Going Beyond ROI

This story has been anonymized for client confidentiality.

Seeking a platform fit for modern elearning design

The goal of the two people in the Learning Design team was to help employees continue their industry learning in-house. They wanted to help employees develop new skills and ultimately improve their performance in the long run. To make this goal a reality, they needed to make the content snappier and more engaging to better fit with employees’ hectic lifestyles and workloads.

They needed to be able to create modern, mobile-friendly elearning, so that people could access it anywhere with the device in their pocket. This was the impetus to ditch their previous software and go in search of a cloud-based authoring platform geared towards creating elearning that would have real-life impact.

One of the Learning Designers explained: “We did some market research, tried out a handful of options using free trials. With all of the different elearning solutions that we tried out, Elucidat was the clear winner. We created a few courses just to see the response, and we got some great feedback. We revamped old modules into Elucidat, and they now have a much fresher feel. The younger demographic of many of our new hires is very comfortable using an interface that mimics a website—navigating the menu, scrolling, and other normal digital behavior.”

A streamlined approach to producing the best elearning

Set up with the right platform, they focused first on getting a streamlined and repeatable process in place to be able to produce content efficiently. First, they meet weekly to assess what’s in the pipeline and share out the work. They then meet with the SMEs to ensure the project objectives are clear and discuss source content. They’ll often create a prototype to help visualize the look and flow before building out a module map to get the structure agreed. Getting this all in place before they start to actually author is key to their efficiency.

“Once we’ve laid out the course, that’s when we hand it back to the SMEs,” explains one of the Learning Designers. “Using Elucidat, they’re able to leave comments right on the platform. Perhaps we’ve missed a certain aspect or we didn’t dive deep enough. Having all feedback live within the platform makes the process much easier and quicker. With only two of us producing content, the speed factor is imperative.”

These processes made a world of difference to the small team. “Over the past 16 months, we’ve launched 125 courses across two different platforms geared to 100 to 1,000 learners each time. Naturally, quality and speed are key. The review process is much quicker within Elucidat than our previous approach.”

The team don’t just “launch and leave”. Instead, they keep a keen eye on the data to measure the performance of their content, making sure it’s optimized to achieve the objective.

“Sometimes the modules won’t always hit their mark first time round, and we’re okay with that,” says one of the designers. “If a course doesn’t have the engagement levels that we want, we try to understand why, early on, using Elucidat’s analytics and user feedback. Perhaps we’ve used too much jargon or there’s a particular page where engagement is dropping off. Whatever the reason, it’s a chance to learn.”

One step further with revenue-generating elearning

The output from the Learning Design team created such a buzz that they found themselves being approached by other departments wanting to invest in their services to help improve their content. “Initially, the concept of charging other departments within our company sounded a bit odd, but it makes so much sense when we realize we’ve saved those teams from outsourcing the same service, and then allowed them to recoup their costs and more by monetizing that product. It’s a win-win.”

The US team for example was rolling out a project around the new brand identity and sought support from the UK-based learning design team. “Because the US office is a member firm to the UK operation, we could charge them,” the UK team explain. “Our work was so well received that they wanted to translate those modules into several different languages. Elucidat has a really efficient translation process, so we’ve been able to monetize Chinese, Russian, Spanish, French, and Portuguese translations.”

The tiny team of two have achieved so much so quickly that they are now referred to as the “internal business school”. Their aim is to continue to grow so that in two years’ time, they can sell their skills to more internal departments and start reselling content to external clients. By partnering with Elucidat, they’ve successfully turned elearning from a cost-center to a revenue generator and are having a huge, measurable impact on their business.

Talk to us about how Elucidat can help you improve the ROI of your elearning.