Janet Clarey, Senior Analyst November, 2011...This document is part of the Bersin & Associates...

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IN THIS CASE STUDYOne of the world’s largest energy companies transformed its learning technology solution with a new custom front-end that changed how it is perceived and used by personnel worldwide. At the same time, it decreased operational costs of training, and improved participation and mandated compliance – saving the company both a significant learning management system (LMS) investment, as well as untold amounts of additional money and personal time in meeting regulatory requirements.

The energy company had a problem. Despite high-level commitment to training and development, supported by a significant annual capital investment in its program, the company’s learning management system, implemented in 2005, was failing. It was often unreliable, generally inefficient, and increasingly disliked and avoided by personnel throughout the organization. In response to what was seen as an inadequate solution, multiple business units created peripheral systems, SharePoint sites and even blogs.

In the third quarter of 2009, the company sought to rectify the problem by first conducting surveys on user perceptions and needs. Based on the results, it implemented a pilot program to leverage what was learned. The goal for the learning organization was aggressive – implement a solution by the end of the second quarter of 2010. Ultimately, a scalable, easily configurable platform that could accommodate the company’s global training and learning needs for years to come was established.

BERSIN & ASSOCIATES © NOVEBER 2011 • LICENSED MATERIAL

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FOCUS:

Drilling for Deeper Learning PotentialHow an International Energy Company Salvaged Its Legacy LMS Investment to Deliver Greater Business Benefits Worldwide

—Janet Clarey, Senior Analyst | November, 2011

ENTERPRISE LEARNING

ORGANIZATION AND

GOVERNANCE

LEARNING PROGRAMS

CONTENT DEVELOPMENT

LEARNING MEASUREMENT

LEARNING SYSTEMS

INFORMAL LEARNING

THIS MATERIAL IS LICENSED TO EXPERTUS FOR DISTRIBUTION ONLY.

2BERSIN & ASSOCIATES © NOVEMBER 2011 • LICENSED MATERIAL


DRILLING FOR DEEPER LEARNING POTENTIAL

This case study describes how the company:

• Upgradeditslearningarchitecture;

• Outsourcedallhostingandlevel31support;

• Configuredagraphicalinterfacethatintegratessoftwarewiththecompany's existing LMS2;

• StreamlinedexistingLMSdatatoimprovetheuserexperience;and,

• Addedasought-after,ad-hocanalyticalreportingtool3.

This case study also details how an international energy company’s learning organization solved a serious problem that threatened executive commitment to enterprisewide learning management – expanding the scope, style and effectiveness of learning in the process. From this case study, you will learn:

• HowtoinstillconfidenceinusersoftheLMSatalllevelsof theorganization;

• Whyitisessentialforbusinessunitstobuyintotheenterpriselearningsolution;and,

• Bestpracticesfordeveloping,implementingandsustainingan effective learning management technology solution. e

1 Although this differs among companies, some support models define support offered

by three levels, with level 1 determining the issue and resolving any common / easy-to-

solveproblems.Whenanissuecannotberesolvedbylevel1support,theissueisthen

escalatedtolevel2;forthoseissueswhichcannotberesolvedbylevel2 support, they

arethenescalatedtolevel3,thehighestlevelofsupportwhichisresponsiblefor

handling the most difficult problems.2 Throughout this case study, the words “portal” and “front end” are used to

describe a configured graphical interface that integrates a solution developed by

Expertus with the company's existing LMS by streamlining existing LMS data to

improve the user experience.3 The reporting tool mentioned throughout this case study is called SmartVisibility – a

tool from Expertus which is used to consolidate training data from multiple systems

to visualize and interpret learning metrics and trends.




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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Company Overview 5

Business Environment 5

Learning Organization 6

Establishing Confidence in the Learning

Management System 10

Addressing User Feedback: Fixing What Was

Not Working 11

2009: The Upgrade Begins in Earnest 14

Executive and Cultural Issues 15

Lessons Learned 18

Best Practices 19

Next Steps 20

Conclusion 20

Appendix I: Topics for Discussion and Learning 22

Key Learnings 22

Ideas for Action 22

QuestionstoConsider 23

Appendix II: Table of Figures 24

About Us 25

About This Research 25




Company Overview

Theinternationalenergycompanywasformedinthe1800s.Withtotalassetsof$160billion,thecompanyhasapproximately30,000employeesworldwideoperating in more than 25 countries. Its activities include oil exploration, production and refining.

