and identify the current pain points in your

organisation and map these to your e-learning strategy. This process will give you

a nice set of elevator pitches and make your ability to converse with colleagues

more effective. When it comes time to write your business case the work you have

done to understand the stakeholder needs in your organisation will be valuable.

3. Itemise your resource requirements clearly.

It is one thing to request financial, human and infrastructure resources for your e-

learning project, it is an entirely different experience to be compelled to ask for more

resources once your project is underway. Once the technology and the project has been

rolled out there is still a need for administration and oversight. It is easier to get

approval for a project that includes a realistic forecast of resource requirements

than it is to ask for more resources when a project is stalled.

For example, depending upon the size of the company you may need full time

administration or a percentage of one person's job role to administer the LMS and

other technology included in your strategy. This is not always an easy thing to

predict and I suggest you ask among your network of learning and development

professionals. If you are new or do not have an established network there are

groups that have great resources.

www.aitd.com.au

www.td.org

If you are not currently using social networking platforms this is a good time to get

started. My personal favorite is LinkedIn. I have been amazed at how willing people

are to assist others who share a professional interest.

You will find plenty of learning and development professionals who have experience

in e-learning projects and are willing to share their experiences and knowledge. I

have asked questions of the user community in Linked In and the results have been

astounding both in the quality of replies and the interesting people I have met and

added to my network.

http://www.aitd.com.au/

http://www.td.org/


4. Write a compelling business case.

If you do an internet search you will find plenty of business case templates that

you can use. Depending upon your organisation you may already have precedents

you can use to provide a structure for your business case. I suggest you ask a few

people in your organisation who may have already written a business case or

persons who have reviewed business cases on behalf of the organisation.

In some organisations there is a strong culture of conforming to document

standards and in others there is no formal consideration of how a business case is

presented.

You may use the process of finding information about business cases as a means of

exploring possible supporters for your e-learning strategy project. When

researching and writing your business case never forget the target audience. It is

often a good idea to write down a demographic and psychographic outline of the

target audience to ensure your work remains aligned to their needs and

expectations.

I recommend creating a short (2 to 3 page) document that provides a good outline for

stakeholder review. This is often a good `thermostat' to test the decision making

environment for your project. You can proceed to your `in depth' document if you

are getting positive feedback from your overview and you are convinced that your

research has been thorough enough to proceed.


The full business case will be a cost - benefit document. You need to write clearly and

for the target audience who may not understand ‘jargon' and acronyms. Include the

following:

Strategies for managing risks (change and market risks)

Scenarios - you may include three but you will overly complicate your

document if you add many more.

ROI analysis using as many parameters that make sense. Do not forget some

of the `soft' results along with the hard numbers. You have created a

‘before’ and ‘after’ matrix to make it easier to link results to business

issues.

Identify the value the project will return. Scan for wide ranging identified

value returns from your project. Your senior leadership are always concerned

with productivity and talent retention. Link these outcomes to your

competitive operating environment, succession planning, and financial results.

You do not need a list of blockbusters; for example, if the onboarding process

is reduced from 10 to 5 days that has a direct impact on cost of hires and

productivity.

5. Choose your project team carefully.

Your project team includes people in your organisation, technology vendor(s),

technology support providers and of course the obvious ones in the organisational area

undertaking the e-learning project.

In my experience there are those that are energised and motivated by a new project

but lack the focus to execute the whole project to completion. There are others who

dig in and thrive on execution and the sense of victory when the project is

completed and outcomes are realised. Both of these types are very useful but ensure

you have not over loaded your team with the energetic starters.

I recommend profiling individuals in project teams as well as a team profile to empower

everyone to understand how they can be more effective as a team. I use an exceptional

tool called Extended Disc. Once I have profiled possible project team members I debrief

each person and assist in the induction of each member to the project team.


With a team profile, I am also able to design communication and collaboration systems

and processes that suit the team. I am able to forecast interpersonal relationship issues

and take preventive steps to ensure the team operates well. The allocation of tasks and

milestones is also facilitated by understanding the team’s behavioral profile to ensure

maximum productivity.


