Chief Learning Officer- September 2008

SOLUTIONS FOR TODAY STRATEGIES FOR TOMORROW Chief Learning Officer magazine presents Video, Podcasts, White Papers and More Enriching the Corporate Learning Community Infozone is a collection of microsites that offers podcasts, videos, white papers and additional resources from our partners in the enterprise education community. These resources offer chief learning officers and other learning and development professionals a one-stop go-to guide to learn more about the practices and strategies at work in the most successful learning organizations across a variety of industries. that training outsourcing can be managed like just-in-time inventory with services on hand as needed, while also resolving issues of cost, lack of talent and timing. Those that outsource appear not only to be satisﬁed with current levels of spending on training, but they continue to be satisﬁed with the results of training providers, as 35 percent of enterprises report being “very satisﬁed,” and the percentage of respondents who are unsatisﬁed is low, at 8 percent. These satisfaction levels are consistent with 2007 results, and it appears training providers continue to provide quality services to their customers. The most important qualities to consider when looking at a training outsourcer are training expertise and subject matter expertise. These are the fundamentals for providing highquality training services in terms of understanding the subject matter and knowing how to impart knowledge to the audience. Other factors that are important are vendors acting as business partners; a good cultural ﬁt between the customer and vendor; knowledge of the customer’s business; and responsiveness. These qualities, while possibly harder to assess in the proposal process, are key attributes for a successful relationship, especially when the vendor will represent client companies in training situations for employees, partners and customers. Increase in Training Customers The targeted training audience has changed slightly since 2005, and there may be an indication of a slow decrease in using outsourcers for training employees with a corresponding increase in training customers. There could be a multitude of reasons for this slight change over time, such as a higher need for customer training as products become more complex or a greater degree of comfort in using outside providers to work with customers. There has been virtually no change in the training focused on partners during the past four years. Decision Making Roles Shift Who decides when or if to outsource has changed during the past several years. From 2006 to 2007, it appeared HR executives were becoming more active in the decision making, even more so than the CLO or head of training. More recently, however, HR executives have become less involved as decision makers, almost back to 2006 levels, while the heads of business units have taken on more decisionmaking authority across companies and continue to be more active in these decisions over time. The CLO or head of training, while still not as active in decisionmaking as in 2006, has become somewhat more involved in the decision making to compensate for the reduction in responsibility in this area for HR executives. Reasons for Staying in-House Companies that don’t outsource typically cite satisfaction with their internal training operations or indicate they don’t do enough training to justify hiring outside resources. Some companies that don’t outsource do not want to lose control of their training functions or believe the subject matter is too complex for outside providers. Companies with highly complex subject matter feel that training is more core to their operations and feel a greater obligation to keep those activities in-house. Conclusion While this survey answered some questions, it also highlighted areas that need to be explored, such as why the levels of outsourcing may be declining, at what point companies satisﬁed with their internal staff capabilities move to training outsourcing and why there is a shift in decision making from HR executives to the heads of business units. CLO Cushing Anderson is program director of learning services at IDC. He can be reached at editor@clomedia.com. Visit infozone.clomedia.com Information and resources provided by our partners: http://infozone.clomedia.com http://infozone.clomedia.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Chief Learning Officer- September 2008

Chief Learning Officer Editor’s Letter Contents Connections Imperatives Selling Up, Selling Down Strategies Take Five Lifestyle Learning: Improve the Bottom Line With Behavioral Education Tracom’s Social Style Model CLO Profile IOL: Determining the Impact of Learning Communicating With the Boss About Impact Mission Accomplished? Measuring Success of Corporate Universities Borrowing Measurement Practices From Investors Value Creation With Human Capital Investment Business Impact Analysis at Chrysler Learning or Performance Enhancement: Which Is It? Best Practices in Global Project Management Training Case Study Business Intelligence Advertisers’ Index Editorial Resources In Conclusion

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.