Greater Efficiency: How Learning and Development
Can Contribute
By Sue Todd

Improving efficiency and driving costs out of operations are at the top of every CEO's "to-do" list. And there is no part of a company that is immune to the need to look at their operation and see what they can do more efficiently. Learning and Development (L&D) is certainly being asked to do its part. In this article, we describe the CUX CASE™ (Consolidation, Automation, Standardization and Evaluation) method for finding ways that L&D can make a difference along with examples of companies that have been successful in applying the steps of the method to their organization's learning operations.

SUCCESS IN A DECENTRALIZED MODE

Many successful corporations have been purposely operating in a decentralized mode to grant business units (BUs) significant autonomy in their pursuit of delivering value to customers. Business units often can adapt more quickly to market changes than if they were waiting for approval at every step by an authoritative central headquarters.

The theory is that astute General Managers can assess threats and shift operations to head off competitive strikes or can adjust to local and regional needs while remaining within the context of the business strategy and without waiting for an okay from the larger entity.

Another driver behind decentralized operations is to avoid disturbing the success of an acquired company. In 2003 alone, there were nearly 8800 acquisitions and 5800 mergers of which 48 percent resulted in failure within 24 months.* The promises of synergy and leverage rarely materialize as planned, and worse yet, the efforts often result in financial harm to one or both organizations. Some organizations take a hands–off approach to minimize those risks. If an acquired company is delivering good results, let it continue. Don't impose adherence to ad hoc controls emanating from the center.

DRIVING COST OUT OF THE MODEL

But there is a shift in progress. And it's not toward centralization but toward establishing common processes, structures and methods across the enterprise that each of the decentralized operating units can share and benefit from.

While companies loathe impeding the progress and track records at their BUs, they are always under pressure to squeeze costs out of their systems. The most logical targets for the squeeze are the supporting or enabling business functions such as finance, technology, purchasing, human resources and L&D.

CUX developed a CASE™ model depicted in the graphic on page 2 to illustrate how L&D organizations can drive cost out of their own operations.

The concepts behind the CASE model are not new but the method offers a more holistic way to think about creating efficiencies within the L&D operation. The method also presents an effective way to think about what could or should be offered within a Shared Services organization for L&D.

Let's look at each area of the graphic to get a deeper understanding of what you would do and how you would do it.

CONSOLIDATION

Many L&D teams recognize that there are significant redundancies in their programs across the enterprise. A classic story is told about General Electric who reviewed curriculum across the enterprise to find 50 different versions of PowerPoint training. Whether it's obvious or not, having numerous versions of the same course can mean that people's time is being wasted by managing numerous vendors, performing maintenance on duplicate courses, or simply managing and updating catalogs or links to competency models.

There also is a possibility that offering numerous versions of the same thing can be very confusing to the workforce who are trying to sift through the volume of material to figure out what they need.

Consolidation doesn't just apply to courseware though. It also means eliminating duplicate processes, technologies, vendors, partners, staff and operational functions. To begin to get visibility into this area, an organization should perform a comprehensive current state assessment. (Corporate University Xchange members can find a variety of Current State Assessment tools in the Collaboratory.)

AUTOMATION

Every industry – from finance to retail to technology to automotive and others – is recognizing significant cost savings by pushing the labor into the hands of consumers in a business-to-consumer model or to another business in the business-to-business model. We pump our own gas, pour our own sodas, and design our own laptops from a library of parts. We drop-ship supplies and materials to disaggregate the middle man, we integrate purchasing systems and RFID technologies to streamline ordering, and participate in online reverse auctions to win business. The concept of self-service has to be one of the greatest cost savings mechanisms ever conceived because it redistributes labor.

Many L&D organizations are capitalizing on the same principles by implementing Learning Management Systems, offering web-based courseware and developing learning portals. But putting those systems and tools in place should not be the end game. L&D must continually consider how it can expand the number of automated services it can provide.

Certainly the learning architecture should support self-service access to learning programs for enrollment and registrations and all the associated communication on logistics, pre-work, and other details. The technology infrastructure also should enable collaboration between managers and employees for Individual Development Planning (IDP) and approval processes and to provide self-serve access to learning histories, completion reports and certifications. The architecture can expand to include supporting Communities of Practice, finding subject experts, capturing and organizing experience-based learning. These activities are somewhat obvious.

But what else can be done to automate the business of learning?

For one, Cisco has done a brilliant job of enabling its product managers to produce, from their desks, video-based learning objects that describe product features and capabilities. They've been provided with systems and processes to record and distribute powerful content in a very automated way with little or no reliance on the corporate learning team.

Bank of America, HSBC and others are working to integrate learning objects into work tools so that their knowledge workers don't have to stop what they're doing, log into an LMS and search for a chunk of content to refresh their knowledge of a topic.

Automation can take on many forms and L&D teams need to carefully consider how they can adopt and adapt it to the hundreds of activities they perform on a regular basis.

STANDARDIZATION

It's very hard to drive continual improvement in any operation if there are inconsistent processes, measurements and methods. The entire notion of Six Sigma is about driving errors out of a process so that the process yields a predictable and successful result every time it is performed.

L&D organizations will significantly improve the quality and fidelity of their programs by agreeing to adopt a consistent set of processes around their programs. And they should agree on the priority for which they must implement common practices.

For example, is it more important to have each L&D group use a consistent set of variables for ranking priorities on new project development so that the organization's investments are properly managed across the enterprise? Or, would greater value come by creating standard processes for documenting the content development history of courseware that's related to regulatory requirements?

Standardization is tough for groups who have significant trouble giving up the methods they've created. But it's absolutely essential if the L&D operation is ever to be treated like other critical business processes that can be finely tuned for maximum efficiency.

EVALUATION

A few short years ago, training organizations were good about measuring the number of hours of training they delivered and the number of employees who completed courses. Eventually, business pushed back and said those numbers don't help us see the value you are delivering. Many L&D organizations started to conduct ROI studies that could document some type of quantifiable benefit.

And there really are two sides to the equation.

It's not enough to run training like a business; L&D also has to run training for the business. That requires making keen business decisions to balance the need for operational efficiencies in L&D programs with the demands of the business to shorten time to competence, reduce time to market, and drive customer loyalty.

The inclusion of Evaluation as part of the CASE method emphasizes the importance of L&D teams' implementing a two-pronged measurement strategy. The first prong of measurement analyzes the overall effectiveness of the L&D operation itself and applies the discipline of continuous improvement to make the operation ever more effective as it operates.

The second prong focuses on defining consistent methods and approaches to measure the L&D function's impact on business performance. The "E" in case should always be pointing to greater refinements and improvements of "C" "A" and "S" along the way.

IT CAN BE DONE

And it has to be. For L&D to deliver learning that matters is not enough - there also has to be a constant emphasis on delivering that learning in the most efficient and productive manner possible. That's when the L&D team can be looked upon as the strategic partner that the business depends on to deliver knowledgeable, talented individuals at all levels of the organization.

Reprinted from Corporate University Xchange Newsletter

Sue Todd is president of Corporate University Xchange. She can be reached at
stodd@corpu.com.

* "When to Ally and When to Acquire," Harvard Business Review, July/August 2004