21st century training

Tim Buff, Managing Director of CM Group, explains how elearning makes a real difference to your company’s operations.

CXO. Please explain about the CM Group and how long you have been in elearning?
Tim Buff. We’re a UK-based company with offices near Bristol and in the US. We were founded in 2000 by IT professionals focussed on educating people on complex knowledge-based topics, originally in the IT arena but now more widely across any industry sector. We’ve gained a lot of practical experience in what works and what doesn’t and have partnered with customers to develop their learning strategies using innovative approaches to elearning, blended solutions, distance and community learning. We’ve been developing elearning since 2002 and are one of the biggest suppliers to Microsoft in the US for their official elearning materials for global distribution. Elearning is great for knowledge based training and we’ve been pioneering its use for wider programs such as soft skills training and to encourage behavioural change.

CXO. Why the growing interest in elearning?
TB. Skilled staff are essential to an organisation’s success. Leading companies are reticent to compromise here, even when budgets are under pressure. For many larger organisations elearning is the only practical way of reaching large numbers of staff, but even for smaller businesses the economic drivers are forcing a re-evaluation of what they do to seek out more efficient, yet lower cost and more effective training interventions. With recent technological advances, elearning has suddenly become significantly more affordable. Combine this with environmental drivers and the current economic climate and you can see why organisations are so interested in it.

CXO. So is elearning limited to internal staff training?
TB. Not at all, it can be a great way to reach partner communities. These could be customers, distributors or just members of the public – the crucial thing is to engage and interest people with up to date, relevant materials which are attractive, accessible and interactive.

CXO. How have advances in technology affected your approach?
TB. Historically, the problem with elearning has been the cost and time spent in creating courses, but since we’ve developed the Luminosity creation and deployment platform we’ve been able to dramatically speed up the process and reduce the cost significantly. A vital side benefit is that elearning is now quick and easy to update. The end result is agility and reach – not words previously associated with elearning.

CXO. How does Luminosity work?
TB. We’ve deliberately made Luminosity the easiest to use toolset on the market, so that people with no IT skills can use it. This means that an organisation’s own trainers and subject experts can create their own elearning and publish it out to a wide variety of devices. The platform is collaborative – that means courses can be created and published by individuals working alone or, more likely, in conjunction with a team dispersed across the organisation. It means that you can create and deliver more training, faster and at lower cost.

CXO. Why are different publishing options important?
TB. Given the investment in creating elearning, it’s vital to be able to easily deliver it out in a choice of ways to maximise the return on your investment. It’s all about reach and flexibility. Luminosity enables automatic reformatting and publishing to CDs, any SCORM compliant Learning Management System (LMS), Luminosity’s own LMS, SharePoint portals, intranet sites, web sites, mobile phones, even the latest handheld gaming devices.

CXO. How do you track that people have done the elearning and what assessment results they achieve?
TB. You will need some form of LMS. This is a system which hosts your elearning courses, controls access to them, records who has done what and any assessment results. This automated system will take a lot of manual effort off your administration team and provide comprehensive reports.

CXO. Where do you see the future taking us?
TB. The future means more elearning, more immediacy, more knowledge sharing, more community learning, more virtual networking and mentoring. So whichever way you choose to create your elearning, make sure you have the flexibility to future-proof your solution.

Tim Buff is Managing Director of CM Group. After qualifying at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, he has spent 25 years in the IT industry, the last 18 of which have been at board level of datacomms, software and training companies where he has been responsible for a combination of finance, operations and HR functions.