Secrets and advantages of successfully leveraging an e-learning platform

This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.

Companies have understood that learning through electronic means and tools can help solve challenges and open up new training horizons. But is your organization prepared to take advantage of all the advantages of an e-learning platform?

It is a fact that, for years now, most organizations with large teams - insurers, banks and pharmaceutical laboratories, the former - opt for e-learning training solutions. Many other sectors and large companies are also incorporating this type of solutions, as unit costs decrease and e-learning platforms are more accessible. And if the pioneers decided to take the leap starting from the teams furthest away from the operational core, now e-learning is an indispensable tool for all personnel of any large corporation.

But why is e-learning such an effective knowledge transfer tool? Our experience tells us that it is because, in the first place, it eliminates the obstacles of traditional training, allowing teams to form without the need for travel, making content accessible from anywhere and enabling interaction between participants, independently of the geographical distances.

It also allows to systematize the knowledge since the e-learning platforms allow to lodge in an organized way the organizational knowledge that each department must acquire to perform its function.

It ensures that the contents are permanently updated. The most recent information is hosted and available and the teams are strictly trained in the procedures, content and knowledge that serve them.

The e-learning also develops the concept of training itinerary, allowing each collaborator and each function to define a set of contents that must be acquired and transferred to the job, during his career.

It allows absolutely all the members to acquire the knowledge, because the platforms have systems that warn if the contents have not been visualized or if they have not been understood, through questionnaires.

It is a transversal instrument since all the departments can use it to establish the content and disseminate it only to the recipients that concern them.

Drastically improves internal communication to the point that today is one of the preferred instruments by the directions to align teams, and materialize the strategy.

What are the secrets to succeed in implementing an e-learning platform?

Contrary to what many managers think, it is not a technological challenge since, currently, the main e-learning platforms of the market allow, at very reasonable costs, ease of access, interactive content and the possibility of monitoring the work done.

It is necessary, however, to have a dynamic content, an expert who proposes to the departments content to develop that, once made, generate demand in each team. From there, each department requests the contents that are most useful and allow it to be efficient.

It is also necessary the presence of a dynamizer of the use that is pending that the platform is used. That the teams of each department pay attention, do the exercises and answer the questions. Likewise, this facilitator must ask people who have not completed the work or who have "suspended" the exercises, to do the task set organically.

Finally, the content must be developed and disseminated ad-hoc since a generic sales or leadership course is of little use.

The most common contents

It is not easy to select a priori the most useful subjects to use an e-learning platform. From our experience, I list the most common that a company can structure, depending on the departments:

In the management stand out the business plans, the messages of the General Management and the strategic lines, sharing the latter with the rest of the organization. From the marketing department, almost everything is shared with the other departments: information about the competition, corporate image, advertising content ... content about new products is not shared.

Sales departments generate content about new products, arguments to improve sales, as well as features and benefits of the product portfolio, all for internal use. The same applies to finance departments that are used to developing materials about processes, internal reporting systems and criteria for allocating costs and expenses that, obviously, are not shared with other areas.

The e-learning in Human Resources is usually shared, especially in regard to information on protocols of incorporation and mission, vision and values ​​of the company, leaving internally those contents focused on internal department processes.

The variety of tools available to e-learning makes its approach to the transmission of knowledge almost complete, leaving only the training of skills (leadership, attitudes, sales, teamwork, accountability) that, to In our opinion, they should continue to be face-to-face, although with digital aids and resources.

At a time like this, when digital is in fashion, it is necessary to understand that, if we truly want a change, we must use technology within our reach, but not in any way. Adopting a virtual platform project is not a technological problem but above all an organizational one.

This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.

Join us in Miami Beach, June 5-7 for the Global Online Marketplaces Summit.