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Both CRM systems and e-learning are designed to make your organization more competitive by increasing the knowledge of your employees.

A comprehensive e-learning system complements CRM in several ways: It reduces the time it takes for your employees to learn how their jobs will change once a CRM system is in place; it reduces the time it takes to make new employees competent; it improves the productivity of your organization; and it provides the resources that employees need to do their daily tasks.

The Customer Relationship Management System

To outperform competitors you must provide the kind of sales, service, and support that customers need. A CRM system is designed to bring you closer to customers by integrating all of your interactions with them.

To quickly benefit from a CRM system you must be able to quickly implement and successfully use the system. However, introducing a CRM system will require fundamental changes within your company. These changes may affect marketing, sales, service, and processes. The changes may also affect how you use technology in your company.

The only way to make changes to process and technology is to change the way people work (Figure 1). After all, it is people who implement processes and people who use technology. Once a CRM system is deployed, nearly every person throughout the organization will change the way they work. Some people may take on new jobs. In any case, the faster you get people to change their jobs to support the CRM system, the faster you will realize the benefits of CRM.

Figure 1 — Implementing CRM requires changes to process, people, and technology.

Comprehensive Learning System

The key to maximizing the value of a CRM system is to implement it quickly. A comprehensive learning system will provide all of the software that you need to manage the change. With a comprehensive system, you’ll have all you need from end to end to:

• Assess current readiness to support CRM and to plan for the required changes in performance and competency
• Create and deliver the training required to make people competent with the new CRM system
• Provide timely information and enable collaboration with experts to make sure that everyone can get the answers that they need to be productive
• Measure learning effectiveness and overall productivity improvement to make sure that change is complete

Assess and Plan

The first step in preparing your people to use CRM is to assess their current capabilities. Are your people capturing information about interactions, contacts, accounts, and opportunities? Do they understand key CRM concepts? A comprehensive learning system enables you to create online assessments and quickly get reports. The results of the assessment will identify the people most ready for CRM and those that need the most help. From the assessment you can use the learning system to establish performance objectives and competencies required to implement and use the CRM system.

The assessment can also measure the gaps between what people know now and what they must know later. Your training group can then map individual learning needs to training and make plans to deliver that training. By doing so, you can create individualized learning plans, focusing just on areas where help is needed. By doing so, you can reduce the time and cost it takes to deliver effective training.

Training

Business must continue while CRM training is under way. This requires a training strategy that allows people to learn as part of their jobs. In this situation, a blended learning approach using e-learning capabilities is ideal. Blended learning combines the best mix of self-paced e-learning, instructor-led sessions, and online experts.

Self-paced e-learning courses are ideal for establishing a basic understanding of CRM principles and using the software. The best courses help people learn quickly through adaptivity, personalization, and study aids.

• Adaptive courses change the flow of the course based on what people already know and how well they perform during the course. This adaptability reduces the time spent on topics the learner already knows and spends more time on problem areas.
• Personalized learning adapts the course to the work environment; for example, scheduling course time to fit within the work week by breaking the course into chunks. Another way to personalize learning is to deliver courses in a format most convenient to learners, including online, offline, CD-ROM, and print.
• Study aids are designed to transfer learning to job performance. With study aids, learners can bookmark course pages, make notes, and highlight the most important areas. Study aids can also be shared with others, making the team more productive.

The instructor-led sessions can then provide lively instructor and peer interaction. Instructor-led sessions can either be delivered in traditional classrooms or in virtual classrooms. Virtual classrooms reduce the need for travel, providing tremendous savings in time and cost. Virtual classrooms support all the interactions of real classrooms: learners can hear and see the instructor, and the instructor has a full range of instructional tools including presentation, application sharing, polling, and whiteboards.

Online experts support people by making sure they understand the application and relevance of the training to their jobs. If there is a question that needs to be answered immediately, the expert can give an answer through instant messaging. Experts can also provide answers through threaded discussion groups.

Whatever the mix of self-guided, instructor-led, or online expert sessions, courses have to be developed in time to meet the needs of the CRM deployment. To get rapid development, you need authoring tools that allow people to develop content as a team, using collaboration tools and workflow. The authoring tools must include capabilities such as template-based development and what-you-see-is-what-you-get editing to make authoring quick and easy (Figure 2).

Figure 2 — Rapid and flexible course development and delivery through team-based authoring.

Information and Expertise

It's essential to provide timely information and answers to all CRM users because, over time, a CRM system will become more sophisticated. New data fields will be added, new processes will be introduced, and new capabilities and experts will be identified. To effectively deal with this ongoing change, a comprehensive learning system offers the best solution, since it provides a single interface for all learning needs including training, information, and collaboration with experts and peers. As the system grows, browsing and searching help people find the information they need intuitively and quickly. What's more, learners may consult with experts by studying threaded discussions and by contacting them via instant messaging.

Measure

A comprehensive learning system can measure how well people are progressing against performance, competency, and learning objectives by providing reports that show progress at both an individual and a group level. It's important to measure the progress at every stage to keep the CRM initiative on track and, if needed, make the necessary course changes.

Benefits of a Comprehensive Learning System

It's clearly advantageous to have a learning system that can assess and plan learning requirements; deliver training, information, and expertise; and measure the results. A comprehensive learning system delivers these benefits:

• Rapid deployment — A comprehensive system can be implemented more quickly than individual software applications.
• Rapid learning — All of the learning is available in a single location so end users do not waste time hunting for the training, information, and expertise they need to get the job done.
• Saving time and money — A comprehensive system enables people to learn as they work, reducing time away from the job and minimizing disruption.
• Ease of management — A comprehensive system provides the capabilities that you need to measure the readiness of your organization to fully use CRM.

Components of a Comprehensive Learning System

There are three major components of a comprehensive learning system:

• Learning Management System — Manage employee competencies, map job requirements to learning needs, manage, and deliver blended learning.
• Learning Content Management System — Rapidly develop asynchronous courses and deliver them efficiently to multiple audiences.
• Virtual Classroom System — Deliver real-time instructor-led sessions with learner support before, during, and after the session

It's also important that a comprehensive learning system fit within your existing IT infrastructure and scales to your learning needs. Ideally, the system should have these capabilities:

• Works with your existing hardware and software, such as Windows, SQL Server, Oracle, etc.
• Runs on everyone's desktop using existing Web browsers
• Is easy to access through a single sign-on.
• Integrates with existing enterprise software and data through an open architecture.
• Is standards based — e-learning standards (SCORM, AICC), vCalendar, ADA Section 508, CFR 21 Section 11.

Summary

Implementing a CRM system requires employees to change the way they do their jobs. To manage this change, you need a comprehensive learning system to assess the scope of change; plan the learning program; create and deliver necessary training, information, and access to expertise; and measure the results. By providing a comprehensive learning program, you will reduce the time it takes to make CRM successful, thereby increasing your return on investment.