Building Your Company's Value Through Rapid e-Learning

If you're like me, when somebody says the word asset, you think of tangible items—things like buildings, automobiles, computer and cash —some, of course, being better than others. But analysts who calculate the valuation of companies see assets through a broader lens.

Your business processes become assets when they're documented. These are things that a new manager or owner could walk in and of my immediately. As the culminations of your successes and failures are shaped into policies and procedures, they become the assets. A training manual is also an asset, the value of course resulting in better equipped and more effective employees.

Enter rapid e-learning: a quicker way to produce training materials…and when properly applied, often more effective. e-Learning can be delivered to learners at the right time, whether a classroom instructor is available or not. And as a classroom of one, the only ongoing personnel costs incurred by that e-learning may be the cost of the learners' time.

Please Note: While it's not a bookable value, Rapid e-Learning models keep subject matter experts engaged in the operation rather than matrixing them to a learning function. This additional benefit is apt to add actual value to the organization.

Like the policy and procedures manual, or the training manual, e-learning can be used immediately by a new manager, new employee, or new owner. It is an asset that can increase the book value of your company.

Capturing a company's knowledge base is one of the critical steps in adding to a company's valuation.

Consider what could happen to the valuation of your company when you capture processes, skills, and training internally vs. outsourcing the entire content development process (which moves the critical knowledge asset outside of the company). Even if an external firm develops your content, be sure you retain all of the data that was used in development of that content.

We recommend that companies limit outsourcing to the instructional design or development processes, but not the subject-matter expertise, ownership, and management of knowledge assets. Rapid e-learning tools and processes can be effectively deployed to properly manage the ID-SME relationship so that companies without instructional design expertise can successfully work with companies that do have subject-matter expertise--without jeapardizing their valuable knowledgebase.

What about time?

Companies often outsource both training development and content development to keep internal resources (SMEs) from being pulled from their normal duties to develop content--an understandable concern. But in traditional development processes, the time-cost-quality continuum prevails, so you save a little of the SME's time, but quality and/or cost are impacted. Using a streamlined, rapid e-Learning process, either internal or external content and instructional designers can more effectively tap subject matter experts so that impacts on their time are minimized while cost and quality goals are maintained.

What large companies know about valuation is that it's captured and maintained by growing your customer base, establishing a market presence, streamlining processes, and managing a business structure in which the individuals may change, but the outcomes remain consistent. Quality, timeliness, and brand must not fluctuate based on the individuals serving your customers, or the company as a whole will suffer. Changes in cost, quality, or perception should be deliberate.

Training is a critical component of every successful, scalable business venture. Without it, changes in people result in organizational or product changes that are unanticipated, and more likely than not, unwanted.

We are not accountants and it would be both unfair and unwise for us to presume we could tell you the actual value that will be added to your company by rapid e-learning. Only a qualified CPA can make such a determination. We can tell you that in software development, we've seen a one-to-one correspondence between the cost of time invested in an ongoing software development project and the book value ascribed by an accounting firm.

Given the fact that rapid e-learning often produces the same amount of content as more traditional e-learning development processes, in a fraction of the time, perhaps it is possible to realize net gains in your company's book value, simply through the production and deployment of rapid e-learning solutions.

A Side Note on Investing in Training

Each year, ASTD (American Society for Training and Development) recognizes the top organizations that demonstrate success in employee learning and development; organizations that "create, support, and champion learning opportunities for results and a learning culture." These types of organizations understand the value of employee learning and place a premium on it--not because they want to win this prestigious recognition, but because they know the future health and growth of their companies depends upon it.

In 2004, the winners included:

• ICICI Bank Limited - recognized for improvements in customer satisfaction, cycle time, and sales revenue resulting from learning initiatives, for this company which calls itself “The Indian face of global banking.” The company experienced such rapid growth that it had to hire 800 unskilled workers and train them as customer service reps--and they did.
• Wipro Technologies - a company based in Bangalore, India, which is so focused on developing intellectual capital that they created an Academy of Software Excellence program in conjunction with a premier technology institute. Graduates from computer science and math programs at the technology institute work at Wipro for four years while completing a master's program. This is just one example of initiatives cranking up the quality of the Indian workforce.

The 2005 winners of the BEST Awards includes five Indian companies:

• Gecis India
• ICICI Bank
• Reliance Industries Limited
• TATA Consultancy Services
• Wipro Technologies

It is no mistake that these organizations continue to focus on training and education as the underpinnings of their company's futures.