AsofDecember31,2010,itisamongthetopU.S.energycompanies,basedon market capitalization, proved reserves, and production of oil and natural gas. The company is also known as one of the largest refineries worldwide, among non-government-controlled companies.

Business Environment

The current business environment of the petroleum-based energy industry is highly complex, with significant challenges facing corporations striving to meet business process improvement objectives. These challenges include financing the large scale of operations over a geographically dispersed area, the high cost of equipment and labor, the unpredictability of natural and manmade events on operations, and the general volatility of global conditions.

The specific business climate for the company is also very challenging. As the company searches for and taps into new sources of petroleum, its efforts are complicated by political risk and technological considerations. This has made the search for oil and gas increasingly difficult. Of course, competition is fierce. Other large global multinationals compete in the same space for the same resources, and some companies are backed or financed by nation-states with almost unlimited resources.

Figure 1: International Energy Firm at a Glance

• Founded: 1800s

• Annual Revenues: Approximately $200 billion

• Employees: Approximately30,000worldwide

Source: Bersin & Associates, 2011.




Learning Organization

The corporate learning organization at the company comprises three principal elements:

1. Leadershipanddevelopment;

2. Humanresources;and,

3. Informationtechnology.

The leadership and development element “owns” the learning management system and provides functional learning guidance across the company’s business units. HR and IT support it in this activity.

The governance model for learning is a federated4 approach in which each business unit controls its own internal HR and learning functions. Day-to-day activities (such as curriculum development, vendor selection and scheduling) are handled at the local business-unit level. Corporate recommends and manages companywide courses, and supports business units by helping them find courses specific to their functional needs.

4 A "federated model" has a small core team that manages some technology and

corporate programs, and empowers business and functional units to run their own

training programs.

Figure 2: International Energy Company – Learning Organization


Copyright © 2007 Bersin & Associates. All rights reserved. Page 2

Lear

ning

Org

aniz

atio

n

Leadership and Development

Human Resources

Information Technology

LMS, Support for Business Units

HR and IT provide

support for the LMS




This means when a need is realized at the business-unit level, it is typically addressed with local resources – the local training department will handle it. The department will make recommendations, look for vendors and so on. In most cases, that is where it stops. If, for some reason, the issue cannot be handled locally or the business unit wants input from the corporate level, the company will allocate learning advisors to the different business units.

The learning advisors, because they are familiar with the business units, know who to contact. For example, if a plant manager wants training on a particular subject, an advisor will ask questions, obtain materials and determine potential training vendors. That is typically how the need is addressed at this level.

The relationship between learning advisors and business units is very active, and the learning advisors are committed to embedding themselves in the business units that they support. Yet they have to walk a fine line. They want to be there to help as much as possible, but they do not want to give the impression that they are micromanaging or taking over business-unit functions. As one executive stated,

Copyright © 2007 Bersin & Associates. All rights reserved. Page 1

Downstream Business Unit

Corporate Learning Function

Upstream Business Unit

Enterprise LMS

• Corporate programs and content only

• Minimal shared services • Limited budget and headcount • Smaller staff • Business units controls its own HR

and learning functions

Figure 3: Federated Model


The relationship

between learning

advisors and

business units is

very active, and the

learning advisors

are committed

to embedding

themselves in the

business units that

they support.

KEY POINT




“The business units are closest to the situation and know their own training needs better

than we could. So we try to stay on our side of the fence and just support them, rather

than take anything from them.”

To keep learning objectives aligned with the needs of the business, the company has training administrators scattered throughout the business units. These administrators do everything from creating content for training courses (in some cases) to assigning training to particular people to administering content once it is active. For instructor-led training (ILT) courses, the training administrators may actually enter the completions for those courses into the LMS manually.

All training at the company is divided into the following four categories:

• Compliance – Is mandatory training, required by a legislative body or standardsorganization;

• Technical–Relatestospecificon-the-jobskills;forexample,anoperatorinapowerplanthastoknowhowtoworkspecifictypesofmachinery;

• Supervisory–Addressesmanagerialskills;and,

• Soft Skills – Covers areas that do not fall into the other categories, particularly those that relate to interpersonal communications and collaboration.

