In This Issue
	What's New The Training Investment Model E-Learning in Leadership Training Rapid E-Learning Study Underway Welcome John Gilfaldi, Strategic Accounts Manager

The Training Investment Model

One of the biggest strategic decisions you must make as a training executive or manager is where to invest your limited dollars. If you focus your limited resources on the wrong programs, you will sub-optimize your training investments. And with training budgets falling approximately 6% in 2003 (Source: Training Magazine and ASTD), you're under even more pressure to prioritize your investments. One large line item in the typical training budget is content. In 2003 the total investment in training content was approximately $9.14 billion. This huge investment breaks down into approximately 40% custom content and 60% off-the-shelf content. Given this huge investment in content, how do training organizations decide which programs to fund? We have found over the past few years that there is a "winning" approach. We call this approach the Training Investment Model. It is an approach that borrows concepts from portfolio management of financial investments. It's easy to understand and implement, and flexible enough to apply to many industries and company sizes. The model is very simple. You look at all of your training programs for the year and allocate them into four quadrants, as follows... Click here to learn more about our Investment Model... »

E-Learning in Leadership Training

Leadership training is a business-critical investment for the long-term success of corporate and government organizations. Leadership training establishes culture and sets in place the management processes for growth, quality, and company leadership. Effective leadership training needs to be very high-touch, so that participants can practice and apply people-oriented soft skills. Consequently, companies face problems in scale, speed, and cost. Leaders are busy people and are often spread all over the globe. How can e-learning be applied effectively to this high-touch problem? We are wrapping up a research project to determine the answer to this question -- details of which will be published in our upcoming industry report: E-Learning in Leadership Training: What WorksTM. We interviewed 10 large organizations that are successfully using technology in their leadership programs. Companies who participated in this study include Amazon.com, the NBA, Exult, FBI, Aventis, CNA Insurance, and E*Trade. We discovered a variety of creative ways that technology is being used to add value to the training process while still providing the interactivity, collaboration, and team building that is required to succeed. A few of our findings include: Blended formats are popular. Leadership training for senior and middle managers in most organizations uses a blended format of online and off-line instruction. Enhancing leadership programs with online instruction has enabled organizations to reduce the overall time investment on the part of learners - anywhere from 50-60% on average - while still retaining acceptable levels of satisfactory learner feedback. In the report we detail the blending models we found. Blended does not imply "classroom plus." Online communities and collaboration are alive and well! Some organizations are using programs that are exclusively conducted virtually. In this format, participants take online courses that are augmented with online collaborate sessions, conference calls, or virtual collaborative exercises. We found several collaboration techniques in use including a virtual classroom system (e.g. Webex), an online collaboration tool from Q2Learning, and conference calls. A new category of "Premium E-Learning" has emerged for leadership training. In general, research participants indicated that using video, interaction, creative story lines, exercises, and recognized management experts are required for successful online leadership training. We believe the content market has split into two categories for leadership and management training: "Traditional E-Learning" and "Premium E- Learning." The report details the differences and when to use each. Click here for the full article... »

Rapid E-Learning Study Underway

Does your organization need to deliver training within weeks of receiving a training request? More and more frequently, business situations require that knowledge and skills be transferred to employees, suppliers, partners, and even customers within weeks of major company events. These events may include an acquisition of a company, a product launch, a ruling on a lawsuit and many more. Rapid E-Learning is the answer for time sensitive issues, where the need is urgent and there is very limited time and budget for development. Rapid E-Learning programs have the following characteristics: Can be authored within 1-2 weeks of problem identification. Do not need Web developers or expertise in Web development tools. Often rely on PowerPoint or other commonly used applications to import content. SME's can author them with a small amount of training. Typically include "light" assessments, not to the performance level. Typically cost less than $2K per instructional hour. May be synchronous (scheduled) or asynchronous (self-paced), or may be part of a blended approach. Can be instructionally sound, rather than just being presentations. If you organization is developing training that meets these criteria, we want to hear from you!! We are conducting the first major industry study on the topic of Rapid E-Learning development. This study will identify when this approach is being used, commonly used Rapid E-Learning tools, and what practitioners like you have found to be the critical success factors. The results will be published on in a future edition of this newsletter, as well as on our Web site. Click here to participate in this study.... »

Welcome John Gilfaldi, Strategic Accounts Manager

With over 17 years in the training industry John brings a wealth of knowledge to Bersin & Associates as our new Strategic Accounts Manager. John's role is to help you get the most out of your relationship with Bersin & Associates. John was a pioneer in multimedia CBT development when he worked for Learning Tree International as Director of CBT, where his biggest challenge was coming up with a creative, fun way to teach IT courses in the early days of e-learning. At Infotec Training, John led a team of custom developers who were skilled in CBT, web-based training, distance learning and e-learning. His team developed an e-learning content development methodology that was adopted by Lotus (much of which is still being used today). He managed the online school for Infotec and was also on the design and review team for WorldTrak, one of the first LMS's. When asked to join Lotus on the Academic Sales Team, John jumped at the opportunity to work in the academic environment where he helped develop e- learning strategies for universities across the country. He then changed positions to IBM where he was involved with the IBM for e-business Certification Program. In that role he led the global marketing and communications efforts for e-business certification. One of his most notable accomplishments was being invited to China to meet the Ministry of Education resulting in over 30 universities across the country adding IBM technology to their teaching curriculum. Being well versed in all areas of e-learning, John can be of great assistance to our clients. Don't hesitate to contact him to discuss your training objectives.