At Microsoft’s2014 conference, general manager Jared Spataro revealed that SharePoint has achieved “double digit growth for each of the last 18 quarters,”reaching $1 billion faster than any other Microsoft product. SharePointhas taken the software world by storm and shows no signs of slowing down.
As a result, manyorganizations already have significant investments in SharePoint and utilize itfor its superior content management capabilities. In fact, it’s estimated thatover 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies currently employ SharePoint. However, onearea where it is being extremely underutilized by a majority of organizationsis as a learning management system (LMS).
Imagine for aminute that you just joined your neighborhood’s most prestigious fitness club.It has everything you could ever dream of—pool, group fitness, personaltraining, spa, child care, basketball courts, and more. It wouldn’t make senseto only use it to walk on the treadmill a couple of days a week, right? Whywouldn’t you take advantage of all the wonderful tools available to you as amember? This is very much true with the current use of SharePoint.
Change management
Unknownto many, SharePoint’s capabilities extend far beyond content management. Its latestversion offers a host of new features prime for training. This article willaddress how using SharePoint as an LMS will give you the most bang for yourbuck, all while increasing productivity and decreasing training costs.
Time is money,right? It is quite a production to roll out a new anything, let alone a learningmanagement system that involves a variety of people and steps includingplanning, configuration, integration, migration, testing, and go live.According to an article in Learning Solutions Magazine, it’sestimated that it takes on average between six months to a year to implement anLMS hosted on the premises, or three to nine months for SaaS solutions. Dependingon your particular situation and needs, SharePoint can often shorten this time-intensiveimplementation because it is already integrated with your IT infrastructure and othermanagement systems.
Have you evernoticed that some workers don’t deal well with change? They’re tasked with amillion things to do and the minute they’re asked to “learn” one more thing, suchas a new LMS for instance, it puts them over the edge. According to the Harvard Business Review, the topthree reasons for employee push back when faced with change is loss of control,excess uncertainty, and the feeling that more work will be added to their plate.Not so with SharePoint, if your organization is already using this tool. Youremployees won’t have to learn a new password or login information becauseSharePoint is already synced with Active Directory. In addition, there is noneed for the “more work” of learning a new system. Microsoft SharePoint isdesigned with a Microsoft Office-like interface that users are already familiarwith.
Content
With learningand development, content is the name of the game. This happens to be whereSharePoint shines. Using SharePoint as an LMS streamlines the process becausenow you eliminate the need to transfer content from one system to another. Thisis incredibly useful when dealing with standard operating procedure (SOP) andcompliance training. Strict versioning and workflows also ensure that only themost up-to-date file is used and stored in one central location.
SharePointmakes it easy to share training content to only those you wish to view it with permissionsettings. You can choose to make content available to your entire workforce, makeit team-specific, or even to your extended enterprise.
Customizable teamsites are great for training because they provide a one-stop-shop wherelearners can find all of the content they need from training material, schedulesand calendars, task lists, discussions, and much more. An example is creating anew employee portal. Trainers can update all new paperwork, SOPs, generalcompany info, etc. You can assign tasks to a learner and add them to theircalendar. New employees can also send an email from the portal to HR or writeon the discussion board.
Collaboration
Research showsthat not only is there an increase in productivity with social collaborationbut also better learner retention. So that is why SharePoint has upped the antewith improved social features like personal sites, communities, forums, Wikis,and blogs. You have the opportunity to revampyour learning model.
Socialcollaboration features in SharePoint give a single place to connect withexperts across an organization, whether in the office down the hall or on theother side of the globe. Questions can be answered quickly in orderto make the right decisions, avoid reinventing the wheel, and improve work.
An example ofutilizing social in SharePoint is with new employees. There are always lots ofquestions that come with a new job, and SharePoint communities help makefinding the right people with the right information easy. Community members caneven be awarded badges to help identify them e.g., peer mentor or new-hirebuddy.
Another way toapply SharePoint social features with training is by tying a discussion totraining material. This gives a better sense of connection for those workingremotely. Learners can converse with the trainer as well as their peers. Theability to post videos is also an enhanced feature useful for training—orconnect Microsoft Lync for instant messaging, calls, and video conferences.
Reporting
Reporting is animportant tool if you want to know whether your training initiatives aresuccessful. SharePoint provides the option to send a survey or quiz tolearners. This information can then be used to create customized, interactivereports and dashboards with charts and graphics sharable with anyone.
Example: CorVel reaps benefits of SharePoint as LMS
CorVel, aleading provider of risk management solutions, had a significant investment inSharePoint. Using out-of-the-box SharePoint capabilities, InfoPath, and alittle custom code, they were able to create a homegrown learning managementsystem for their training needs.
This solution inSharePoint worked for several years but additional business-criticalrequirements overwhelmed the system. Specifically, CorVel needed to be able totrack continuing education credits, attendance at training webinars, andawarding of continuing education credits. They also needed to be able to offerbetter compliance and security such as eSignature capabilities. Trackingtraining and testing results was another important need as was offering a shortlearning curve for employees. From a business investment and efficiencystandpoint, CorVel needed a solution that fully integrated with their existingSharePoint network.
Theseadditional requirements went beyond what CorVel’s in-house development teamfelt comfortable with building. However, SharePoint had proven to work well forthem previously so when they needed to improve upon their homegrown solution, ratherthan moving to a totally different approach that would have been less compatiblewith their other enterprise systems (and would have required more tailoring), replacingit with another LMS based on SharePoint made perfect business sense.
CorVel implementeda vendor-provided learning management system based on SharePoint to solve theiradditional training needs. They were able to integrate with existing SharePointcontent, reuse their SharePoint network, and completely reuse existing approvedpersonnel profiles, organizational structures, and related SharePoint metadata.
With this implementation,CorVel was able to see a cost savings of approximately $500,000 during thefirst year of operation. They were able to save money in IT infrastructure, training anddevelopment, and travel. They were also able to reduce IT expert-resource consumption,avoided retraining costs, increased onboarding pace, and increased theefficiency of documentation and the training team.
Conclusion
SharePoint isabout giving you and the people you work with a better way to get things donetogether. SharePoint’s capabilities extend far beyond just being a contentmanagement tool with reporting and collaborative features that just worknaturally for training needs. If your organization is already using SharePoint,why not leverage its capabilities for your learning management?
Thismultifunctional tool can help keep your entire organization in sync, makeprocesses and people more productive, deliver more engaging and effectivecustomer experiences, assist in achieving legal and regulatory compliance, andbalance IT and businessneeds including reduced total cost of ownership (TCO).
CorVel’s experiencehighlights how you can use SharePoint as a homegrown LMS as well as when thereis a need for more advanced features that only a comprehensive LMS can provide.SharePoint provides an upgrade path in this situation, avoiding the need toconvert everything to a new system.
I hope this article providesa “light-bulb moment” and sheds some light into all the untapped features inSharePoint that will make your training and development job easier.