Compliance Technical

Supervisory Soft Skill

Figure 4: Training Categories


To keep learning

objectives aligned

with the needs

of the business,

the company

has training

administrators

scattered

throughout the

business units.

KEY POINT




Compliance, critical in the energy business, accounts for the lion’s share of training at the company, with technical training second. These categories far exceed the other two.

Training delivery modes include:

• Self-pacede-learning;

• Classroom-basedILT;

• VirtualILT(vILT);and,

• On-the-jobtraining.

e-Learning and classroom-based ILT account for the majority of formal training completionstoday;however,thecompanyisseeingadramaticincreaseinvirtualinstructor-ledtraining.Whilethecompanydoesnotcurrentlyhaveanative virtual learning tool integrated with its LMS, employees who want a virtual training session can schedule it outside of the LMS and communicate the details, so that completions can be entered in the LMS.

The company also uses an on-the-job training delivery method that is not considered “instructor-led” because it is not scheduled, there is no class roster and employees cannot register for it. One manager explained,

Figure 5: Training Delivery Modes


Self-Pacede-Learning

Classroom-Based Instructor-Led

Training

Virtual Instructor-Led Training

On-the-Job Training




“You can’t see that an on-the-job training session is going to take place two weeks from now in a certain room. It’s more spontaneous,

where a foreman or manager will grab two or three guys and say, ‘Machine X is down for maintenance. I’m going to take you to

machine Y and teach you something about it.’ It’s spontaneous, but it’s still worth credit and

needs to be logged in the system. It’s also a very popular delivery mode.”

On-the-job completions are entered manually in the LMS. Training administrators will receive a note from the person who conducted the training saying that an on-the-job training occurred, who was involved and whatthepersonlearned.Whilethecompanyistryingtoeliminateasmuchmanual work as possible, there is currently no other way to capture on-the-job training. Due to its nature, it has to be done retroactively and manually.

Establishing Confidence in the Learning Management System

In mid-2005, the company deployed a new learning management system. At that time, multiple learning systems of one form or another were scattered acrossthecompany.Somewereassophisticatedasafull-blownLMS;somewere simply spreadsheets. The company decided that an enterprisewide LMS was needed and the other learning systems would be eliminated.

The learning organization had a number of challenges associated with the original LMS implementation that contributed to the bad reputation it got within the organization. One was how old data was handled. Unfortunately, because of timeline and other pressures, there was really no data cleanup involved in the original LMS implementation. All the data from the other systems was more or less dumped into the LMS.

At the time of the original LMS implementation, no formal governance existed to determine what information was loaded into the system, how that information was used in a consistent manner or how the LMS was used. There was a general lack of coordination. Additionally, the technology supporting the original LMS was extremely unstable. After two or three years of running the system, as well as having constant complaints from users and managers, the learning organization started looking at what was needed to improve the system to make the learning experience better.

Whileattendingvariousproductsupportevents,businessanalystsqueriedothercompanies about the vendors they were using for their LMSs and how they were handling challenges. Some of the same names kept coming up in these

At the time of

the original LMS

implementation, no

formal governance

existed.

KEY POINT




conversations. The learning organization started a dialogue with several of the solution providers mentioned. It shared its LMS challenges and learned of some of the best practices the providers had deployed at other companies.

Eventually, the company brought in a solution provider to analyze its LMS. The provider conducted a detailed analysis of key configurations and data elements, and then worked with several business units to create process-driven job-aids that allowed a governed approach to loading information into the LMS in a consistent way. That helped solve some of the problems for those business units and raised an awareness of the continued need to improve the LMS. Thus began a working relationship with Expertus and the rebuilding of confidence with learning management within the company.

Back when the learning organization originally surveyed end-users, one of the main complaints was that the LMS was simply not easy to use – the user interface was not intuitive. Even more so, the inconsistent way that data was being entered into the system made the interface problems much worse. An administrator in HR confirmed,

“People didn’t know what training they needed to take and when they needed to take it. It just

wasn’t clear in the user interface.”

