Are you using mobile or social technology to deploy snippets of content to customers? If your answer to this question is no, you’re not alone. A question in the Education Services Benchmark Survey reveals that only 22% of education services organizations deploy any kind of content using mobile technology and slightly more, at 30%, use Web 2.0 technologies, with blogs and wikis being the most common elements used.
This lack of technology adoption by education services organizations proved challenging when recruiting panelists for “The Future is Now,” the final education services session conducted Wednesday, at Technology Services World. Ultimately, I was able to round up three trailblazers who shared how they’re using these new technologies in their ES organizations; Jennifer Edwards, Training Program Manager, Motorola Mobility, Danielle Tomlinson, Sr. Director, Training, Red Hat and Kurt Bauer, VP, SAP Education, SAP AG.
Some of the take-aways from Jennifer’s presentation were – JUST GET STARTED and remember that the solutions you deploy using mobile or Web 2.0 technologies have to solve a business problem. As there are not many ES organizations out there to follow, you have to lead by just trying something, seeing what the results are and making changes along the way. Some of the things Motorola Mobility is doing is pushing new services, via an application, to the sales team. This push also includes PDFs for customers. Additionally, they’ve launched a troubleshooting app for field technicians. Currently, they’re developing a sales curriculum to be deployed by smartphone. To quote Jennifer, “Don’t be afraid.”
Danielle shared what Red Hat has been working on over the past several months in the world of Web 2.0. They’ve created an interactive community for their Certified Engineers. The purpose is not only to build community, but to also reinforce the brand and continue to build customer loyalty. The approach that Danielle and her team took was to “make it personal.” In other words, make the community feel like they’re interacting with a personality and ask a question such as, “How do you use your Red Hat certification?” Red Hat has integrated the website, Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In and they’re adding Google + to the list. Way to go Danielle and team!!
Our third panelist, Kurt, discussed the SAP courseware production challenge – lots of content, in multi-modalities, in many languages, overlaid with the variables of cost, timing, quality and maintenance. It makes my head spin just thinking about it. SAP has worked out a solution in which a workflow-based collaboration process is used. All content developers us a single-source infrastructure and automated publishing. In this scenario, each developer works on a job task and then the tasks are assembled to create an ILT course, or perhaps the tasks are re-assembled to create a job aide, or a virtual offering, or…….. All modality formats share the same processes, tools and content. SAP has had such great success with this approach that they are considering it as an education services offering for their customers. A key point that Kurt made is that at the end of the day the purpose of all this content is to drive product adoption. He couldn’t be more right.
So, what are you going to do? Whatever your answer, let the trailblazer in you follow the iconic words of Nike and “Just Do It.”