8 Steps to Create a Compelling Business Case for the Percepium LMS

Introduction You may know it and your team may know it but you cannot take it for granted that other

members of your organisation understand the benefits from an LMS. As you develop your

business case you must remain aware that there are a number of facets to it that will

collectively determine the success of your case. These facets include marketing, financial

and operational.

You will need to market your business plan to influencers and decision makers in your

organisation. Do not get complacent that your business case will rest on its own

laurels; it will not. You need to think carefully about your communications and

information that supports your case.

Although financial facets of your business case may not be a comfort zone for you

they are absolutely necessary. You must be able to adopt a financial perspective for

your business case that ideally includes you thinking like a finance person would.

Operations is a big area. What we are talking about here is being able to look at

existing processes that exist not just in the learning and development area but more

broadly. There are usually a bunch of processes that are directly aligned with or on the

periphery of L & D that are clunky, inaccurate and kill productivity. One of the most

common of these is on-boarding/induction, knowledge retention, skills gap analysis

and succession planning.

Ok, with these concepts in mind let’s get started.


1. Diagnostic Process

We like to think of this phase as diagnostic since this word accurately reflects your

objective. You need to create a diagnosis of current reality in your organisation

that is clear and supported by information.

Needs analysis Another common term used for needs analysis is business requirements.

There are probably some needs you have already identified that have prompted you to

begin this journey to LMS adoption or replacing your current system. You need to cross

check that these needs are not you centric. Needs analysis must incorporate the entire

organisation and stretch out to include external stakeholders as well.

Recently one of our clients was successful in gaining approval for an LMS based on the

compelling outcome of increased customer contact and product training effectiveness.

The company is very focused on revenue growth in new markets so this benefit was

high priority. The LMS was implemented to provide their prospects and customers high

value information and learning opportunities related to their range of healthcare

products.

The more you analyse your organisation the more you will uncover. The Percepium LMS

has an extensive feature set and this will permit you to look at needs such as continuing

professional development tracking, profiling, competency management, internal and

external surveying, training vendor management, performance appraisals, inductions,

succession planning among many others. The key is to dig and dig deeply.

When a need is identified, it is advisable to include the following in your documentation;

an accurate description of the need/requirement

a brief overview of the current situation

a vision of how the issue is resolved with the LMS

clear benefits to the organisation and its people


Strategy alignment It is absolutely necessary that you understand your organisation’s

strategy. There may be strategic horizons including the current year, two years, five

years and so forth. Your LMS business case must address the strategic objectives within

each of these horizons and demonstrate its utility in both the execution and ongoing

support of strategic objectives.

Strategic objectives may include ones that are focused on areas such as:

Business Growth

- revenues/head count/locations/acquisitions/mergers/new products among

others.

Business Consolidation

- changed focus areas/sale of business units/office rationalisation/hiring

freeze/reduce or increase outsourcing etc.

Resource Planning

- talent attraction/talent development/succession/manufacturing planning/

new markets/capital expenditure/relocation/expansion/suppliers/

currency management/materials sourcing etc.

Financial and Operational targets

- improvements to efficiency, cost reductions, capital investments, R & D budgets,

mergers and acquisitions.

Stakeholders

- board composition/shareholders/suppliers/partnerships/institutions etc.

Your business case should be as comprehensive as possible in linking the LMS technology

to the strategic objectives in your organisation. The level of detail in a strategic plan

available to employees varies greatly. Do your best to get the most up to date

information and you may be able to supplement this during your stakeholder interviews

later on.


Purchasing process You can avoid a lot of heart break and disappointment if you know

how your organisation manages software purchasing before you get too far in your

business case. You should be clear on all aspects of the purchasing process so that your

business case does not contradict or potentially contravene these processes.

Here are some examples of the information you must have:

What is your organisation’s capital expenditure level?

Has your organisation purchased hosted or SaaS software previously?

