How to Measure success of eLearning initiative

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Importance of measuring the success of your eLearning program?

Most leading businesses aroundthe globe are learning organizations

But, how can you tell if your learning and development programs have a direct impact on how the business operates?

Do you know if

It impacts revenue, productivity, profits andIncomeIt improves customer satisfaction and positioningIt is improving recruiting, retention, quality and innovation

Learners are actually translating skills learnt to the job?… there’s more

“Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil.” - J Paul Getty

Which metrics should you use?

“It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement — that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life.” ― Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

A sales team should work towards higher revenues

A marketing team should work towards more qualified leads

An operations team should work towards better profits

An engineering team should work towards more productivity

A learning and development team should work towards enabling all of the above

BewareMetrics such as ease of use, graphics quality, access speed, user friendliness are subjective and may not meet the ‘does this sync with our business goals’ test


A tale of two dashboards – which one would you use?


Important to use the right metrics and not just make something up on the fly to satisfy upper management

Does your eLearning program have specific goals?


What do your trainingprograms target?

Some examples:

Training engineers to improve productivity of a specific job function by 20%

Training techs to reduce installation time by 10%

Training managers to handle employee issues – Reduce HR overhead by 15%

Training customers to reduce support calls by 20%

Training sales partners for selling higher up the value chain to improve revenue by 3%Training accounting and finance departments for compliance to reduce legal costs by 8%

It’s easier to choosemetrics when yourprogram hasSpecific goals

All goals can be translated into the following four buckets

Learning and growth

Business process

Customer

Financial

Learning and Growth Metrics


How are our employees developing?#of courses accessed and completed

Knowledge retention: short term and long term assessment scores

Refreshers if scores fall below a threshold

Certifications achieved

Time spent in course and for overall certification goal

The thing about employee satisfactionQuality of content and reference materials,

availability of instructors for chat/messaging should be taken out of the equationAbility to do ones job must be the clear measurable here

Business Process Metrics


How does the training program help improve our internalbusiness processes?

Does it help our HR department hit recruiting goals within the same or lesser budget?

Are we reducing our attrition rate due to better employee satisfaction?Related to personal growth, benefits and financial rewards

Is the quality of our service/product improving as a result?

This can be linked to financial and customer satisfaction metrics as well

Are we filing more patents?

More such measurableparameters applicable to your business

Customer Metrics


How are our customers fairing based on the training program?

Have the calls to support dropped since we started the program?Have the number of web cases reduced?

Are customers watching self help eLearning modules and downloading reference material?Are our sales people spending more time selling or hand-holding? Has our company transitioned from a vendor to a partner?

A customer satisfactionindex could be createdbased on several metrics & then tracked on a monthly basis

Financial Metrics

What is the financial impact of eLearning on our company?

eLearning ROI – how does eLearning help the bottomline by cutting costs?

Have we increased our revenue due to a better trained sales force?Has employee productivity improved since?

Have we reduced compliance costs?

Has our company transitioned from a vendor to a partner?

Financial metrics arethe holy grail


Financial Metrics


Deloitte Consulting

45% reduction in learning costs

KPMG

Training time reduced by 79%

$1Bn revenue acceleration

PWC

Reduced per-student costs from $706 to $106

E&Y

35% reduction in training costs

Nike

Minimum 2% increase in sales dollars since its program started

Best Buy

Special learning segments for slow-moving products improved sales by up to 20%

Home depotSpecific products covered in e-learning modules demonstrated penetration rate increases ranging from 1.2 to 4.6%

AT&T Wireless19 days to train 19,000 staff after merger with Cingular

Net increase in subscribers by 1.4 million

IBMManagers learned nearly five times more material without increasing time spent training

Conclusion


Marketing

How to Measure success of eLearning initiative