Over the past several years, organizations have increasingly focused on optimizing their value and supply chains for their customers who are demanding better and more efficient service. Many companies have also strengthened their relationships within their stakeholder network with suppliers, contractors, partners, or dealers (e.g., the just-in-time manufacturing model) and, ultimately, with customers. Organizations are also becoming increasingly borderless through flexible working models, joint ventures, and outsourcing, which means that within an organization there are more external employees (i.e., contract or offsite employees).  

SAP supports this focus on learning management for the extended enterprise with an extension of its SAP Learning Solution environment: SAP Learning Solution, option for the extended learning community.

This can be used for:

• Maintaining a consistent qualification of supply chain members to minimize risks and ensure legal compliance with training requirements.
• Enabling external target groups to ensure they deliver the best possible service or product maintenance.
• Selling training to increase revenue and profitability.  
• Speeding up knowledge transfer about new or changed products and services to their channel partners and end customers.

Optimizing External Learning in Different Industries

The SAP Learning Solution, option for the extended learning community, is relevant for many industries. Depending on the industry, there are different scenarios for how and when to use SAP Learning Solution to get the most of out of it. These include:

• In regulated industries (e.g., oil and gas, and mining), there is often the need to train external contractors in security, health, and safety before they enter the production site. It is important for auditors or managers to prescribe, track, and monitor the fulfillment of this training.
• In the automotive industry, services firms need to train their service partners in complex car diagnosis products to ensure maintaining high service and quality levels. Car manufacturers also need to train all their dealers about the new car models and how best to sell them.
• Consumer product companies often provide e-learning as an after-sales service to end users to reduce support costs and as a value-add for their products.
• In health care, as part of the continuing health care model, patients are increasingly being trained about their after-treatment options and techniques for improving recovery, In addition, doctors need to be trained on analysis and how to use diagnostic tools effectively.
• In the media, as a way to increase revenue, publishing houses are placing more focus on selling education via e-learning or classroom training.
• Finance and insurance organizations are increasingly using the channel sales model, which are generally made up of independent agents who have an ongoing need to learn about new products and updates to existing products.

This list covers just a few examples of how SAP Learning Solution, option for the extended learning community helps a variety of businesses — these examples can be easily expanded to other industries to illustrate the benefits of training their extended learning community.

External Learning Roles

With SAP Learning Solution, option for the extended learning community, different key roles are supported. The five key roles are as follows:

• External learners search, book, and buy courses or events in the external learner portal (Figure 1). They consume e-learning, take tests, rate courses, and give comments. They are registered users who can buy learning courses privately as direct consumers, in a business-to-consumer (B2C) scenario. Or they might belong to a company that buys courses for their employees on their behalf in a business-to-business (B2B) scenario. A B2B scenario is one in which shops or catalogs are specifically available to that company in branding, payments, discounts, or contents.
• Learning managers plan, manage, and approve the training activities of a group of learners in their company. They track learning progress as well as the consumption of licenses, and can do further operations work on behalf of the learner, such as profile maintenance. They book training on behalf of learners. The learning manager is located at the end-customer site (e.g., the HR training manager or training coordinator).
• Company administrators administrate company profile data; they establish, maintain, and approve learner relationships to the company; and review general sales information at the customer site. They also can see the most important reports, such as course enrollments, pre-payment account- and access code consumption.
• External instructors or trainers review detailed information about courses in an instructor portal. They also view assigned resources such as location, address, room, participants, date, and time, and can follow up on courses (e.g., confirm participation of attendees using the Web front end).
• Operations employees who are located at the training-provider maintain the training administration back end. They are responsible for maintaining the course catalogue, tracking, participation management (e.g., back-end booking), invoicing, billing, payment administration, pricing, and discount administration and reporting.

Figure 1

External learning portal screen

Functionality

The process framework of learning management for the extended learning community supports different processes. Here are some of the highlights:

• For training and resource planning, many simple (but effective) reports are readily available (e.g. reports on pre-bookings, waitlists, course requests, past attendance, cost, and consumption). These functions, together with statistics on past use and feedback, give valuable input to help create the learning portfolio.
• One of the main tasks in training preparation and delivery is the set-up and maintenance of training catalogs. There are different delivery methods – for example, event-based delivery (classroom and virtual live classroom) and different formats of e-learning. The different delivery methods can also be packed in various new bundles, such as a curriculum (with a blended-learning path), a subscription library (for subscribing to whole learning libraries), or the mix-and-match bundle (where learners can select a number of courses out of a larger library). Part of the training preparation process is to manage resources, price, and cost planning. In the end, learners can book learning products themselves or can be booked for a course by an administrator or learning manager.
• Membership management enables the registration of learners and companies. Profiles of learners can be also connected to the company profiles, so, for example, the company learner can see the company catalog and take advantage of any discounts offered. There are different ways to achieve registration and profile management (e.g., self-service online registration for learners, web-based registration by the companies´ learning manager, or back-end registration by the administrator). Learning managers can also perform bulk registrations (e.g., via Excel upload or by transferring data out of other SAP systems — for example, from SAP CRM business partners).
• In learner life cycle management the learner searches the learning catalog, books learning products, and then buys them. There are a variety of payment options available — credit card, pre-payment (in the case of companies), or invoice. Different compliance management options are supported, including the assignment, consumption, and monitoring of mandatory training courses and qualifications. Tracking learner activity ensures monitoring and tracking of different activities; this can be done by the learning manager or administrator. Recommended and advertised courses can be used on different levels to drive attention to book courses. For example, learners can enter their interests in their learner profile via keywords, preferred methods, or locations. This results in a personalized entry page for each learner. Administrators can also push courses to be displayed as advertisements in the catalog, including timely advertising (i.e., last-minute). In addition, every learner gets recommendations about course levels for possible follow-up courses or on courses other learners have booked automatically by the system.
• As learning with social media (e.g., LinkedIn, Twitter, and blogging sites such as Insider Learning Network), becomes a more common business tool, SAP has responded to this new way of communicating and learning by enabling learners to make comments and assign ratings to learning products. In this way, new users can communicate with previous learners and benefit from their counterparts’ prior experiences. Collaboration platforms, such as SAP StreamWork or Jam, allow social or informal learning to be integrated with the learning process. These collaboration platforms can be made part of the course or bundle of courses, and is enabled after booking. Learners can discuss courses (e.g., in a forum) with other learners or online mentors before, between, or after taking courses. In the case of informal learning, casual or on-the-job training can be recorded in order to ensure that workplace instruction or ad hoc on-the-job training is tracked by the system.
• In the finance and administration processes, you have the ability to manage access codes. This is an easy way to distribute licenses or course slots without booking or on behalf of booking efforts. Learners simply redeem a code and then directly consume an e-learning course. Vouchers (e.g., percentage off, value, or buy one, get one free offers) also can be connected to learning products and distributed. Customer-specific discounts can also be managed, along with invoicing and payment by the operational employee. 
• As part of business operations’ processes, different back-end reports can be executed. For the learning manager, front-end reports can also be executed.

Technical Specifications

Technically, the solution is an add-on to the SAP Learning Solution with components for the front end and back end. The back-end needs are based on SAP ERP 6.0 enhancement package 4 or enhancement package 5. The front end is based on SAP NetWeaver 7.30 and reuses SAP Web Channel Experience Management 1.0 components — SAP’s new e-commerce solution. Global delivery starts with the following languages: English, German, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Further languages may be added later, depending on demand.

As part of SAP Learning Solution, users can create courses, catalogs, resources. There are some new infotypes (e.g. the sales information infotype), which lists who booked the course — either an internal employee, an external learner, or both — and where prices and discounts can be maintained. The courses can be grouped together as a product catalog. This is useful when specific customers or countries require other settings — for example, when there are discounts being offered, or you want to brand catalogs differently by customer brand. This product catalog is then published via TREX to the external learning portal. When users are self-registering or are being registered by their administrator or manager, a system user is created for them. Regardless of how users are registered, either by self-registration or when they are registered by the administrator or manager, a system user is automatically created for them. The system user (SU01) is also the object that finally books the courses.

Based on their specific learner profile the learner’s system user data includes information about his or her respective catalog, as well as other features, such as the learning manager role. The configuration of the back end is done in the IMG.

To configure the front end, you can use SAP’s Web-based Web Channel Builder tool, which can also be used to assign themes. These themes can then be used to define the look and feel of different catalogs. No SAP NetWeaver Portal or SAP NetWeaver business client is needed with this front-end configuration. The front-end system works as a standalone and uses the SAP ERP system as the back end. This means that customers do not need to have, install, or purchase a licensed CRM system — everything the customer needs comes with SAP Learning Solution, option for the extended learning community. Figure 2 shows the different leaning components.

Figure 2

Infrastructure and component overview of SAP Learning Solution, option for the extended learning community

Features for Users

Users can leverage the incorporated, built-in SAP e-commerce solution (SAP Web Channel Experience Management) and use the front-end technology and e-commerce functionality. On the other hand, they also have access to best practice processes in the field of e-commerce such as management of access codes; course vouchers, bundles and discounts; and subscription libraries.

SAP Learning Solution and Enterprise Learning users can also leverage the same Learning Management infrastructure for the external learning solution as for the internal solution. This ultimately reduces the total cost of ownership for the solution and maximizes companies’ existing investments by building on them and not having to start from scratch. Users can leverage the integration into SAP ERP HCM, sales, and financial processes to reduce support efforts and to ensure consistent data quality and in-depth process integration.

With the SAP Learning Solution, option for the extended learning community 1.0 release, SAP, as part of its Ramp-Up program, is currently working closely with a selected set of users across various industries and regions to implement the solution in a managed way. This release is expected to be generally available to all SAP customers by the end of 2012. Other areas of planned innovations are improvements to the usability of the learner portal, improved analytics, and a planned native mobile learning app for the iPad.

Thomas Jenewein

Thomas Jenewein is in charge of business development and solution management at SAP Education. Before this role, he led an SAP internal learning and development team responsible for strategic learning programs and new media. He studied organizational psychology in Mannheim, Germany, and San Diego, California, and is passionate about learning management, new media, knowledge management, and people development. You may contact Thomas via LinkedIn or via his Twitter Account.

You may contact the author at thomas.jenewein@sap.com.

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