Who is involved in a software purchase? (IT/ c-level/external vendor or

services provider/you/your manager etc.)

Is there an existing budget allocation or will one need to be made?

What will happen to your business case during the purchasing approval phase? Will

you still participate? Who will drive the case if not?

Does your organisation typically pilot new software systems prior to engaging fully

with them?

2. Identify Training and Development Needs

This step should be fairly straight forward since it is likely training needs precipitated

your creating this business case. This step requires you to think just as broadly as you did

in listing out your organisation’s needs and there may be some duplication.

When identifying your training and development needs, try to link them to your

organisation’s strategic objectives. Your training needs may be different for different

parts of your organisational structure, professions, vocations, locations etc. In many of

our clients there are training needs identified for customers, suppliers and strategic

partners. Your training needs should have both time and stakeholder horizons.


3. Interview Internal and External Stakeholders

There are two aspects to your interviewing phase. One is straight information gathering

while the other is more sublime. You may use your interviewing phase to collect

champions, supporters and influencers for your business case.

As you interview across your organisation you will by default be presenting a picture of an

improved organisation for each of the people you interview and their area of

responsibility.

Once you have collected your champions, supporters and influencers they are added to

your communication and collaboration list. From now on you keep them up to date, ask

them further questions and so forth to keep them engaged with your business case.

I recommend you use a tool such as Microsoft Sharepoint, Google Sites, Evernote,

OneNote, Podio or any other option that is available to you. You can set up a portal or

site that people can view your communications, add comments and other files to support

a comprehensive knowledge management solution for your project. This eliminates the

need to rely on email.

We have recently worked with an L & D team that are masters of this phase. They

operate within a comparatively small business unit but interviewed across the

enterprise. Within two months they had so much energy created around their LMS

business case that the other larger business units began clamoring for the LMS as well.

In their case the momentum was unstoppable, the project was approved and they have

retained project stewardship for the enterprise roll-out.


Stakeholder Management

This diagram illustrates one way to segment your stakeholder population and how best to

communicate with them to manage information sharing, influence and participation in

your project. Apply this diagram and you may like to add persons to a list with their

quadrant or add names directly to the quadrant.


Here are some ideas for your stakeholder interviews;

Interview Questions Notes

What are your goals for the

quarter/financial year?

Do you have a plan you can share with me?

How are you measured in your position?

How is your team, department, business

unit measured?

What metrics do you use to track your

team, department, business unit?

What are the key issues you face now?

Is there another department or business

unit that has direct influence on you

achieving your objectives?


4. Map Out Existing and New Processes

While you are interviewing you can capture information on how things get done in the

various parts of your organisation. I am certain this will uncover some insights about how

your strategy will alleviate ad-hoc processes and administrative resource intensity. For

example:

how does a manager deal with a training request from an employee?

How does your team manage these requests?

How does an induction program get organised for new employees?

Is there a process for rolling out performance appraisals?

Do you have a process for identifying high potentials?

There are many processes you can identify and some may be so nebulous from a process

perspective that each instance may be more ad-hoc. Despite this, map out as many as

you can and these will provide the foundation for demonstrating how the Percepium LMS

will deliver more structured, automated processes and productivity across the

organisation.

In our experience we have found that with the best of intentions many organisations

have learning and development processes that are dead ends. For example, employees

not hearing back from a training request, not being able to apply for internal positions,

not getting feedback on their work, and lack of professional development.

Keep this in mind when you are process mapping since many processes in learning and

development are circular as opposed to linear.

5. Measure Financial Impact

This step in your business case may be difficult outside your operational area. You should

have been able to gather some financial impact information in your interviews however

not all people use financial impact measurement in their analysis.

It is perfectly fine to include projections, estimates and forecasts that are based on best

available information. Do everything you can to ensure the reasoning behind your

projections, estimates and forecasts is sound.


