Executive Overview

"It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change."

Charles Darwin

Recent advances in enterprise technology from several industries make the “learn first, perform later” process, inherent in conventional training and elearning , costly and inefficient.  New innovations in enterprise technology can measure performance skills and provide remediation in real time, on the job, and in the context of an employee’s workflow .

Enterprise technology is in the midst of an accelerating process of integration and convergence. Previously distinct product categories are being assimilated into integrated enterprise application suites. Learning technology is one of those product categories being drawn into the suites. SAP , IBM , Oracle , Sun , Siebel  and PeopleSoft  have all added new elearning  modules to their Enterprise Application (EA) suites in the last year. They have redefined elearning as a business process and assimilated learning technology into their ebusiness suites. Those suites are tightly integrated with business process management technology.

The consequence of this inexorable convergence and assimilation is the emergence of next-generation performance improvement technology, content and services. Large and small enterprise application vendors from several industries are innovating completely new product lines that have a direct and immediate impact on performance improvement. These innovations are characterized by:

§          Task-specific, contextual content and simulation embedded in the workflow .

§          Real-time multi-user collaboration in virtual Workspaces

These new technologies are the catalysts for four watershed developments in the enterprise. They include the:

§          Migration away from courseware as a corporate performance improvement method.

§          Adoption of true performance support embedded in workflow  applications.

§          Adoption and automation of Situational Learning and Situational Awareness for performance improvement design, development and delivery.

§          Emergence of a fundamentally new type of elearning product called Workflow-based eLearning

Vendors like SAP , Epiance , Knowledge Products , XStream, Lombardi, Nobilis, Ultimus and Knowledge Impact, are providing tools that embed performance support and simulation directly into applications. These tools are not designed to create courseware. They are designed to create and embed simulation-based performance support objects directly into business applications.

Business Intelligence (BI), Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) and Business Process Monitoring (BPM) used to be confined to analyzing system processes. Now they are being used in convergent workforce optimization applications. Products from vendors such as Cognos , Business Objects, FileNet  and Lombardi  now track and interact with systems and humans in the context of the workflow  in real time.

Business process management is being tightly integrated with learning technology. Docent ’s new workforce analytics product is an example of this trend.  Indeliq  and Hyperwave  integrated ILOG ’s business rule management technology into their product suites. Hyperwave has gone a step further and integrated a robust workflow  and business process management functionality into their Hyperwave eKnowledge Suite.

PeopleSoft ’s Intelligent Context Manager “proactively” prompts sales people in the field with relevant information. According to PeopleSoft, “contextual information is automatically displayed enabling users to intelligently navigate through the business process.” Information provided by employees in the field is used to update CRM  and SCM  systems in near real time (field personnel refer to this as “feeding the beast”).

Situated Learning is a recent iteration of the relatively new Constructivist learning theory. Situated Learning is gradually replacing “instructivist” design models that are inherent in courseware-based products. It stresses authentic context as the primary design criteria and challenges the notion that learning takes place as a result of instruction.

Field-based certification, virtual lab and simulated lab products are indications of this move away from instructivist models in the IT training market. Simulation-based contextual curriculums and game-based business simulations such as those developed by Socratic Arts and games2train.com are examples of this type of product in the broader education and training market.

Products like these reduce the need for conventional training and certification, since an employer can assess, train and track employees while they work.

In today’s economic climate, customers want immediate, measurable and observable workforce improvement results (concepts familiar to both performance technologists and CFOs). The customer demand for optimization is driving the demand for real-time technology.  This is what is now known as the Real-time Extended Enterprise  (REE).

In the context of this new “zero-latency” and workflow -oriented corporate environment, there is literally no time or place for courseware.

The first report in this series describes the market factors and the economic conditions that are driving elearning  and performance improvement technology into enterprise suites. It describes the “pain points” of vendors, customers and users.

This report highlights the vendors from several previously distinct industries that are now focusing on a single convergent performance market. Along with the enterprise vendors, the vendors discussed in this report include: Simulation and Training, Product Lifecycle Management , Business Process Management , Collaboration , Enterprise Content Management and Enterprise eLearning.

Each of these industries has experienced failures with first-generation products. Those failures have become the design criteria for second-generation product development. The “lessons learned” have been carried forward into innovations in new product lines. Second and third-generation product cycles are now being launched by all of these industries.

Elearning, Enterprise Collaboration , Product Lifecycle Management , and Enterprise Content Management have just entered a distinct second-generation stage. The Simulation and Training, Business Process Management  and Enterprise Application product lifecycles are more mature than the others. They are entering third-generation product phases.

The Real-time Extended Enterprise  taxonomy below is the first cohesive map to incorporate all the rapidly emerging technologies into a single schema. It is organized around the functional quadrants of workflow . The functional quadrants are subsumed under the mnemonic rubric of “People and technology in the workspace collaborate in a process to produce products”.

With the advent of workforce analytics and embedded performance technology it is now possible to see the shape of best-of-breed learning solutions. Topics covered in the first report include:

§          Feel The Burn: Vendor, Buyer and User Pain Points

§          The Dawn of the Real-time Extended Enterprise

§          When Galaxies Collide: The Seven Industries on a Collision Path

§          The Economy of Fusion: Convergent Technology, Tools, Content and Services

§          The Convergent Application Interface: The Enterprise Portal

§          The Convergent Enterprise Taxonomy: Overview of Enterprise Application Suites

§          Best-of-Breed: The Real-time Extended Enterprise  Learning Platform

The second report highlights the vision of the large global enterprise software vendors like SAP , IBM , Oracle , Microsoft , PeopleSoft , Siebel  and Sun . IBM has been an elearning  leader for many years. The others have all added elearning functionality to their ebusiness product suites in the last year.

The dominant theme in their marketing positioning and product strategy is the clear message to customers that learning is a core business process and needs to be integrated in enterprise business application suites. Once learning is integrated with other business processes, it becomes possible to analyze the impact of learning on productivity. In that context, learning becomes a Key Performance Indicator (KPI).

In response to the encroachment by enterprise vendors. Vendors are:

§          Building out their brands as a best-of-breed solution.

§          Upgrading their learning product suites to facilitate integration.

§          Upgrading their products with workflow technology and Workforce Analytics.

§          Integrating Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) technology.

Customers are steadily migrating away from courseware-based elearning  products and enthusiastically adopting next-generation, real-time, embedded workflow  products. Even at the height of the recession, vendors of these new products experienced unprecedented revenue growth.

Best-of-breed vendors are developing performance-based products that support extensive integration with workflow  processes across the enterprise.  They are migrating away from courseware-based product models. At all costs they must downplay the “point solution” status of their products. Topics covered in this second report include:

§          Web Services  and eLearning

§          The Emergence of Workflow

§          The Assimilation of Elearning into Enterprise Point Solutions

§          The Assimilation of Elearning into Integrated eBusiness Suites

§          Snapshots of Solutions from IBM , Sun , Siebel , Microsoft , Oracle , PeopleSoft  and SAP

§          The Impact on the eLearning Industry

§          The Emergence of Best-of-Breed Workflow Products

§          Systems Thinking and Situated Learning: Workflow Trumps Courseware