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Streamline your way to bigger margins #7: “E-Learning – A way to boil the ocean (and save some cash)”

By on April 27, 2011

A few years ago our company started an e-learning initiative to help clients maximize time, while saving money on travel expenses, etc. It has been a very popular way for firms to save money and for employees to learn about individual modules, functions and features easily. Our 750+ lessons are built with Adobe Captivate software. This works very well, however, with the advanced technologies out there; video conferencing, tablets, tele-presence, the world of e-learning – although much the same – seems to be on the cusp of change.

It seems the communication of information has found so many different mediums; from Twitter to enterprise-level apps to, even, a corporate movement towards providing more value-added quality information to prospects and clients. The question is: how does one boil the ocean? In other words, with all of the information being thrown at us to further our knowledge, what really are the benefits of e-learning and what is the most palpable way to get it?  

To start, the benefits of traditional e-learning are pretty obvious:

  • The “learner” can go at their own pace; one that works for them.
  • Companies save money on travel expenses and the expense to pay a trainer, etc.
  • Learning – on-demand; when it’s convenient.
  • Learners can learn from whatever place is best for them; from the office to their home.

In terms of “getting” e-learning, it seems the future is in apps, videoconferencing, etc. I’m sure many companies are using these approaches already. I personally think the greatest benefit of e-learning in the traditional sense is that the information is boiled down for the user – they aren’t inundated with snippets of random information. Although the social mediums, etc. that are available now are great, sometimes it feels like quantity over quality; the quality of information has gotten lost. It kind of reminds me of those Bing commercials where people start listing off randomness based on a search engine search and it turns into utter mayhem and confusion. I am not saying social mediums are the same as e-learning, I am simply stating that the communication of information has changed radically over the last few years, and sometimes it is best to use the traditional avenue of utilizing electronic learning services, over the barrage of information readily available is the best way to go. The way the information is communicated and found is another story. E-learning can be accessed in so many different ways now, which makes it even better. I’m sure to many this is a moot point since e-learning has been available for some time now, but for those who haven’t tried it, I would encourage you to give it a shot; whether accessing a course via videoconferencing, via an enterprise app, or the “old-fashioned” way over the internet.

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Categories: Best Practices, Financial Management, Productivity, Technology

e-Learning, Changing the Training Paradigm – Part 3 of 3 Customer Response

By on July 7, 2010

Today there are more than 750 e-learning courses on our portal. We’ll never be done; we’ll always be updating old courses and adding new ones.

Here is what we’ve found from our customers:

  • They have been able to substantially lower the cost of implementation and training, especially smaller (20-40) lawyers firms. Some of these firms just could not afford our previous method. Our “blended” training now includes web and on-site training along with e-Learning.
  • They are able to “try-out” new modules and get an in-depth understanding of them before they either purchase or begin using them.
  • They use e-learning as the first source for training, even if they get consulting from us. Therefore, the questions we get and help we provide are much more focused to meet their specific needs.
  • It makes it much easier for them to train new users in their firm, even new attorneys doing time entry, or adding case management information.
  • e-Learning is much less intimidating than classroom training; it allows the user to train at their own pace, even in the privacy of their cube or home. When in doubt, just pause, “rewind” or play it over again.
  • Many times it’s much faster to use e-learning than to call the hotline.
  • They know much more about how to use the features of our products and have increased their productivity.

What did e-learning do for RainMaker and me? It allowed me to meet a commitment, and provides the company with much happier and more productive customers.

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Categories: Uncategorized

e-Learning, Changing the Training Paradigm – Part 2 of 3 Blazing Trails in Production

By on July 7, 2010

With the web site portal problem under control, we needed to get production of the e-learning courses ramped up. We’ll just ask our employees to take turns, using the Captivate software, putting on the head phones and explaining how our software works. This just wasn’t going to work, everyone has a different voice, style, and some were going to be “camera shy”. We needed a dedicated resource. A young lady, Lisa came in for an interview, with no e-learning experience of course, but just assured me that she would find a way to learn the Captivate software, and build these courses for us. “I’ll give you a chance and you’ll work directly for me since this is my pet project”. Unfortunately I forgot that the week she began I was traveling and wasn’t around to even get her started. The following week wasn’t much better and we were off to a rocky start. Week 3, Lisa asked if I had a moment to just take a look at some samples she had made all on her own. She was so nervous that she was going to fail and not meet the dreamy expectation I had for this project. Since she had no idea how our Platinum product even worked, she built a few courses on how to use various features in Outlook. As I watched and listened to these courses, I almost had tears in my eyes. We were really going to be able to do this, people shouldn’t roll their eyes to wild ideas.