Some examples of financial impact that our clients have used include the following and

these are only a guide;

productivity gains enabling re-deployment of human resources

cost savings in training delivery

fast induction and job readiness saving x hours/days

reduction in number of information systems/database

risk reduction in compliance management (value of possible damages incurred by the organisation)

reduction in staff turnover

consolidation/elimination of external training vendors

6. Build Your Executive Support Team

You can build your executive support team during your interview phase if you secure

some face time with your executive team. You may be surprised to learn that many of

our clients found enthusiastic support from the CFO and other financial executives more

quickly than others.

Your business case will have cost savings, efficiencies, and productivity enhancements

made obvious to the readers. Your CEO may see risk management, your CIO may see a

system she does not have to worry about (fully hosted LMS), marketing will see another

communication channel, operations may see faster on-boarding reduced compliance

risk.

The fact is all members of an organisation see reality through the lens of responsibility

and stewardship. As a learning and development professional you must see the

organisation in its entirety and your business case will reflect this. When you have

successfully completed this phase of your business case your probability of success has

increased dramatically.


If you work in a large organisation or one that has some insularity in its executive ranks

your job is much harder but not impossible. You need to plan your approaches to the

executive team more carefully. This may necessitate finding creative ways to gain

contact with the executive team. This could be as easy as finding a go-between for an

introduction or as bizarre as a well planned interception in the car-park.

7. Develop the Case

This is just a basic framework to help you create your business case.

Your business case should include supporting information that is easily read and absorbed

by the various readers of the document. It is advised to include as many visual

representations of information such as graphs, shapes, tables and images.

Current Situation and issues

across the Enterprise that have

been identified

The LMS solution that will solve

these issues

Improvements that will be realised with the solution.

Include all of the issues you

have identified

Strategic objectives that will

be supported and sustained by

the solution


8. Project Manage the Entire Process

A word of advice, learn what you can about basic project management. If you can

understand the principles of project management, gain competency in your chosen tools

and set up a project plan. An understanding of basic project management principles will

help to instill confidence in others about your project. Beyond this, you will be managing

a range of parallel and dependent tasks and milestones. It goes a bit beyond managing a

to-do list. You will be more effective and productive if you use project principles and

tools to support your work.


9 Ways The DOTS Percepium LMS Will Improve Your Organisation’s

Performance

1. Growth-Sustainability - Resilience This whitepaper is based on over ten years working with organisations that have implemented

learning and collaborative technology. We have consolidated the enormous amount of data

we have on the results our clients have achieved with the Percepium LMS into 10 key

result areas.

The market for Learning Management Systems grew over 21% in the last 12 months and the

overall market is estimated to be over 2.5 billion USD. This growth is based on impressive

precedents established by organisations that have realised substantial return on investment

by implementing Learning Management Solutions.

In the current economic environment there has been a surge of interest in learning and

collaborative technologies as organisations reduce travel and other expenses linked to

training and development.

The feedback we receive from clients is that once established the LMS has changed the

learning and development paradigm in the organisation significantly. The cost reductions

achieved by our clients include increased productivity, reduced travel, improved planning

and decision, risk reduction, among others.

2. Simplify Access to Key Information

Most of the clients we work with have their learning and development information in a

number of databases or Excel spreadsheets. In addition to these sources there is information

retained in payroll systems and document folders and personal information management

systems such as Outlook. In this type of environment information is difficult or even

impossible to access and consolidate. This has enormous impacts on the organisation.


With Percepium, our clients achieve these benefits consistently:

Enhanced productivity

Informed planning and decision making

Improves the strategic posture of learning and development

Eliminates manual processing and errors

3. Remove/ Reduce your compliance risks

This is where many of our clients started their e-learning journey. These clients often reacted

to legislative requirements that directly impacted on the ways they managed their business.

E-learning and talent solutions provide a fast and auditable process to deliver and assess

people in compliance related content. People who undertake compliance based learning can

be tracked automatically for compliance expiry and re-training. The organisation has a real

time ‘snap-shot’ of the compliance gaps in the organisation and can easily address these risks.

The use of Percepium enables the easy delivery of supporting courses and

collaboration tools to ensure the learning is retained and applied on the job.

