November 11, 2005

For at least three years now, traditional eLearning wasn't easy to integrate in the B2B segment in a way to be able to satisfactorily service the specific needs of companies in delivering constant-changing information such as the latest product updates, corporate planning and a whole range of other types of data that today will help businesses react to rapidly-changing market conditions and help their sales personnel.

Until now, creating and delivering eLearning material was something that required advanced knowledge and turnaround time of weeks and sometimes months to build.

To deliver e-learning via traditional methods of development still involves the help of digital media experts, graphic designers, and instructional designers; and significant time spent chasing down the subject matter experts within an organization in order to transform the knowledge in the expert's head into an e-learning course.

Today, more and more companies are embracing the concept of Rapid E-Learning, a new approach to e-learning that involves reduced development time, and places new capabilities to build and deliver content into the hands of those that hold the knowledge within your company -- the subject matter experts themselves.

Today, new technologies make it possible for those without specialized media skills to use existing business materials -- such as presentations, documents, and a web browser -- to create and deliver online courses very quickly; and to easily track course completion and learner progress.

As a result, companies can enjoy the engaging delivery and extensive reach of e-learning while accelerating information and education -- opening up the possibilities for the types of information that can be delivered.

Companies are able to deliver the types of education and information that they simply could not have previously addressed in a timely manner, or that they may have tried to deliver in other less-effective ways such as using documents or text published on a web page.

Rapid E-Learning is catching on not only with training organizations who are looking towards this approach to address the increased demand for time-critical learning; but by line-of-business groups who are driving the demand in the first place -- the product managers, heads of sales, and marketing teams that have a continuous need to get information and time-critical messages to their audiences in an effective format.

Their objective is to keep sales and channel reps better informed, stay top-of-mind with customers and channels by providing frequent, valuable education; and to quickly align organizations around important initiatives.

Certain types of business information and education are particularly compelling for this method of learning delivery. These include:

Time-Critical Information -- When a company launches a new product and needs to train their sales force on how to sell it, the volume of information that needs to be delivered is enormous and may include which buyers to target, how to position the product, how its priced, how to successfully demonstrate the offering or differentiate among competitors.

And again, just prior to launch, the volume of information about the new offering will most likely change weekly prior to the actual launch date, and continue to change for some time thereafter.

The faster companies can communicate this information to their sales force in small segments so that reps can absorb and process it, the faster they can hit the ground running and significantly ramp revenues prior to launch.

Communicating with Audiences Outside the Organization - When it comes to external audiences such as customers and partners, it can often be difficult to try and get in front of every individual in the organization that you need to reach at a time that is convenient for them.

Rapid E-Learning allows these outside audiences to hear directly from your experts more frequently and allows your targets to know more about your organization in ways not previously possible.

When your channel partners hear directly from product experts, clients hear directly from key executives, your audiences establish a familiarity with your organization, the feeling that they know your company and the people that run it.

By making it convenient for them to hear a valuable message directly from your experts at a time that fits into their schedule, you can capture mindshare and strengthen relationships.

Conveying Informal Knowledge - Or the type of knowledge that educates sales reps on respond to a recent competitive threat, how to address the intricacies of their selling process, how to communicate a company's position on the latest "hot button" issues, or tips for how to address customers that have very specific needs.

This type of knowledge can make every employee an expert at his or her job, make every one of your channel partners an expert on your product and make your salespeople more effective on their next call. Salespeople can close deals faster, your channels can sell your product more effectively, and your customers can derive greater value from their relationship with your organization.

Large and small companies alike can benefit greatly from a Rapid E-Learning approach to training and communicating. Large companies face the challenge of reaching a global employee base, multi-level distribution channels, and thousands of customers; while smaller companies have the challenge of maximizing resources to appear bigger than they are.

But no matter what size organization, can your subject matter experts afford to drop everything to deliver training on one topic repeatedly until ALL the people that need to hear it have been reached?

In each of these situations, Rapid E-Learning becomes the solution of choice when effective education to those who need it in a timely manner.

Source: Line 56