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SAP Learning Solution accelerates skills development for SA companies


Johannesburg, 13 Aug 2004

With most South African organisations struggling to get their skills development plans up and running in time to stave off government pressure on that front as well as meet the country's dire need for competitive talent as quickly as possible, SAP's Learning Solution is being implemented by organisations such as the City of Tshwane to cascade relevant learning to thousands of employees at a time.

"There's a worldwide need to integrate the principles and practicalities of life-long learning into an organisation's knowledge and performance management and get all three aligned with business strategy," says SAP Public Services product manager, Andr'e Kruger.

"That's a tall order, with the cost of classroom-based learning escalating and in-house human capital and training practitioners being shed as part of the global cost-cutting frenzy. Ten years ago, a company with 500 employees would have had 40 HR in-house practitioners to service it. Now there'll rarely be more than 10. So, the manual capacity to understand what employees know, what they need to know and how or when to teach it to them is diminishing all the time.

"In SA, all these problems exist alongside an urgent national need to develop competitive skills - without companies here having the extra financial or human resources to be able to address the additional burden effectively.

"So, many of them are turning to technology-driven learning as a means of quickly and cost-effectively extending traditional knowledge transfer methods."

Kruger warns, however, that standalone technology-based learning solutions can be counter-productive. "A learning solution that works off its own database and cannot be easily integrated into administrative systems focused on performance management and workflow and HR systems such as payroll, key performance indicators (KPIs) or Workplace Skills Plans, is pointless.

"Making your business sustainable and adaptable is a strategic not a tactical imperative. It follows, then, that you should map your employee and learning lifecycles to your business strategy from a holistic rather than an ad hoc point of view. Besides, return on investment is always best achieved through the coherent, comprehensive application of a system."

Return on investment in the right kind of technology-based learning solution is significant. Meta Group estimates as much as a 67% reduction in training time and costs associated with travel alone. Then there are accelerated employee productivity and improved performance, close employee alignment with organisational objectives, competence matched with objectives, the ability to deliver the right information, in the right amounts, at the right time... and integrated testing and assessment capabilities that avoid wasting time and money on teaching learners what they already know.

There are also benefits from increased efficiency through automated processes and workflows, strategy optimisation by tracking KPIs, and the possibility of creating new revenue streams through sales of e-learning content.

But one of the single biggest benefits the system offers is the potential for preferred employer status by providing a service delivery platform that increases employee satisfaction. "And that kicks over into an ability to retain the kind of talent you really want," Kruger says.

The SAP Learning Solution provides pre-packaged, integrated best practice across all levels of employee development, employee management and employee administration - incorporating features and functions for all roles in the learning arena - managers, instructors, learners, training administrators, authors and instructional designers.

By supporting individual learning strategies and learning objectives it enables the most effective type of learning and thereby increases the quality of learning. It combines blended delivery methods in curricula. It provides an authoring environment for creating re-usable content, tests and structures to support individual learner strategies. It enables risk management by tracking expiring qualifications. And it enables compliance with requirements from regulated industries and for all country-specific labour legislation.

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Editorial contacts

Anique Human
Ogilvy Public Relations
(011) 880 2271
anique.human@ogilvypr.co.za
Andr'e Kruger
SAP Africa
(011) 319 7410
andre.kruger@sap.com