4. Enhance your tactical and strategic decision making

When you have access to the right information you can be far more effective in your tactical

and strategic decision making.

This key information is available in real time and across many key drivers of individual and

organisational performance when you have a system like Percepium that automatically

captures data.

Percepium eliminates the need for searching for information when you need it. Learning and

Development is able to position itself more effectively as a key strategic input when it is able

to supply timely information that relates to risk, compliance, retention and attraction of key

talent.

You have the option to decentralise the reporting to enable line managers to have access to

information about their specific team members.


5. Plan successions easily

The workforce demographics are changing dramatically all over the globe. Succession

planning is one of the primary resource planning risks facing organisations in an environment

plagued with skills shortages.

Human resource planning requires alignment with the organisational strategy and growth.

To assist in succession planning a solution like Percepium identifies potential succession

gaps as well as facilitating skills acquisition for persons identified to undertake learning

paths and developmental plans. Percepium facilitates predictive planning and decision

making.

6. Retain your organisation’s knowledge assets

Does your organisation have processes to retain the knowledge that is within each of your

employees?

It is one of the most overlooked assets and competitive advantages that can be leveraged.

We have worked with clients who have effectively tapped into the collective knowledge of

their employees with common tools such as Microsoft PowerPoint, Visio, Excel, audio and

video files. These files are easily converted to SCORM (if desired) or simply imported into

Percepium in their native form.

Once you have the knowledge captured it can be used as online courses, blended workshops

and published content in the Percepium Libraries.

7. Capture and share best practices

Organisations are able to capture and distribute best practices very effectively. You may

wish to enable best practices to be captured directly by the practitioners. These people can

capture their practices in a range of formats and then distribute to the entire organisation or

to specific user populations.

The best practice content may be as simple as PowerPoint or include audio and video files.

People creating this content require no technical or special software skills. There will be a

permanent record of who accessed the best practice content as well as discussion groups

and libraries where further information may be viewed or downloaded.


8. Distribute information and training to your prospects and customers

Organisations are able to grant access to unique Percepium web portal environments to their

clients, prospects and other stakeholders. Your prospects are able to learn more about your

organisation, your products and services by accessing information in a range of formats and

styles.

One of our practice areas delivers enhanced business development capacity in our client organisations.

9. Retain and develop high performance employees

Most organisations acknowledge the need to retain high performing and high potential

employees. Percepium provides a self-service platform for these employees to take

stewardship of their careers. In Percepium they can explore career paths and gain clear

understanding of what competencies and skills are needed to progress in the organisation.

They can access learning and development opportunities as well as demonstrate their

commitment to shared goals and objectives through contributing to Discussions, Libraries,

Courses, Surveys and other tools. Coaches, mentors and managers can utilise the Percepium

360 module to create profiles to facilitate constructive feedback, self reflection, and award

behavioural competencies.


Knowledge, Innovation and Resilience Arrives for Work Every Day You can achieve dramatic results in your organisation by harnessing the power of e-

learning and collaboration. You can increase this power and maximize the returns on

investments you have made in your learning strategy by tapping into the embedded

knowledge you have in your people. This article is a simplified overview of a process that

achieves knowledge retention with flow- on cultural benefits for the entire organisation.

Why is this important?

Knowledge retention goes hand in hand with talent management and staff retention. In a

market with skilled talent shortages it is imperative you have strategies to retain your

best people while attracting new hires. However effective these strategies are people

will still leave; whether they are poached, start a family or retire.

The costs of staff attrition are high and one key cost is the loss of knowledge in your

organisation when experience people leave without a knowledge legacy available for

successors and others in the organisation.

How do you retain knowledge? I am going to offer one idea here.

Every organisation has thought leaders. These persons come from all parts of the

organisation and their thought leadership is usually recognized by others in the

organisation; who tends to get asked questions the most about a particular topic? The

thought leaders do not necessarily represent the most popular, vocal or otherwise high

profile persons in the organisation.