Many saw the system as a necessary evil, a tool by which corporate HR and corporate legal assigned mandatory training. They expected to use it once or twice a year, click through an e-learning course that they did not really like, and complete it just to say that they had done it. Users wanted to get in and get out as fast as possible.

In addition to interface complaints, one of the toughest challenges the company had to address was the many cultures that fall under its corporate umbrella. Before the original LMS was rolled out, the company had multiple LMSs, all of which had been grown organically. A new user portal would lay on top of the original LMS to provide a more user-friendly experience (see Figure 6).

Another challenge was with reporting. The company was using the native reporting feature in the LMS to deliver most of its reports, but there was a problem. It kept running into the need for an ad-hoc reporting tool that would allow business units to build their own reports and queries to get the data that they required – as opposed to having someone build a custom report. That took quite a bit of time and, depending on how busy the resources were, it could result in a significant delay before that report could be built and delivered.

Addressing User Feedback: Fixing What Was Not Working




According to a leader in the company’s learning organization,

“Our business units need that information at their fingertips to make decisions. We’re a very compliance-driven industry. If employees

don’t have the proper amount of training, they can’t and shouldn’t be allowed to work in a particular operating unit, for

example. Those managers need to have that information to make decisions on who is

and is not allowed or qualified to work in a particular area. That’s very, very important.”

Figure 6: Expertus Reporting Feature





From a business standpoint, when there is compliance training on subjects, such as ethics and workplace harassment, the company needs to understand who has and has not taken that training and, therefore, is compliant or not. It had become difficult to run that type of data from the system and to add ad-hoc elements to standard reports to do certain types of modeling using the rigid reports. Managers could get certain types of data, but they could not easily add elements to get other data. That is where the need for anad-hocreportingtoolreallycameintoplay.Withthenewinterface(seeFigure 7), managers could sit with a report developer, and drag and drop the needed elements of interest, then easily get that data, versus having to go through a full-blown process of requesting a new report and hoping to get that developed in a timely manner.

Part of the company’s business case for the query tool was to be able to answer inquiries more quickly in the event of an incident. It would also be able to use that reporting data more easily to get training rebates from certain states when it had done a significant amount of training in applicable areas. So in addition to the compliance piece, there was a monetary benefit as well.

Figure 7: Expertus Manager Interface


Part of the

company’s business

case for the query

tool was to be able

to answer inquiries

more quickly in

the event of an

incident.

KEY POINT




In summary, the following two specific needs were clearly defined:

1. A custom-developed user portal that could lay on top of the original LMS toprovideamoreuser-friendlyexperienceforthoseusingthesystem;and,

2. An ad-hoc query tool that would provide a solution to the ongoing reporting problem.

As the company developed its relationship with Expertus, those tools became available.

2009: The Upgrade Begins in Earnest

In mid-2009, four years after the original LMS implementation, an upgrade to the learning management system began to incorporate a new user portal, and ad-hoc querying and reporting tool. During the upgrade project, the company determined that it was going to face several internal challenges.

One was the LMS technologies – they were not core to the company. So an attempt to upgrade the LMS to run more efficiently was not going to work due to the company’s core networking infrastructure. At the time, several other initiatives were in process to upgrade hardware and software. There had been a lot of noise from the IT perspective about supporting the LMS internally. According to one of the project managers,

“There was a little finger-pointing for a while. HR was saying that it was a technology

problem and IT was saying, ‘garbage in garbage out.’ There were problems all

around, but everyone knew that the system had to be fixed.”

Whiletheystartedwithaninitialdesignfromtheupgradeattemptandearlierpilot, what Expertus brought to the table was significantly different. Listening to its advisory committee, making sure of the “pain points5” and learning that sometimes less is more when it comes to interface designs, the resulting portal solution allowed for a significant amount of the complexity to be handled behind the scenes, so that the system would work well for the users.

Today, with the user portal that is put on top of the LMS, everything is very clear(seeFigure8).Theportalhasthreetabs–WhatINeedtoDo,WhatI’veDone and Search. If an employee wants to take a training course, it is right undertheWhatINeedtoDotab.Theusercanclickonit,registerifitisILTorlaunch it immediately if it is an e-learning course. Once an e-learning course is completed,thecompletiondataismovedtoWhatI’veDone,sothereis

5 The phrase “pain points” refers to recurrent issues or problems.

Consider

outsourcing

technologies not

considered core

to the company’s

business.

