SuccessFactors Learning icontent Eliminate content chaos and accelerate learning ROI

Transcription

1 SuccessFactors Learning icontent Eliminate content chaos and accelerate learning ROI

2 SuccessFactors Learning icontent Eliminate content chaos and accelerate learning ROI With icontent, you can focus on the quality and effectiveness of your organization s courseware. Also, organizations realize substantial cost savings and deliver content faster. Say you re the head of learning for a large global manufacturer. Your move to implement a learning management system (LMS) for the first time is really paying off. You re realizing ROI quickly as the adoption of online learning has caught on with line managers and employees. Subject matter experts in various lines of business easily contribute content they create, and their online content supports instructor-led training. Now, regulatory-required training is easier. And the company is even developing a new leadership program based on proposed new content. The benefits of e-learning are clear to the entire company. However, the story soon changes. Learning managers at the company are frustrated. Employees complain that courses stop during playback or sometimes never load. Frequently, end users call HR about scores not tracking and the system incorrectly telling them they missed the course deadlines. Finally, after the company misses a single critical compliance update, the COO and Chief Counsel get involved and demand immediate fixes. The LMS is fantastic, but course delivery is killing you. As a learning professional, you know that your team is working at full capacity. What s the missing link? How do you remedy this situation and make sure it doesn t happen again? Organizations everywhere struggle with similar problems. As the shift to e-learning and rich media content accelerates,, learning staffers spend more time managing content in addition to all of their other duties. We call this Content Chaos and learning departments everywhere are straining under the burden of ever-increasing e-learning courses, online simulations, videos, manuals, and podcasts. 1 Fortunately, there s a way to relieve those pressures and keep up with the pace of business. SuccessFactors icontent is a comprehensive, flexible Content-as-a-Service (CaaS) solution you can use to support and streamline content delivery. With icontent, you can reduce the burdens of administering e-learning infrastructure, decrease costs, and reliably deliver content faster to your learning audience. 1 Clarey, Janet and Mallon, David. Learning Management Systems 2013: The Definitive Buyer s Guide to the Global Market for Learning Management Solutions. Bersin by Deloitte To purchase the report, visit de=search&p=learning-@-development 2

3 CaaS: Why icontent is different Learning in the digital age increases opportunities for organizations to bring learning out of the classroom and onto the job. Employees can create their own content based on their knowledge about customers, processes, and products. You can develop custom content that s tailored to your organization and its unique challenges. You can even find and buy high-quality off-the-shelf coursework from third-party content providers. The only downside to all of these options? You still need to manage and deliver the content, which means putting it through a QA process that could tie up resources you d rather have focused on core learning initiatives. It s easy to underestimate the time, effort, and expertise needed to manage learning content. Deploying icontent can lead to more effective training, efficient use of training budgets, and a better end-user experience for employees. CaaS is similar to SaaS. Just like SaaS, there are no servers or hardware to build or buy. Because it s content management delivered as a service, you can avoid the need for expensive technical resources, such as servers, disk space, IT staff, technical content specialists and network capacity. CaaS handles the technology infrastructure and solves hosting, management, security, tracking, and delivery problems. The goal is a better end-user experience. Content is easy to access, download, and complete. Without disruptions, users find it easier to complete coursework. The pains of e-learning content management In the past, organizations would manage their own content and buy or rent storage. Some LMS providers would even give away storage. However, addressing content storage is not even half the battle. Without attention to management, delivery, security, and updates, online content ceases to be an effective training tool. Soon, you feel lots of pain as you wrestle with content management and delivery challenges. Administrative issues: It s easy to underestimate the difficulty of e-learning content management. Unfortunately, many of the problems become clear when you find yourself manually confirming AICC/SCORM compliance, troubleshooting end-user environment variables, and dealing with non-tracking types of content, such as Word documents, PowerPoints, and PDFs. Whether you re talking about custom or off-the-shelf content, getting everything to work seamlessly takes a lot of work. Then there s the matter of security. Do you know for sure that your confidential material is secure? If unauthorized outside users access your content, they can burn through purchased licenses of third-party courses and even add or delete unauthorized material. User spikes can magnify bandwidth constraints. If your organization releases a course to meet business deadline-driven (such as end-of-year) training, it isn t unusual for demands on the system and network to dramatically increase. When an entire user community takes a required course, a network slows dramatically and sometimes crashes. The result? A negative user experience, reduced training effectiveness, and even possible compliance problems. 3

