In his book Designing the Smart Organization: How
Breakthrough Corporate Learning Initiatives Drive Strategic
Change and Innovation, Roland Deiser redefines
corporate learning as the core engine for building
sustainable "strategic competence" into the DNA of
a firm. "Corporate learning becomes an indispensable
enabler of continuous innovation and change," he adds.
Deiser asks a fundamental question in his book: "How
can entire corporations, industries, even societies learn to
be more strategically competent systems, so they will
ultimately survive in balance within their relevant
ecosystems?" If we look at the training function as a
strategically competent system, we must focus not only on
its core function of developing learning that aligns with
the organization's business goals to yield business results
but also on the processes and operations that enable its
smooth functioning. Though these operations may be termed
the learning "back office," their
activities-enrollment, scheduling, or instructor
management-are often the most directly visible to the
learner audience. To run like the proverbial well-oiled
machine, these operations must first be streamlined and
optimized.
In this post-recessionary year, the road ahead is
uncertain. If companies start hiring or expanding their
operations, the demand for training employees will increase.
However, if companies play it safe, then training
investments will be conservative. How do learning leaders
cope with fluctuating demands and declining training budgets
in a recovering economy? It is no wonder then that the
L&D function is most in need of a makeover.
This is easier said than done. In large global
organizations, training functions not only have to contend
with budget and resource constraints in the face of
consolidation, they also have to push the envelope with
global expansion and an increasing ecosystem of employees,
customers, and partners. In other words, if your training
department is managing every aspect from strategy to
learning and development (L&D) to back-office
administration, it probably has its hands full. It is no
wonder then that outsourcing training administration
continues to be a growing trend even in a post-recession
environment. In his blog post,
7 Trends in Training Outsourcing, Doug Harward states,
"Training administration is one of the most common
functions outsourced due to the increased focus on
centralizing back office activities."
However, many CEOs and CFOs still struggle with
preconceptions about outsourcing any aspect of the training
function even though it has been proven that outsourcing
learning administration-which includes the people,
processes, and the Learning Management System (LMS) for
successful planning, implementation, operation, and control
of a training program-cuts costs and allows organizations to
increase efficiency. The advantages of outsourcing learning
administration become even more pronounced in the case of
large, global corporations-like the electronic giant
Philips-which can tremendously benefit not only from the
variable cost structure but also from a streamlined,
centralized learning back office.
Nearly 30 percent of the $56.2 billion dollars spent on
training expenditures in 2008 went to outside products and
services. Clearly, there is a business case to be made for
outsourcing learning functions. As organizations strive to
spread their presence across multiple geographies, it is
becoming increasingly complex to manage learning
administrative operations through a standardized, seamless
process. (Continued)
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