KEY POINT




no more guesswork about how to go through the system, how to launch a training course or when to take it. There is also increased accountability of the manager to manage the training of his / her group.

Executive and Cultural Issues

Every project that the learning organization runs at the company has a steering committee. On the steering committee for this project, there was key leadership, not only from HR but also from IT. The vice president of HR was fully engaged with what was going on and very much in tune with the surveys that had been done. Because initial complaints about the LMS had gone all the way to the executive level, there was a lot of interest from that perspective.

In addition to the steering committee, there was an advisory committee that had membership from multiple business units. Not only did it have training

Figure 8: Expertus Learner Interface





administrators, but also key training managers and HR leaders. People from all levels were involved. The learning organization was under a microscope.

Why Keep the Original LMS?

Considering the initial difficulties with the LMS, there may have been sentimentinsomequarterstojuststartover.Whynot?Saidonemanager,

“What the LMS had under the hood – the database structure and the key components

that make up the training itself – were all well thought out and deployed.”

TheLMSwasallthere;itwasjustpresentedbadly.Itwaswaytoocomplex.The fix was to make things clean and customizable. the portal solution allowed the company to, as the manager concluded,

“ … Get away from an out-of-the-box user interface, deploying a more customized and

effective approach.”

It also saved the considerable initial investment in the LMS, which, understandably, appealed very strongly to management.

The learning organization knew going into the project that it could not resolve all of the issues with the LMS. One leader confirmed,

“We had to really hit the mark with this project, but we also knew that there was

going to be follow-on work.”

This group really focused on improving the technology and making the front-end more useful, so the group could come back to the same users the nextyearsaying,“Look.We’vegivenyouagoodinterface.Thesystemisusable now. Now let’s talk about how you should be using it.” That is where the learning organization is now, focusing on processes, such as how to improve the data that goes into the LMS.

How the LMS Delivers Value

Some easy metrics for assessing results, such as the number of course completions per employee, can be taken further and averaged over specific organizational parameters. Also measurable are the delivery types being utilized and how many training hours they constitute.

Extrapolating these low-hanging metrics into business value gets more complex. One way in which that has been attempted has been to gauge the revenue from training grants. Certain states offer a reimbursement of




money based on how much training occurs on a particular topic, most often compliance-related. The LMS enables the business units to monitor the training that they are doing anyway and then generate the reporting that they need to support applications for these training dollars.

Another value-added metric currently under consideration is correlating use of the LMS with accident prevention. The company is very focused on compliance and safety. Some business units have tried to correlate their traininginitiativestoareductioninthenumberofonsiteinjuries;thisprocess should become easier with the portal.

Another means of gauging performance is to look at the number of tickets and complaint calls. After the rollout of the new system, the group expected some rocky times. People tend to react anxiously when presented with a new system and a spike in the number of support tickets was anticipated. The group expected this to level off and eventually drop dramatically. Indeed, there was a spike after introduction, but the expected rapid decline in the number of tickets did not really happen.

According to one project leader,

“We were very concerned. Did we miss the mark? What was going on? But when we

started analyzing the tickets, we found the total count of tickets didn’t go down

because the utilization of the system went up dramatically. So that was something that

management was willing to accept. If you are getting three times the utilization and

maintaining steady at the number of support tickets, you’re doing very well.”

Further proof of the project’s effectiveness was seen in the rising number of completions, reinforced by reports from the field. Feedback received through learning advisors was that the people controlling the budgets for training in business units believed they could start spending money on putting training into the system and delivering it to their users because the system had been taken to a much more usable level.

A project leader remarked,

“They had always wanted to do it. The money was there. The need was there, but they were reluctant to do so because they expected poor acceptance and poor adoption of the training

as had happened with the original LMS. This has changed with the advent of the new

system and the momentum is being sustained.”

The number

of tickets and

complaint calls has

remained static,

while system usage

has increased

threefold.

