Conference 2005 >
Track 2
| Reaching all learners
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Gerard Kerin, Head of Regional Training, EMEA, Galileo International. |
Cendant is a leading provider of travel and real estate services recognisable through its brands such as Avis, Budget and Days Inn. To support the services it provides, Cendant uses Galileo, a global distribution services provider for the travel industry. This presentation focuses on how Galileo implemented a learning service, which has removed costs while improving service levels.
It will describe how the service was scoped, developed and implemented. It will also cover the carrot and stick approach used to encourage take-up. Neither an ROI case study nor a content development model. It is a real life example of using e-learning to meet customer service expectations in a global business, complementing classroom based learning, while tightly controlling operational and capital costs. Galileo provides access to over 44,000 travel agencies in 115 countries.
That's about 30,000 individuals logging onto the Galileo system daily across EMEA. Knowing that there is a clear relationship between an individual travel agent'ss ability to sell services to their customers and their knowledge and ability to navigate Galileo screens, Cendant was keen to ensure that all Galileo users were well trained. For all sides good training would mean a reduction in costly help desk calls.
How do I calls are expensive to manage and often imply the agent is struggling to service their customer's needs. In April 2003, Galileo launched an e-learning service to US-based users, and later the same year offered the service in French to Canadian users. In 2004 the service was extended to include blended courses using virtual classrooms. An English language service aimed at EMEA is planned for February 2005, with translation into four additional languages now underway. |
| Workflow learning
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Pete Ford, Training Services Manager, ITNET |
This session examines how ITNET deployed training to their staff as workflow learning - that is, incorporated into their daily lives. Doing so enabled ITNET to train 3,000 people over 300 sites in just 3 months.Updating software to the latest supported version is a task that all companies undertake at some point during the product lifecycle.
Staff require training in the important new functionality, but in many cases there is a reluctance to allow staff to attend training courses just to understand small changes in a product they already use.
New working practices and procedures are also continually being implemented and this requires staff to understand the change management issues that these create. In this case the knowledge required is process related not IT related. To support ITNET's client base, Remedy a Customer Relationship Management tool is used to track requests and problems by staff who service the requests and solve them, together with our clients who need to track their own issues.
The latest version of Remedy not only updates the software functionality but also incorporates new business processes for ITIL. The training issue this created was for the deployment over a three-month period to 3000 people on 300+ sites throughout the UK. A new method of delivering training was required to give staff.
Just In Time training when they needed it, not when the training could be planned around trainer availability. Workflow learning was the only way to successfully deploy the learning to so many staff, incorporating the learning into every day roles and tasks, rather than creating a classroom lead training approach that would have been difficult to manage in terms of resources and timescales. |
| Making on-line learning work
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Delphine Parmenter, Director, StratX OnLine. |
With 20 years experience delivering high impact seminars, StratX was already in a advantageous position as market leader in its field, facilitating and leading group-learning environments for customers such as GE, ACNielsen, Novartis, and L'Oral.
The missing piece from its offering of industry and concept-specific business simulations was the concept of remote learning. The company wanted to expand and capture a larger customer base of learners who did not necessarily have access to high quality onsite educational opportunities, and the logical method of achieving this was through e-learning. StratX was convinced that a distance learning approach needed to be instructor-led with coaching around the StratX business games. In its program design StratX sought to duplicate the classroom environment at a distance.
The adoption of WebEx formed a new e-learning channel for StratX which offered the capacity to share documents, software applications and a whiteboard in real-time, in order to teach market-focused strategies to classes of individuals in remote locations, via the internet. Anyone with a telephone and an Internet connection can attend an online classroom. The technology was only part of the story.
As you can't see delegates, you have to get them to interact with you throughout the session. To make sure that participants are understanding the content and staying alert, we call on people directly to ask for their input using the polling aspects of the WebEx. Keeping the classroom size small ensures optimal interactivity and brings experience is as close to the real world as possible.
Often with web-based learning around 70 per cent of registered learners do not complete the course - it's so easy not to click the button. StratX OnLine programs have a 92 percent completion rate and over the past three years thousands of participants from over 50 countries have enjoyed the StratX e-learning experience. |
| Total learning
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Richard West, Head of Organisational e-Learning, BAE Systems. |
The rapid pace of market and technological developments in the defence and aerospace industries have required the development of new capabilities and partnerships, new innovative ways of working, and greater organisational agility in responding to the needs of customers and marketplace.
A cornerstone of BAE Systems approach to addressing these challenges has been its ongoing investment in organisational learning and the development of its people, as reflected in the People Value, and the investment made in the company's Virtual University (VU). The VU is a gateway to know how, a dynamic library of information that can be accessed by individuals from across BAE Systems.
The VU plays a major role in brokering best practice and examples of excellence from across the company. It has become a conduit for good ideas that might otherwise never be shared company-wide. Underpinning the Virtual University strategy is an infrastructure designed to deliver organisational learning and know-how company wide and cope with numerous legacy computer systems and complex networks.
E-learning and web technology were the only rational solution to creating affordable access to a continuous learning environment for over 100,000 employees, working at over 60 sites across the UK alone, and many more abroad. The VU's thinking is that, to truly drive competitiveness through learning, access to wider sources of learning - such as best practice, know-how, research and even expertise, personalised to an individuals or team needs, available at the right time - would be needed.
The technology implementation directly supports the VU's overall strategic direction. By supporting processes such as Best Practice Detectives, Chairman's Award for Innovation and the Best Practice Forum, the company can already point to over 50 million pounds worth of savings. This session will focus on the evolution of the VU and how it has recently been used to support the roll out Windows XP to 80,000 employees using a truly innovative approach to learning. |