4 Technology limitations: Hosting e-learning content on the free space that other LMS providers provide actually strains network capacity and makes it hard to reliably deliver content. The best content is rendered useless if it takes so long to download that users give up. If you need more server space as your library grows, you may end up in conflict with IT concerning priorities of upgrades, service, and maintenance. Support needs: Even if your own IT people understand all of your technical needs and are ready to support you, what about learning-specific expertise? Wouldn t it be nice to have a learning content expert on the other end of the phone when you hit a dead end while troubleshooting content that isn t tracking course completions correctly? Content testing and validation: What happens when someone hits play? Will content load properly on a mobile device? Will a course stop unexpectedly in the middle? Will custom content from an internal team work without a glitch? Missing even one variable could delay deployment and create compliance risks. Content updates: Content is rarely static for long. Managing content updates requires the same due diligence before content is production-ready. It s important to factor in resources for ongoing management and updates. When subscribing to a large library of titles from a third-party vendor, most customers ignore or neglect the need to handle monthly vendor updates. Without a process to handle the updates, content becomes stale, or even noncompliant, and organizations lose the full value of the purchased licenses. You can try to manage these challenges on your own. You might even develop an in-house system to reduce your pains for a while. However, there s a better way. With icontent, you can hand over content management and delivery to SuccessFactors and instead focus on delivering the right training to the right people at the right time. The role of icontent with SuccessFactors LMS 4

5 How icontent can work in your organization With icontent, you give us your content and we make it work. You re free to focus on strategy and learning effectiveness rather than updates and troubleshooting, which is a significant departure from the old way of managing content delivery. SuccessFactors icontent is a CaaS solution that complements SuccessFactors Learning. Two levels of icontent service are available: Premium and Standard. For most organizations, icontent Premium service is the right choice. It includes full e-learning content management, content testing, and delivery assurance in addition to hosting and infrastructure support. icontent Premium With SuccessFactors Learning, you get a world-class LMS ranked as a leader in every major analyst report, including Bersin by Deloitte, Forrester, Gartner, and IDC. 2 icontent Premium is designed to perfectly complement your LMS. icontent takes case of the infrastructure in the same secure, scalable and reliable data centers that host SuccessFactors Learning. You also get a dedicated content expert who tests and validates content. With icontent Premium, you also benefit from: Dedicated content advisory and support resources, including an expert with AICC/SCORM who has SuccessFactors Learning experience Centralized management of your content library and your hosting Efficient content delivery with the Akamai Content Distribution Network (CDN) Support for custom, internally developed content Full content management, including verification and management of both custom, internally developed content, and third-party vendor content Expert pre-production content testing Deployment of content to the customer s LMS Regular content updates Continuous process and delivery enhancements 24-hour content Service Level Agreements (SLAs) End-user technical support for content Content entitlement for title license control and security Unlimited storage Easy content backup 2 For the full list of analyst recognition, visit 5

6 SuccessFactors icontent makes life a lot simpler, because everything is in one location. Mike Malehorn U.S. Department of Labor Centralized library for easy access When you move e-learning content to the cloud and manage the courses and information in a single location, you re taking a significant step toward improved content governance and simplifying tracking and version control. Learning professionals will find it easier to view everything in one place and to find the training they need for seamless use with SuccessFactors Learning. For the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), centralizing its learning content was key to maintaining the sustainability of its programs. 3 With icontent, the DOL enjoyed overall control of learning activities with the flexibility to manage unique training needs at all levels of the department. The cloud-based server centralizes all content across the DOL. SuccessFactors icontent makes life a lot simpler, because everything is in one location, explained Mike Malehorn with the DOL. And with icontent, the DOL doesn t worry about future needs, because the solution can scale to handle everything that 17,000 DOL employees may require. The centralized content system also eliminates server costs and saves time for learning administrators. Now the department can focus on implementing key strategic learning initiatives, not managing the day-to-day processes of content administration. Fast, reliable course delivery to your workforce Fast, reliable delivery of content can improve the user experience and course completion for your learning audience. Because it s integrated with the Akamai Content Distribution Network (CDN), icontent helps you get fast, efficient, and reliable content distribution. If you ve ever shopped online, downloaded music, watched a Web video, or connected to work remotely, you ve probably used Akamai s cloud platform. Akamai routinely delivers 15 to 30 percent of all Web traffic and over 2 trillion Web requests each day. With customers such as Verizon Wireless, Apple, ESPN, and NASA, among many others, Akamai ensures a secure, high-quality online experience on any device, anywhere. The SaaS environment shifts the quality assurance and content troubleshooting work off our shoulders. Kelly Iblings Securitas Security Services Here s how the Akamai CDN benefits icontent. When a course is launched for the first time, it s cached on the CDN server that s geographically closest to the end user. The next time any authorized user launches the course, it loads from the cache, which speeds up user response times by 60 percent and reduces network demand on the content server. The CDN also supports delivery during large-spike training events that can slow down or crash standard content servers. Securitas Security Services knows about learning system capacity problems all too well. The company needed to upgrade its learning systems but also had to find a solution that met many of the integration and technical requirements already in place from legacy systems. 4 Using the previous Securitas LMS, remote users frequently experienced content-loading problems, lag time, and time-outs. If we d had to host content on our own server, said Kelly Iblings, senior IT analyst, it would have taken more resources. icontent was an ideal fit because it met requirements for both the learning team and the IT team. The SaaS environment shifts the quality assurance and content troubleshooting work off our shoulders, said Iblings. With icontent and the Akamai CDN, Securitas accelerates content delivery with faster downloads and streaming, which saves time and resources. 3 SuccessFactors Department of Labor Customer Case Study. successfactors/en_us/resources/case-studies/us-dol-cs.pdf 4 SuccessFactors Securitas Security Services Customer Case Study. successfactors/en_us/resources/case-studies/securitas-cs.pdf successfactors/en_us/resources/case-studies/us-dol-cs.pdf 6