Talented people, regardless of their position, regularly innovate in their positions. It may

be small incremental work flow process changes or it may be a completely re-engineered

system or process that delivers tangible improvements in effectiveness and productivity.

The results produced by these people may be noted, but how often are their work

practices explored with enough depth to document and replicate?

This knowledge capture strategy needs to be approached as an organisational project

initiative. The project needs to be approved and adopted throughout the organisation, top

to bottom. The project must have resources committed and the initiative needs to be well

communicated. Once the project is underway there is no reason why it cannot be made a

part of the embedded culture of the organisation.


The key is to provide your people with the tools to capture and share their ideas with

others. In my experience the easiest tool is often Microsoft PowerPoint. PowerPoint has

been a part of most people’s desktops for a number of years now and whether or not a

person has progressed past beginner level proficiency, they are usually familiar enough to

put together some basic slides.

What Next?

In some of the businesses I have worked with, the roll-out of the knowledge project has

been woven into the performance review process. The performance review often

presents an ideal environment to ensure persons understand their role in the project and

the organisation’s willingness to support the individual in the project while engaged in

their normal work responsibilities.

What does e-learning have to do with knowledge capture?

e-learning technology serves as the distribution and tracking system. There are all sorts

of variants that will serve as good platforms to share knowledge and make it available

anytime and anywhere. As a leading developer of a learning and talent management

solution, I am biased towards our solution called Percepium.

Percepium includes many learning, performance and collaboration features to support a

project of this type. Percepium and other solutions automate all the processes

associated with online learning access and delivery as well as tracking and recording all

activities performed. Other solutions can be as simple as CD/DVD or a Wiki or Microsoft

Sharepoint.

How do you get from PowerPoint to e-Learning?

I am the first to admit that this type of e-learning project will not produce ‘level three’

e-learning content. The content need not be too prehistoric either. If you are interested

in seeing what is possible with PowerPoint you can visit this site with some great tips.

Microsoft Mix is a free add-on for PowerPoint that supports the development of SCORM

courses from PowerPoint presentations. There are other tools as well such as Articulate

Storyline, Adobe Captivate among many others.


A Simple Overview of the Steps

Identify and assess your organisation’s knowledge risks

Prioritise these risks and add timelines if desired

Which ones are critical?

Will they cost money or present litigation risks?

Will they compromise or destroy the competitiveness of the enterprise?

Identify a Project Manager

This has often been a learning and development professional in my clients,

however we have worked with sales managers and even ‘c’ level executives and

others. Your project manager selection is based on the scope of the project and

the skills needed to manage it. (If sales knowledge is the critical risk, it makes

sense to consider the sales manager).

Identify the thought leaders/knowledge sources

Determine the tools needed to capture and deliver the knowledge

Acquire the tools.

Train people in their use. One of the most successful projects I have worked

on included training a small group of sale professionals some advanced

PowerPoint skills.

Create and roll out the communication plan to the organisation

Coach and support the thought leaders in their authoring work

Ensure that time is allocated for this work. I like the idea of ‘sanctioned

time’; depending upon the culture of the organisation this could be time

spent in the office without disruption or permitting people to work at home.

Publish the content to the e-learning system


Demonstrate the content throughout the organisation

Establish access protocols.

Configure delivery platform as desired.

Keep the content updated as needed.

Establish review cycles and include feedback as part of the delivery of content.

This is a short primer on how you can tap into a wealth of knowledge that is often taken

for granted and lost for a number of reasons. DOTS Talent Solutions can help you design

and execute this type of project. Once we show you how you will likely be able to

maintain this type of knowledge initiative and reap the benefits as a learning organisation.

About DOTS Talent Solutions We are a specialised software and consulting business that delivers improved enterprise

performance to organisations of all types and sizes. We design and develop the Percepium

LMS that has a global client community.

We are well known for our experience in working across a range of industries and user

populations. Our technical team is renowned for its responsiveness and knowledge of

client requirements.

You will not find a more effective and knowledgeable partner for your LMS and talent

requirements.

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