How does your learning organization add business value?

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In today’s economy .... you better have a quick, clearly articulated response!






Lets start by looking at some information from a recent benchmarking study completed by Mile High Research. Our study looked at several global learning organizations within the technology industry and identified four common corporate level business objectives that drove the Learning Services charter.

Corporate Business Objectives - Driving the Learning Services Charter

1. Grow Product and Services Revenue – Learning Services can enable buyers to deeply understand how to use, apply, and customize the product or service purchased. As customers better understand the details of a product, they identify new opportunities and buy more. As new product features and models are announced, highly trained customers will advocate to acquire them and can more rapidly adopt them into their environment.

2. Grow Contribution Margin – Learning Services can be a high-margin business. Many technology companies use their customer training businesses as a profit center. Learning Services are offered to customers as another line of business similar to Support, Professional, Managed or Field Services generating incremental revenue and contribution margin. A well managed Learning Services business within a technology company can return comparable contribution margins to a Professional Services practice.

3. Grow Product Adoption – Learning Services are often used as a strategic adoption enabler to reach new audiences. Many technology companies target academic institutions offering no or low cost software and learning content to faculty and students. This may include entry level certification credentials seen as a value add to students formal academic achievement. Technology companies are now targeting the primary and secondary education market (K-12), introducing their brand to future technology evangelist.

4. Improve Customer Satisfaction - Learning Services can enables buyers to effectively utilize the products and services sold by a corporation. Research shows the better a customer understands how to use a product, the higher their level of success, overall satisfaction and are inclined to recommend that product to others.

Some learning organization are blessed with a charter that focuses on impacting one or two of these corporate level objectives. Others have a more complex charter that includes impact to all. Learning leaders, tenured learning staff and corporate stakeholders were asked to stack rank these objectives and describe their rational.

Our study concluded that 46% of learning organizations studied had charters that were clear and aligned with both staff and corporate stakeholders.

Clear Charter – The charter of the learning organization was clear with business value well understood throughout the organization. Corporate stakeholders views of the business value potential was in alignment with the learning organization. A scorecard tracking key performance indicators (KPI's) goal vs actual was established and monitored as part of the learning organizations metric review cadence. The KPI's were visible at the corporate level with summary level detail reviewed quarterly.

The balance of learning organizations studied (54%) had charters that were in transition or not clear. Survey results and interviews correlated two major themes by audience. Learning leaders most often ranked financial goals #1 and #2 while corporate stakeholders ranked adoption and customer satisfaction as the top corporate goals impacted by learning services. Tenured learning staff was split between the two major themes.

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In Transition – The charter of the learning organization was clear with business value well articulated but not yet fully understood throughout the organization. Corporate stakeholders understood the charter as articulated by the learning organization but had varying views of the business value potential. A scorecard with key performance indicators (KPI's) had not yet been finalized. Our analysis also reveled that smaller learning organizations (<100)>

Not Clear - The charter of the learning organization was not clearly understood throughout the organization. Significant differences exist between stakeholders understanding of the learning organization charter and views of its business value potential to the corporation.

Note: If the charter of the learning organization was considered “In Transition” by members of the learning organization for more then 6 quarters we placed it in the “Not Clear” category.

An effective charter will help guide an organization and ensure that its members understand its purpose and stay on track to accomplish it. It establishes a common language, between the learning leader and other corporate leaders. This can serve the learning leader well when it comes time to justify investment in the learning services business to stakeholders. Or when you find yourself in the elevator with the CEO or CFO and they ask the question, “So how does your learning organization add business value to the corporation?”

"Mile High Research can assist learning leaders to clarify their charter and develop compelling business value statements for their learning organization." - Denny Schall, Chief Learning Officer at Mile High Research .

Our targeted Learning Charter Assessment Service provides an comprehensive review of the learning organization charter and assesses the current state of real and perceived strategic business value delivered to the corporation. Deliverables include a strategic insight summary of the current state and defines actionable recommendations to further enhance the business value potential of the learning organization. Assessment and recommendations are based on our benchmark data and best practices research within the learning industry. The assessment can be completed in as little as three days.

Contact Mile High Research for further information.