7 icontent experts address most issues and ensure that e-learning content works before it goes live and end-users find errors in coursework. Access to dedicated support With icontent Premium, you can call with questions and know that your dedicated icontent expert can provide more than IT support. icontent experts are learning specialists who know your challenges and understand the obstacles you face as a learning manager. These experts are part of the SuccessFactors Learning team and have daily access to, and interaction with, SuccessFactors learning engineers and product management teams. icontent experts are source-agnostic: They help learning managers with content updates and testing, regardless of the author. These specialists address most issues and ensure that e-learning content works. They even troubleshoot end-user environment variables and resolve any issues quickly. Content testing, validation, updating, and security All content is tested and validated for launch, play, and track to ensure effective operation with the customer learning application and faster deployment. To remove administrative burdens, icontent experts deploy updates and ensure that all content is in the correct catalog so users easily and quickly find and consume it. Speed matters for the global optical retailer Luxottica because 24-hour turnaround on course deployment reduces training costs, improves compliance with legal mandates, and increases employee effectiveness. The 85 people who take our new retail training through icontent make million-dollar purchasing decisions, said Angi Willis, learning technology project manager. So even if they learn one thing in taking this training, it could save our company millions of dollars. The icontent entitlement service backs each course launch, which ensures that each course is accessible only by authorized end-users. icontent Standard For organizations that already have expert resources and teams in place to manage learning content, the icontent Standard Service may be all you need. With Standard Service, you get: Centralized management of your content library and your hosting Efficient content delivery with the Akamai Content Distribution Network (CDN) Content storage based on the number of users and gigabytes of storage, with no charge for overages, so you buy only what you need Easy content backup 7

8 Conclusion Keeping up with the speed of business is rarely easy, but with icontent, your organization can keep pace with its learning needs. Don t wait to make a move until courses fail to load or slow down, course completions and scores aren t tracked, or critical content updates don t occur, jeopardizing compliance. With icontent, you won t get bogged down in the day-to-day administrative hassles and technical headaches that come with managing learning content. Instead, you can turn your content management frustrations over to SuccessFactors and watch as we make them go away. Call us today so you can get back to the strategic side of learning. About SuccessFactors SuccessFactors, an SAP company, is the leading provider of cloud-based Business Execution Software, which drives business alignment, optimizes workforce performance, and accelerates business results. SuccessFactors customers include organizations of all sizes. With more than 20 million subscription seats globally, we strive to delight our customers by delivering innovative solutions, content and analytics, process expertise, and best practices insights. Today, we have more than 3,600 customers in 177 countries using our application suite in 35 languages. For more information, go to 8

9 2013 SuccessFactors, Inc. All rights reserved. SuccessFactors Global Headquarters One Tower Plaza South San Francisco, TOLL FREE PHONE FAX EMEA APAC No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or for any purpose without the express permission of SuccessFactors. The information contained herein may be changed without prior notice. Some software products marketed by SuccessFactors and its distributors contain proprietary software components of other software vendors. These materials are subject to change without notice. These materials are provided by SuccessFactors and its affiliated companies for informational purposes only, without representation or warranty of any kind, and SuccessFactors shall not be liable for errors or omissions with respect to the materials. The only warranties for SuccessFactors products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services, if any. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. SuccessFactors products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks o registered trademarks of SuccessFactors Inc.(and SAP) in the United States and other countries.