KEY POINT




Because the data is so easily presented and managers have been provided with reporting, that lets them quickly grasp if they are in or out of compliance, as well as who has and has not completed compliance training. According to the business analyst,

“Any time that you have a very visible system, these types of issues jump out very quickly.”

Lessons Learned

Among the key lessons learned throughout the process was the importance of confidence in the system, the advantage of moving from reactive to proactive engagement, the need for business-unit buy-in across the extended enterprise and the importance of flexibility in sustaining the momentum gained through the initiative. The IT leader of the project stated,

“Just having confidence in the system and that our solution provider can deliver

information to us quickly if we were to have some sort of incident is a win for us.”

Because of this confidence, the IT project leader feels large global rollouts of training are less of an issue from a corporate standpoint. The “noise level” is significantly reduced where those are concerned, as it is for the LMS itself.

Withtheoldsystem,thelearningorganizationoftenintervenedtoputout fires. It had to figure out what went wrong and do damage control, a negative experience that dissuaded people from using the LMS for their future training needs. This reactive approach has essentially been eliminated.

Instead, the learning team is called into meetings to talk about how the company can take learning to the next level. The team is still being engaged and still has the same number of meetings. But instead of a negative, “How areyougoingtofixthis?”meeting,itisa“Wherecanwegonext?”one.

This project was a make or break for the learning organization. The project manager for the upgrade confirmed,

“If this didn't work, we would have been back to 40-something individual learning management systems. We wouldn’t have

been able to stop them.”

So from a corporate perspective, getting that buy-in from the businesses and seeing utilization expanding was critical to success.

Now, the learning

team is called into

meetings to talk

about how the

company can take

learning to the

next level.

KEY POINT




Importantly, adding the LMS-agnostic portal had added flexibility for the learningorganizationasitmovesforward.Whiletherearenoimmediateplans to move away from the LMS platform, the fact that the portal can work with any LMS means that the learning organization is less locked into it.

The organization wants to get its investment out of the LMS and the work that has been put into it. However, if some pieces of technology come along that better suit its businesses, it still has the ability to leverage the portal and provide that same interface to its users – this is another win.

Best Practices

The best practices from this case study include the following.

• Control of Scope – In principle, with software implementations, the sky is the limit. But in practice, you can only do so much and you have to quickly come to a concrete definition of what it is that you are trying to do – what is in scope and what is out of scope, with good logical explanations of why certain things are out of scope. The company did this early on by limiting scope to external hosting, improving the user interface, and adding an ad-hoc query and reporting tool.

Learning organization leadership embarked on this project thinking that it would be an easy thing to describe to users and management, and that they would all buy into it and say, “Of course. That makes sense. You are doing all the right things.” But it was often a hard sell. In a large corporation, there are always going to be groups that have solved the basicsandarereadytomovetothenextstep;theydonotwanttowaitwhile others catch up. So being firm on what is in scope and what is out of scope – applying the proper logic of address – was critical to the project’s success. Those who were eager to move faster also needed to be assured that their day would come, that this was a first step, not a final approach.

• Team Engagement – Engaging the advisory committee throughout the process was important because of the perspective it provided. Since the project team had extensive experience with the LMS and the primary users, it had to resist the temptation to believe it could address all the issues without seeking outside counsel. No matter how well you think you know the product and the problems, engaging respected others tends to yield new and often-illuminating ideas.

• User Acceptance Testing – User acceptance testing in multiple rounds was key. Project leaders had to explain to the advisory committee and testers thatnobodywasgoingtogetthisrightthefirsttime.Whileconfidencein the solution provider was reinforced and the provider’s success stories were pointed to repeatedly, the bottom line was that this was software,

Engaging

the advisory

committee

throughout the

process was

important because

of the perspective

it provided.

KEY POINT




and it was highly complex. Everyone involved had to understand that any solution provider was not going to nail the interface on the first try. Everyone had to understand that there would be multiple rounds of acceptance testing, and that was just fine. Multiple iterations did not meanthatthesolutionproviderwasnotdoingitsjob;infact,itmeantprecisely the opposite. Setting the stage for the process was important.

Next Steps

For the foreseeable future, the learning organization plans to continue to leverage the original LMS, the portal and ad-hoc reporting. Additional goals include further building out the ad-hoc reporting piece and including in the portal view some operational competencies.

