NOVEMBER 2008

Organizational Development
Fast, nimble and effective

With the rapid changes today’s companies are facing, the time to market as well as the time it takes to develop, design and create a new training program that focuses on addressing necessary and essential concepts, skills, initiatives and accompanied problems or concerns, is quickly evaporating. As a consequence of this fast paced business environment, learning and development staffs no longer have the luxury of time. Their companies want and need the training ”ASAP,” not three months, six months or a year from now. Even if one particular designated time frame was agreed upon during the initial planning and budgeting phase, the pressure to perform and implement ahead of time is intense.

“A good outsourced training partner can dramatically reduce the overall time it takes to effectively plan, design and incorporate a new program or initiative to obtain favorable outcomes and expected results much more quickly.”

If you are experiencing this problem, what do you need to do to solve it? The answer is to bring in help. The most obvious solution is to bring in an outsourced training partner. The benefits of doing this are substantial, including:

Focus and Direction

Much of the time dedicated to developing, designing and creating new training programs and initiatives becomes lost in countless meetings and in the process of arriving at a group consensus. Often teams know what they want as far as specific training, and they know what it should look like, but have no idea how to establish, develop, flow, and incorporate specific planning elements and components etc. within it. They often struggle with the focus and direction that a training program or initiative should take. A firm that specializes in learning solution engineering can greatly assist a learning development team in these areas by identifying specific criteria that is able to define the totality of a project, including outcomes, results, problems, issues and concerns as well as specific evaluation methods and metrics among other things. A good outsourced training partner can dramatically reduce the overall time it takes to effectively plan, design and incorporate a new program or initiative to obtain favorable outcomes and expected results much more quickly.

Experience and Expertise

Within many companies, learning and development department staffs are not likely to possess the necessary breadth, scope and depth of experience and expertise that may be required to craft some new programs and initiatives, especially ones that need to address serious or pressing business issues, challenges or opportunities. Sometimes it makes sense to bring in outsourced professional experience and expertise when it is needed. Doing so will reduce time, costs and frustration. The practical application of utilizing outsourced capabilities aid in pinpointing precise gaps in learning and voids in knowledge, concept or skill redundancies, knowledge or skill related voids and specific opportunities that may be otherwise missed.

Instructional Designs and Content

An effective learning solution engineering company has access to innovative and flexible instructional designs. It also tends to have an extensive amount of instructional content that can be drawn upon and utilized effectively. The availability of these components, even if they need to be modified and adapted, can save enormous amounts of time and overall reductions of cost, especially if there is the need to internally produce these from scratch.

Structure and Integration

All too often an effective underlying structure is missing from many training programs and initiatives. The failure to integrate and implement a solid foundational structure and instructional platform results in a lack of training focus and integration. This is one of the primary reasons that most training falls extremely short in producing desired results and specific outcomes. Without proper structure, specific programs and classes end up being delivered without the necessary integration of learning components, cross-linkages and essential reinforcement connections.

An effective learning solution engineering company is able to design a comprehensive blueprint and structure upon which to build a meaningful training program or initiative. It is able to weave and craft diverse instructional elements together to achieve desired results and necessary outcomes.

Speed to Market

The motivation of outsourcing to a learning solution engineering company comes from the need to increase the velocity of “speed to market.” The purpose is to perform the task of training development and delivery more quickly, more nimbly and more effectively than a company’s own internal resources are capable of doing. In the current environment, this is critical to a company’s competitiveness and sustainability.

Budget Considerations

In addition to “speed to market,” budget constraints need to be considered as a major training factor. An effective learning solution engineering partner tends to be sensitive to budgetary constraints. It realizes its customers must work within monetary parameters and boundaries, and is willing to accommodate them as much as possible.

The Bottom Line

While not all of the benefits received from a learning solution engineering partner are detailed in this article, the primary advantages of designing, developing and creating effective solutions quickly, nimbly and effectively are highlighted to demonstrate how these solutions are readily available within your budget and time constraints. Utilizing an outsourced training partner can help bring company programs or initiatives to market as quickly as they are needed.