E-learning, the Lucent way: Lucent extends its e-learing enterprise to customers; customer satisfaction guaranteed

T+D, July, 2003 by Martha Gold

Lucent embarked on an in-depth search by putting together a complete business case for an LMS capable of meeting its extensive infrastructure requirements. That entailed gathering together the business owners of the different divisions to discuss how to join all of the separate training systems. The owners defined their requirements, which were used to select an enterprise-wide LMS, choosing Saba for its sturdiness and flexibility.

"We're talking about a global training enterprise with a sophisticated business model," says Roller. "Saba was the most robust system and required the least customization to meet our diverse needs."

The conversion over to one LMS from many different platforms required a culture change, in addit1ion to a switch in technology and tools. Each of the discrete organizations had to change its individual appearances, standards, rules, and approaches to meet Lucent's new standards.

In the interest of uniformity, they gave up a certain amount of freedom and individuality, but the benefits to the customer easily outweighed those concerns, says Roller. "Once people got on the platform, they saw some real synergies. In the end, they gained capabilities that they couldn't have afforded on their own, simplified things for their customers, and got great visibility."

The departments didn't have to sacrifice their individuality. Within the LMS framework that Roller and his team manage, the different departments retain the flexibility to customize their offerings and messages to their respective audiences.

"There are different audiences within Lucent, and each has its own requirements with respect to e-learning," says Roller. "We put the framework in place--the tools, technology, and architecture to be able to get e-learning elements from a number of different places and present them to users under a common look and feel, common access, and tracking and course descriptions."

E-learning migration

With the Saba LMS, which is AICC-compliant, Lucent is able to purchase more off-the-shelf content and grow its course selection without having to spend a lot of time customizing courses, according to Margaret Pasterchik, project manager of delivery platforms for Lucent's information products and training organization. Lucent currently uses courses from a wide variety of vendors, including Netg, Telecommunications Research Associates, Interactive Services, Award Solutions, Question Mark for colluding assessments and surveys, CD-ROMs from the Richardson Company, and a lot of internally developed content. It also uses Simentor, a simulation-authoring tool.

As Lucent increases its electronically delivered courseware, it's also working on increasing the percentage of learners who take courses online. Today, nearly half (49 percent) of Lucent's users take alternately delivered courses, including Web-based, CD-ROMs, and other electronically delivered media. The rest of the users (51 percent) attend classroom-based training, many of which are product training courses.