Operational competency speaks to the need of the company’s field operating units to have their people qualified as competent on specific things. For example, there may be a platform in the North Sea that has unique processes and procedures. So the need is to make sure that the people who are working or are scheduled to work on that platform are actually competent to do those specific tasks. That could be anything from operating a forklift to welding pieces of equipment.

The LMS is very good at corporate competencies. But when it gets into measuring the details of operational competencies – not only measuring whether employees are competent, but also gauging how competent they are – the system needs to improve. The three levels of operational competency for field activities are beginner, intermediate and advanced. The way the company uses the LMS today, it does not fit the need of defining, teaching and documenting those levels. The learning organization is looking at how it can accomplish that moving forward.

The group is also beginning to look at integrated talent management platforms and plans to explore how its solution providers may play into that effort. Opportunities lie ahead but, in the short term, the company plans to continue with the solution that has just been developed.

Conclusion

The company’s biggest win was taking a system, the LMS, in which it had a significant investment, in terms of time and capital, and putting a new face on that product to save its functional use across the enterprise. The new front-end that has been created is going to be around for some time.

Everyone at the company has confidence in the LMS now. Before, the LMS had a highly negative connotation throughout the company. Through




the efforts of a third-party solution provider and the company’s learning organization, that negative has been transformed into a strong positive. For a global corporation in a difficult marketplace, in which ongoing learning can be a competitive advantage, this was an immense victory.




The following sections will provide you with considerations for sharing and implementing the best practices that were highlighted in this report.

Key Learnings

The following is a list of the key learnings (the “gems”) from this case study.

1. Having governance in place emphasizes the importance of alignment to business needs.

2. A thorough needs analysis and thick skin force an organization to address real problems, ultimately leading to increased credibility.

3. Duediligenceiscriticaltosuccesswhenusingathird-party solution provider.

4. Bad technology decisions early on can impact the entire learning function.

Ideas for Action

Below is a list of actions that you can take in order to apply or implement the best practices highlighted in this report. These are some of the foundational elements that we highly recommend be in place inside your company in order to execute such a plan, process or program.

1. Keep learning objectives aligned with the needs of the business.

2. Select a third-party vendor that works as a partner to solve business problems.

3. UseyourLMStodrivebusinessvalue.

4. Face bad technology decisions head-on by working directly with the business units and key stakeholders to solve problems.

5. Consider that sometimes less is more. If a system is not easy to use, people just will not use it.

Appendix I: Topics for Discussion and Learning

Having governance

in place emphasizes

the importance

of alignment to

business needs.

KEY POINT




Questions to Consider

Below is a list of discussion questions that you can ask your team, colleagues and business leaders, which will help you to take the next steps.

1. Are your learning technology initiatives aligned with the needs of thebusiness?

2. Do you have a process in place to make sure the third-party vendors you selectcantrulyworkwithyoutomeetyourneeds?

3. Isthetechnologyyouareusingnowpositivelyimpactingthebusinessbyprovidingrealvalue?

4. Have you done your homework regarding user needs versus selecting a technology solution that just meets the need of the trainingdepartment?

5. Are you collecting the right data to provide managers with actionablereports?

Select a third-

party vendor that

works as a partner

to solve business

problems.

KEY POINT




Appendix II: Table of Figures

Figure 1: International Energy Firm at a Glance 5

Figure 2: International Energy Company – Learning Organization 6

Figure 3: Federated Model 7

Figure 4: Training Categories 8

Figure 5: Training Delivery Modes 9

Figure 6: Expertus Reporting Feature 12

Figure 7: ExpertusManagerInterface 13

Figure 8: Expertus Learner Interface 15




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About This ResearchCopyright © 2011 Bersin & Associates. All rights reserved. WhatWorks® and related names such as Rapid e-Learning: WhatWorks® and The High-Impact Learning Organization® are registered trademarks of Bersin & Associates. No materials from this study can be duplicated, copied, republished, or reused without written permission from Bersin & Associates. The information and forecasts contained in this report reflect the research and studied opinions of Bersin & Associates analysts.

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Janet Clarey, Senior Analyst November, 2011...This document is part of the Bersin & Associates...

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