We took a systematic approach  to building our e-Learning library.

Step 1.   Master Spreadsheet . We asked RainMaker employees to start adding course names to a master spreadsheet. Any employee could add a course if they felt it was beneficial. Courses had to be very concise, 3-5 minutes long about a certain function or process. Time entry couldn’t just be one course, there were too many options, we’d end up with dozens of time entry courses.  Quickly we determined this was not going to be 400-500 courses, it was growing much faster. This master spreadsheet has served as the “road map”, identifying all the courses in various stages of production, those loaded on the portal, the last date modified, etc.

Step 2. Story Boards. The person recording the training lessons was never going to be the “subject matter” expertise for more than 25 modules and advanced settings. So we came up with “story boards”, just like shooting a motion picture. Each course needed a story board with screen shots, narrative, important tips and so forth. We had to rely on our training and support staff to help build story boards, one for each course and these were done in Microsoft Word. The finished story boards were reviewed by at least one other employee or a manager to insure we were providing highly accurate instructions. If a user was going to change general ledger rules, we better have the right instructions. When the story board was approved the master spreadsheet was updated.

Step 3. Producing the Courses. Once we had approved story boards, we were able to begin producing the actual courses. We need standards for such things as background colors, placement of the navigation tools (rewind, fast forward, pause, etc.). Other considerations include screen resolutions, file sizes, volume and speed of the course. Little by little we were building the library.

Step 4. Final Review. Just to be safe, we instituted a final review of the actual streaming course, was it what we had in mind, did it match the story board, or did it need changes. If the course was accepted it was noted in the master spreadsheet.

Step 5. Load the Portal. The final step was to copy the Captivate files for each course to the hosted e-learning portal. Each course needed a multi-digit course number, a description and an association with a module or an overall function. We also the course duration and a few other bits of information to help the user. The course was now available for end-users.

Step 6. Documentation/Help files. We noticed early on that there was a similarity between e-Learning and software documentation/help files. We implemented a product called Doc-to-Help which allowed us to match up our Platinum Help screens and documentation to e-Learning courses. Providing paper documentation was not “green” enough for us, so we moved to HTML files, of course no one wants to read documentation anymore. Documentation is like reading a map on a trip, its old fashioned and so much easier to use GPS (e-Learning of sorts).

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Categories: Best Practices, Going Green, Productivity, Technology

e-Learning, Changing the Training Paradigm – Part 1 of 3 Commitments and Challenges

By on July 7, 2010

We needed to change the paradigm of how our clients could maximize the benefits of their investments in our products. We were rolling out enhancements and advanced features to our Platinum product much faster than our clients could incorporate them into their businesses. It was frustrating to see that users didn’t always understand how to use all the short-cuts or capabilities within the product. As we strategized on aggressively designing new modules, the problem was only going to worsen. Old fashion one-on-one user training was just too costly and webinars just weren’t personal enough. We needed a new solution.

So there I was at the podium during my launch session at our 2007 Annual Client Conference committing to revolutionize how law firms would get trained using our products. I could just see the eyes rolling, another wild idea from the president, although they had to admit I’d consistently delivered on “wild ideas” in the past. We would build a complete library of audio/visual training courses; we’d provide a course for every feature, on every screen, in every module, in every suite. The eyes started rolling again as I predicted that we’d probably end up with 400-500 of these courses.

Early on in the project we were getting discouraged, the cost to both build and then stream these courses from the internet was going through the roof. Third-party company’s offered these services primarily to Fortune 500 companies, and they were really expensive.  After extensive research we settled on Adobe Captivate as our tool to build the courses, it allowed us to not only record live software simulations with instructions but also add quizzes built right into the courses. We would build all the courses ourselves, in-house. The challenge now was to find a way to stream the Captivate files to the end user via the Flash player built into most browsers. Outside streaming services were available, but the cost per user was just going to be too much, this needed to be really inexpensive or clients would never use it. OK, time to get a RainMaker web software developer to figure out a way to build our own service. Within a few months we had developed a prototype website that would stream native Captivate files directly to the browser, we were in business. The site was further enhanced with levels of security, navigation grids to make it easy to find courses, sorting ability and an easy way to identify a new course that was added. We also added features to allow the e-learning portal and accompanying database to be used as a private label portal for law firms or other businesses wishing to host their own courses.

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Categories: Best Practices, Going Green, Productivity, Technology, The Legal Market
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