For those of you who read my blog, have seen any of my blog comments, or follow me on twitter, you’ll know that I’m a fairly big critic of training departments that still tend to disconnect themselves from the rest of the enterprise, be it stand-alone learning content development processes, and now much to my chagrin, siloed social learning initiatives. Today, I’m going to talk about learning content management (ECM) and enterprise content management (LCM).

The enterprise content management software market currently exceeds $4B, so it’s quite clear that the vast majority of organizations place strong emphasis on their ECM strategy – a strategy that the training organization unfortunately typically takes no part in. In his paper At the Intersection of Learning and Enterprise Content Management (available for download at the resource library section of our web site), Chapman Alliance analyst and Brandon Hall associate Bryan Chapman makes clear the repercussions of such a strategy:

1. The training department cannot leverage content used in other parts of the organization,
2. There is limited or no collaboration between training and other enterprise functions,
3. Training have limited influence on the enterprise content strategy.

If there is any question as to why the training department has become increasingly marginalized and the CLO role quickly diminishing, this should provide some good insight.

But this blog post isn’t about why learning needs to engage with the enterprise. I’ve already written about this extensively in my Plugging Learning into ECM white paper (also available for download at the resource library section of our web site). What his blog post is about is what happens when the training function actually engages with the rest of the organization to take a leading role in the enterprise content management strategy and radically grows its sphere of influence to elevate learning from riding the bench to a star player within the enterprise.

In mid-May, along with Xyleme CEO, Mark Hellinger, I attended EMC World where one of our enterprise customers, Informa, had the opportunity to showcase their integrated Xyleme LCMS / EMC Documentum solution to the ECM community. For those of you unfamiliar with scope of this event, EMC World 2010 boasted about 8,000 attendees, filled up the entire Boston Convention and Exhibition Center for four days, and closed down Faneuil Marketplace, one of Boston’s biggest tourist destinations, for a private party for event attendees. It was very different from the typical training conferences that we regularly attend.

In front of an audience consisting of the people responsible for developing and executing on their company’s ECM strategy, Bob Hecht, Senior Vice President of Publishing Technologies at Informa, presented on how Informa’s performance improvement businesses, the groups responsible for the development of the company’s training content, transformed the company’s content-driven business through an enterprise project they dubbed “Olympus”. So how did they do it and what were the results? Read on!
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Technorati Tags: Documentum, ECM, EMC World, enterprise content management, Informa, learning content management, Single Source

Dawn ECM, Learning Content Management Documentum, ECM, EMC World, enterprise content management, Informa, learning content management, Single Source

A couple of weeks ago, Xyleme presented at Intelligent Content conference hosted by the Rockley Group. Intelligent Content isn’t a training event; rather it’s a small conference showcasing how leading edge companies are exploiting the value of content through XML, open formats, and standards. I think the Rockley Group’s definition hits the nail on the head:
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Technorati Tags: Ann Rockley, blended learning, content reuse, Intelligent Content, multi-channel publishing, Single Source

Dawn Instructional Design, Learning Content Management Ann Rockley, blended learning, content reuse, Intelligent Content, multi-channel publishing, Single Source

This past week, I’ve been reading and referring to Jane Hart’s article The State of Social Learning Today and some Thoughts for the Future of L&D in 2010 quite a bit. As always, Jane combines a wealth of information with some remarkable insights on where organizational learning is (or should be) headed.

One thing that has always been of great interest to me is what I’ll refer to as the integration of social and formal learning content. So when I got to the part of Jane’s article that said it’s time to re-think the design and delivery of formal learning initiatives, I felt we were on to something. Jane nails it when she says:
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Technorati Tags: formal learning, learning content management, Social Learning, subject matter networks, user generated content

Dawn Learning Content Management, Social Learning formal learning, learning content management, Social Learning, subject matter networks, user generated content