Elearning! August - September

2013

Elearning! Magazine: Building Smarter Companies via Learning & Workplace Technologies.

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TipsAnalytics Learning and Analytics Help Deliver a Quantifable ROI BY ED COHEN AND PETER HOWES As every business leader knows, there are always gaps between strategic goals and workforce capabilities. Training will get you part of the way there, but in isolation it's not enough to bridge critical capability gaps. Tat's because training is ofen managed without the tools to deliver the right training or even measure the impact on the business. How do you know if it's effective? How do you determine whether it delivers a real ROI for your business? Only when you use business metrics and analytics to support your learning programs will you start to see the impact across your business. Te relationship between learning and analytics is ofen misunderstood. Typically, when people discuss analytics, they are talking about reporting within a specifc learning management 44 system. But this doesn't help you make the connection with what is happening in your organization or show you whether the training is having the desired efect. Training without the right analytics is like driving without a map. You know what you want the training to achieve, but you have no idea whether you are delivering the right solution or providing it to the right people. REAL RESULTS Te value of analytics is that they demonstrate what real results you can achieve. Efective, data-based insights show the links between training and key metrics. Te key to successfully using analytics with learning is combining traditional training reporting with business data from other systems. Tis data is critical to understanding the business impact of training. Te frst step when developing a training program is iden- August / September 2013 Elearning! tifying the key business issues you are trying to solve. >> What are the business problems within your company? >> Can they be solved through training? >> Was the training efective? >> What was its impact? Te best way to answer these questions is by using workforce analytics to continually measure your company's performance — and the only way to measure the impact on your company's performance is to incorporate business data and metrics in your analysis. Workforce analytics give you curent information on training's impact. Integrated into a suite of applications with both workforce metrics and analytics capability, it can help you identify problems and show you how to solve them through training. Plus, it also provides a transparent way of calculating the ROI across the entire company, not just within your training department. Traditionally, training departments have been measured by how cheaply and efectively they can deliver training. But with the use of analytics against company metrics, you can now measure the impact of training in terms of how much money you're saving per training dollar. For example, if you identify a $500,000-a-year problem that can be addressed with $50,000 worth of training, the results easily justify the budget. EXECUTING EFFICIENTLY AND PROFITABLY Workforce analytics and learning combined can provide a tremendous amount of insight for your training department and also deliver a powerful tool for measuring business performance. In today's economy, this kind of insight allows you to be more effective with your budget, and to make training more impactful across the business. The integration of workforce analytics and learning will generate insights that in turn create a real and sustainable competitive advantage while demonstrating the value to the business. Here are what we believe are six factors for success: Deliver fact-based business cases for what training you are doing and why. Demonstrate why investing in training will help the company. Engage the business leaders with metrics to show the impact of training. Embrace workforce analytics as an integrated part of decision-making. Move from reporting to analytics to action. Proactively engage with HR and business leaders to uncover problem areas. 1 2 3 4 5 6 —Ed Cohen is vice president of Learning and Technology, and Peter Howes is vice president of Analytics and Planning for SuccessFactors. More info: www.successfactors.com

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