Learning Portals – The Build vs. Buy Dilemma

Why You Should Proceed With Caution When Planning Your Next Portal

By Kathleen Waid, Senior Director, Client Services, Expertus

Kathleen Waid, Senior Director, Client Services, Expertus

Recently, the chief learning officer of a major U.S. software company made one seemingly small tactical error that morphed into a horror story of massive proportions – for him and his company.

The terror began in one of those meetings with way too many attendees: the CLO, his learning executives, a few business line managers, some of the IT team and a vendor. All wanted to build a learning portal, which would (hopefully) solve the company’s biggest problem – a “shockingly unknowledgeable sales force.”

But 2 years and almost 1 million dollars later, their learning portal still hasn’t seen the light of day – and probably never will.

How did this happen?

• The CLO and his IT team became deeply distracted by competing priorities…
• This created chronic cost-overruns and development delays…
• As a result, other mission-critical learning projects fell by the wayside.

In fact, the effectiveness of the company’s learning organization sank to a 10-year low! Which is why the CLO was eventually let go, and left wondering why his IT team (the people who recommended this custom-build “solution”) were left unfazed.

Is This Your Reality?

Yes, this real-life example is extreme. But you’d be surprised at how common this scenario is. Of course, the CLO doesn’t always get fired and the portal doesn’t always fail. But in too many instances, the decision to build a learning portal internally has come back to haunt almost everyone involved.

So What’s the Temptation?

It seems obvious that building a learning portal from scratch is an unnecessary endeavor – a poor allocation of risk and resources, and generally a bad idea. Why, then, does it keep happening? What’s the temptation?

The “Gotchas”

The crux of the problem is the word “portal.” Often IT teams are able to successfully build corporate or business-unit portals with off-the-shelf solutions. However, getting a learning portal to interface with your existing LMS and other enterprise applications requires a much more sophisticated understanding of your underlying LMS technology, business rules and corporate learning drivers.

Here are a few tips that will help you avoid common “gotchas” that often derail custom learning portal projects.  So, how should you proceed?

Tip #1: Choose an Established Technology

There’s a significant learning curve in picking the technology that’s best for your custom learning portal and will stand the test of time. Many companies invest in standard IT portal technology, which may be out-of-date by project end.

In other cases, the selected technology simply doesn’t work well (i.e. exposing the data elements of a legacy LMS system) – or it doesn’t add any processing (“mini-application” intelligence) to the portal information – or it’s hard to work with, so the portal is cumbersome to build.

To improve your odds for success, you should choose established technology that is proven to work seamlessly in a learning environment. It should be flexible, scalable, and have a future-proofed infrastructure, so that you won’t have to rebuild your portal in 2-3 years.

Tip #2: Set a Realistic Budget and Timeline

Internal stakeholders are inclined to think it’s cheaper to build a portal in-house – but that’s because it’s difficult (if not impossible) to truly understand a learning portal project’s scope and complexity.

Supporting the learning department is usually not a top priority for IT. So, they tend to be a bit detached from its many nuances. The learning department, and other business owners, usually learn this the hard way when they uncover hidden costs, and must personally make a massive time commitment to oversee the project, themselves.

Sponsors often find themselves over their heads as they become responsible for creating an effective user interface, and developing requirements that reflect the intricacies of an enterprise LMS (typically deployed to multiple audiences).

To avoid this outcome, you need to see a working portal prototype before you buy into the solution. This way, you’ll know exactly what to expect, and you can rest assured that it can be implemented and deployed within a reasonable timeframe.

Tip #3: Don’t Lose Sight of Your Core Competency – Learning

This is often the most overlooked, and possibly the most critical “gotcha.”

In a custom portal development project, business unit owners and learning executives don’t realize how much of THEIR time will be consumed and how steep the learning curve can be. So, unfortunately, while they go through the tedious process of figuring out how to design a learning portal, they often lose sight of their “day job” and what’s mission-critical.

---

Note from Kathleen: Would you like to read more? Download the full “BUILD vs BUY” whitepaper – including the 5 Learning Portal Gotchas and the 8 Benefits of a Buy Decision.

Or, if you’d like to discuss your learning portal needs and questions, contact me anytime by email at: kathleenw@expertus.com.

Baker Hughes – Compliance Training in Hard-to-Reach Places

Guest post by Francesco Turchetti, Director Talent Management, Baker Hughes

Francesco Turchetti, Director Talent Management, Baker Hughes

Compliance is critical in the energy sector. At Baker Hughes, our compliance challenges were compounded by our 34,000+ employees, spread across  a global organization with multiple business units.

The key to our compliance success was to develop a training solution that offered the required employee training while supporting our growing, global workforce. Our learning organization partnered with Expertus to develop a centralized shared-service model that solved a multitude of learning administration issues, such as logistics, training support and report management.

Logistics
Logistics management for 16 hard-to-reach countries was essential for us. So the team established key contacts in all 16 countries and delivered training via CD to employees who were in remote areas with limited Internet connectivity.

Centralized Support
In order to support our  various business units worldwide , the team developed processes flexible enough to adapt to each  unit’s unique needs and a 24×7 support team infrastructure to make the training transition as smooth as possible.

Report Management
We gained key insights for compliance decision making because the team developed reports, dashboards and charts that made it simple for country managers to track compliance and push non-compliant employees to complete their training.

RESULTS

Within 60 days, we increased our compliance from 32% to a record 99.8 %. And while this initiative was not focused on reducing costs, learning administration costs were reduced by more than 40%.

We now have a cost-effective learning umbrella designed to cover the unique needs of our enterprise and our employees, while meeting the industry’s strict compliance guidelines.

Note from Expertus: Would you like to know more about the training outsourcing & reporting solution we spearheaded for Baker Hughes? Or do you have a real-world enterprise learning story to share? Contact Expertus anytime at info@expertus.com.