Across the country, the use of e-learning for employee training is exploding, and the reasons are many.  With e-learning, or Web-based training, organizations can save time and money, reach wider audiences and provide consistent delivery of content.  Transforming the way people learn, e-learning allows employees to complete training at their own pace and on their own time.  Providing this flexibility can help organizations reduce employee stress and increase employee retention rates.

The primary reasons organizations adopt e-learning strategies is to lower the overall cost of training and reduce the amount of time employees spend away from the job.  Web-based training reduces learning time and provides on-demand availability, enabling employees to complete training conveniently during off-hours or from home.  Certainly, this is reason enough to introduce self-paced learning, but smart businesses also weigh other factors, such as maintaining a competitive workforce.  Companies of all sizes are introducing alternative training methods to help employees be productive and thrive in their organizations.  Today's forward-thinking organizations also use e-learning to increase productivity by speeding the delivery of company and product information to their employees.

Even with the growing success of e-learning, many senior managers will still have questions such as: 

• What are the risks of e-learning?
• What are the tangible benefits? 
• What is the ROI for e-learning?

If you are a training and development professional attempting to "sell" the value of e-learning to your firm, you must be prepared to effectively answer these questions and be able to present a winning business case for e-learning.  This takes preparation.

Know Your End Goal Before You Start
Establishing the need and desired outcomes for e-learning requires preparation and the ability to communicate your plan effectively to management.  If you hope to persuade management that e-learning has significant benefits, you must first understand the business of e-learning.  This will not only help you construct a viable argument for e-learning, but also serve as a guide to achieving a successful outcome for your training programs.

Identify the Business Need for E-Learning
A needs analysis begins with collecting the information needed to define the purpose and objectives for implementing an e-learning strategy.  In addition to considering requirements for technology, content and resources, this fact-finding stage enables you to identify and analyze the business needs.  Questions to be addressed include:

• What are the firm's long-range business goals?
• What are the business problems the firm is trying to solve?
• What business needs are currently being addressed by senior management?

Talk to those who are responsible for different employee groups within your firm.  Solicit feedback from managers in human resources, IT and professional development.  Then, talk with senior management to better understand the firm's goals and the obstacles to obtaining those goals.

By addressing these questions you can effectively examine the business case for e-learning and assess whether or not your firm is ready to implement e-learning as part of its education platform.

Address Business Challenges and Opportunities
You can develop a strong business case by identifying core business challenges and opportunities for which e-learning is a potential solution.  The following are some examples of common business problems or challenges that many organizations are faced with today:

• Time-to-competency for new employees (onboarding)
• Access to information, training and resources 24/7
• Geographically dispersed employees
• Increasing cost and time required to train current employees
• Gaps in employee skills or knowledge

As you consider the business needs that e-learning can address for your firm, outline how e-learning provides a solution to meet those needs.  For example:

• Cut training costs
• Convey information quickly across the firm in a standardized format
• Meet increased training demands
• Offer flexibility in the delivery of training to employees

Reducing the cost of training is certainly an important consideration because it points to hard dollar savings, but there are other equally important factors to consider that go beyond just cost cutting.  Organizations now see the potential for broader business impact by tying learning to increased productivity, improved employee retention and better client service. 

Develop the Business Case
Once the needs analysis is completed, the next step is to write a business case that outlines your research, your analysis and your recommendations for e-learning.  Your business case should address, at a high level, the reasons for implementing e-learning, the expected benefits, the options considered and the expected costs and risks.

A well-developed business case shows you've done your homework and is a key strategy for presenting upper management with the business need, the solutions and the expected outcomes for e-learning. 

Include Risks and ROI
Implementing an effective e-learning strategy should also include consideration of the associated risks and a close look at the return on investment (ROI), or the costs versus benefits.  To gain management approval these two topics need to be incorporated into your business case.

Typical risks associated with e-learning include:

• Financial (up-front cost)
• Project implementation challenges
• Failure to launch

To offset the first risk, consider human capital development and the financial resources allocated to employees as an investment in increasing their knowledge and skills.  The second risk, project implementation, can be addressed by applying basic instructional design principles and by following SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model), a consistent and standardized approach to course delivery.  With SCORM compliance, you can mitigate a great deal of execution risk in e-learning.  Without this approach, you will find yourself with a collection of unmanaged courses, each with different interfaces and pedagogical approaches.

There are several strategies that can be used as countermeasures to the third risk, failure to launch.  To ensure that e-learning actually will be utilized by employees:

• Make e-learning courses prerequisites for a number of instructor-led courses.
• Use e-learning for mandatory competencies and as a prerequisite for compliance training.
• Tie the deployment of e-learning to a significant event, such as a software upgrade.

Overall, the key to diminishing your risks is consistent and systematic attention to what might happen before it occurs.

Calculating ROI involves comparing your costs against the benefits, which is your "return."  Determining cost is straightforward and typically falls into three expense categories:  equipment, labor and overhead (time and materials).  Benefits fall into a gray area and are often harder to quantify.  Increased revenue and reduced costs point to hard dollar savings.  Better client service, on the other hand, points to soft dollar savings, and this is more challenging to measure.

The following are several examples of the benefits of e-learning:

• Reduced training time and costs
• Better utilization of training resources
• Quicker conveyance of information across the firm
• Improved process and speed for onboarding new employees
• Increased productivity in using desktop tools for document production
• Improved client service

As you write your business case, keep these questions in mind:  What will success look like in your firm after the e-learning initiative has been implemented?  What results will be expected?  Your results should be tied directly to the challenges or opportunities identified in your needs analysis.

Design Your E-Learning Strategy
By assessing your firm's readiness for e-learning with a thorough needs analysis and a well-developed business case, you will be equipped to design a strategy that aligns the objectives for e-learning with the business goals of your firm.  By being prepared to answer the tough questions management will ask, you will also strengthen your own professional credibility as an e-learning strategist.  Ultimately, this will enable you to present a winning case for e-learning and propel your firm to future success. 

About our author

Theresa Lundquist, Chief Learning Officer for SS Solutions, delivers strategic consulting services and learning strategies that provide effective solutions for improving productivity and proficiency in document production, client service, and organizational performance. Theresa's primary focus is designing skill assessments that measure core competency skills and developing customized learning plans targeted to close skill gaps. She can be reached at Theresa.Lundquist@SS-Solutions.net.