Crisis Forcing Changes in Learning Industry

When times get tough--the tough make changes. The hardships to companies and individuals in the current financial crisis cannot be overstated—layoffs are all too common and budgets are being slashed. But as some pundit recently said, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Companies are being forced to make difficult decisions, which may ultimately lead them to adopt much more efficient and effective ways of sharing knowledge than prior attempts using formal e-learning.

In better times, companies could afford to have a multiplicity of redundant learning/training solutions, technologies, and vendors. And they could afford the lengthy and expensive process of creating instructionally deisgned courseware. But no longer. The following are examples of the significant changes and consolidations that we at Altus Learning Systems see our customers making these days:

• A major storage systems company eliminated its annual sales meeting and invested in Altus to capture and deliver the essential training on-demand that would have occurred face-to-face in the meeting.
• A leading enterprise software company cancelled its annual customer conference and invested in Altus to capture and deliver the product-related training on-demand so its customers did not have to travel to the event.
• A major networking company eliminated travel for internal transfer-of-information meetings for the sales force and invested in Altus to capture and deliver the knowledge live and on-demand.
• Another electronics manufacturer discovered that it was using three knowledge sharing solutions and decided to reduce costs and improve the end-user experience by eliminating the other two vendors and consolidating with Altus. The same company is considering replacing a significant amount of its off-shored e-learning courseware development with on-demand presentations made directly by subject matter experts recorded in the Altus system.
• And an automotive company decided to abandon the expensive satellite television system it was using to broadcast technical updates throughout its domestic dealer network and substitute the Altus on-demand system for easy reference by automotive technicians.

In each case, companies decided to invest in Altus after reviewing all their options and coming to the conclusion that it was the most cost-effective solution for sharing mission-critical knowledge.