SAP Learning Solution: Business Scenario Overview

Success of the organization in the increasingly knowledge and service-based economy depends on its ability to maximize the value of its intellectual assets and human capital. Corporations have to meet the learning needs of a globally distributed workforce, but the geographical dispersion impedes the simultaneous training of all employees. Ever-shortening product cycles and time-to-market demand just-in-time education. Competitiveness can only be predicted by evaluating the capabilities of the workforce: the knowledge, skills and competencies of the people working in and for the organization. A company's future, now more than ever, depends on the knowledge of its employees.

Whether an organization needs to train a globally distributed workforce, help suppliers find new ways to collaborate, educate students, inform partners about new products and developments, or provide customers with e-learning experiences that really create loyalty, SAP's Learning Solution offers the means to get the job done. SAP Learning Solution is a fully integrated solution, based on extensive research, state-of-the-art methodologies, emerging technologies and industry standards. It contains a Learning Portal, a Learning Management System, an Authoring Environment and a Learning Content Management System.SAP has secured partnerships with leading names in the service industry and content providers to complete the offering. The solution also offers the ability to incorporate 3rd party content.

The learning process begins with the course planning where the line manager derives the training needs from company goals, the employee expresses interest in the topics that will enhance his/her skills and competencies, and the training provider defines the training requirements based on input from the manager and the employee. The training provider can either purchase the content externally or produce the content with in-house experts. The training provider then creates and publishes an online general training catalogue and is optimally supported in managing the resources for classroom training. Based on this catalogue and the competency profile of a particular position, the training provider then assigns a personalized learning offer to the employee. In the Learning Portal, the employee then selects courses based on his/her skills profile and interests, and registers for these courses. The employee embarks on the learning voyage by choosing his/her preferred personal learning strategy - be it in the form of example-orientation, overview-orientation, action-orientation and so on. The learning content is delivered via e-learning media or classrooom training. In the case of an e-learning course, the employee can complete the training session according to his/her own schedule and monitor the learning progress along the way. In the case of classroom training, the training provider prepares to teach the course, which is then attended by the course participants. The training provider then executes follow-up tasks for the courses, for example, he/she prepares the course certificates or updates the participants' skills profiles with the new qualifications. The line manager can generate reports to monitor the team members' skills as well as course participation, progress and test results. The process ends with the training provider settling the participation fees with the relevant cost centers.

This scenario lists a multitude of benefits to be reaped using the SAP Learning Solution. Some of the key benefits of the SAP Learning Solution are:

·        Training of the entire workforce can be targeted towards company goals

·        Personalized learning offer based on learner's role and skill profile

·        Support of multiple learning strategies for the learner as well as for the author in the content Authoring Environment

·        Integration with SAP HR: newly added skills and qualifications are automatically transferred to the employee's master record. Upon an internal job change, the system automatically proposes new training based on the skills gap analysis

·        SCORM-compliant content is easily integrated

·        Interfaces for invoicing classroom training available