After all, ADP is the world’s largest HR software company. It has been the payroll system of choice for the majority of companies for decades, and many companies use its integrated HRMS. But a few years ago, when large businesses were clamoring for a single unified HR system, ADP developed a complete talent management system, including learning management.

At the same time, SumTotal, the workhorse of enterprise learning management systems, developed a talent management suite.

Many businesses use ADP for payroll and SumTotal for learning. ADP is the system of record for employee information, so it becomes a business necessity to use ADP data to manage employee records in SumTotal. Today’s modern enterprise cannot afford to risk data errors or incur the administrative overhead of manual data entry.

It’s possible to avoid the cost of developing a data integration using ADP’s API by downloading a report from ADP, manipulating the data in a spreadsheet template, and uploading it to SumTotal. Possible, but certainly not recommended. There is still too much exposure to data error.

If this describes your situation, until now, you had only a couple of alternatives:

• Wait for your overworked IT team to develop a custom solution using ADP’s API, or
• hire a consultant to do the work.

That doesn’t make sense to us. It’s a time-consuming, expensive solution to a common problem.

So, we’re doing something about it.

At Chasma, we’ve created a standardized, plug and play connector to use an automated data feed from ADP to SumTotal to manage learner records. You no longer need to develop a custom solution or overburden your already too busy IT group.

It only takes a day or so to map the data and deploy the connector, and we give you the tools and support to manage changes when your organization or job structure changes.

You can now enjoy the peace of mind of an automated connection without a long deployment or the cost of a custom solution.

We have years of experience with both ADP and SumTotal, and we have completed many integrations, but it makes sense to us, in the digital age, to provide a customer-focused solution in the connector that doesn’t require custom work.

Enjoy the efficiency of an automated data integration. Contact us to see how our ADP/SumTotal connector can help you manage your employee data.

Chasma Place, is an independent source for solutions that will help you keep pace with changes in the way your people work without ripping and replacing your existing systems.

From the 1980s until just a few years ago, HR technology focused on making HR work more efficient. It worked. HR teams are now a tiny fraction of the size they were 30 years ago.

There was a cost. For the employee who needed to use HR services, the experience changed from a face-to-face conversation with a helpful assistant to complicated self-service software. We hated it. Not that it was so hard to use once we got used to it, but we used it so seldom that we had to relearn it. The conversation changed from Hey, Jack, can you help me sign up for leadership training? to Where is that #@&% user guide? Never mind. I’ll just call Jack - but Jack’s busy.

Recently, vendors have been focused on the user experience and have made great strides in usability, both on desktops and in mobile apps. But it is still software.

Artificial intelligence is changing the game. Helpful chatbots and textbots surround us in our daily lives. If you want to get directions, find a recipe, or call a friend, we can ask Siri, Alexa, Cortana, or one of many other virtual assistants for help. And now they are coming to HR.

Artificial intelligence is on the cusp of helping us do just about everything in HR better. We can make better hiring decisions, promote the right people, and understand the learning needs of our workforce with the help of algorithms. But we think chatbots in HR will have a more significant impact because they will change how people feel about work as they are doing it.

Instead of sending an email or leaving a voicemail with busy HR staff and waiting hours or days for a response, workers will now be able to use AI-driven virtual assistants to get instant answers to their questions. If they want to submit a request for vacation time, they can just ask.

Because of the wonders of natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning, these virtual assistants will learn from their interaction with humans, and they will provide data from their conversations to help HR deliver better service.

Soon, we will be able to ask questions like these:

• what is the next step in my leadership training?
• How do I request parental leave?
• What opportunities are available to me in project management?

Achal Khanna, CEO of SHRM India, hinted last December that 2018 is the year of Chatbots in HR. They are already here – helping people, not replacing them.

Chasma Place, is an independent source for solutions that will help you keep pace with changes in the way your people work without ripping and replacing your existing systems.

Once you start down that path, be prepared for your people to want more. Once they start using apps at work the way they do at home or on the go, they will want more apps. People always seek the path of least resistance, and well-designed apps offer a simple, intuitive way to get things done. As consumers, we already prefer apps over web-based and desktop programs.

The “Appification” of HR

Established vendors, hundreds of new startups, and thousands of independent developers are now creating apps for business. Now, for almost any function, you can find an app that will plug into your existing HR technology to give users the digital experience they want. The growth of apps means that leaders will soon see themselves managing more than a few large platforms. They will be operating an extensive portfolio of apps that run on any platform.

As we visualize how the appification of the enterprise will look, red flags pop up in our minds. Anyone can sign up for free individual accounts on Slack, Igloo, River, or the many other collaboration platforms and invite people anywhere to join the team. Then they can upload any information and share it with any of the team site members.

That’s not the only risk. A stable, secure platform is only the beginning. There are a lot of ways HR information security policy can go wrong if you don’t have a strategy in place. You can do many things to mitigate your risk, including using a private app store, monitoring network downloads, and identity management. But even if you have the best data security tools and procedures in place, you haven’t addressed the most critical risk.

Create a Culture of Information Security

The “Black Hats” are always looking for ways to exploit security vulnerabilities, but the easiest and most lucrative way to beat security is through your users. You need the best protection you can deploy, but even more, you need to create a culture of information security, including your partners, value chain, and other third parties. It requires a robust and never-ending change management effort that permeates your entire eco-system, with the disciplined communication that is a part of any culture change.

Information Security Training

Training is essential. Educate new employees, but include ongoing reinforcement for everyone and frequently update the training methods, so they don’t become stale. Measure the impact on user behavior and use the feedback to reinvigorate your communication efforts.

Think like a marketer, or better yet make marketing a part of your team. Keep your communication fresh, and measure the sentiment of your audience. Use analytics to gauge interest and adapt your communication methods to their preferences.

Information Channels

One communication channel could be pop-up messages when people log in to their work systems. If you do that, it won’t be long before users ignore the message. When that happens, it’s time to move to a different communication channel. Come back to it later with a fresh message.

Another channel can be company news. You can deliver that through user portals, widgets, and apps. Include stories about security breaches and how they occur.

In certain situations, communication embedded in the workflow can help — just a simple reminder when users are uploading or downloading information, using messaging apps, and communicating with external entities.

Locking down environments and restricting access can backfire. People will always seek the quickest and easiest way to get things done. If rules and restrictions get in the way, they will find a way around them. Collect frequent feedback on user sentiment, and provide the best systems and methods you can. Keep managers aware of the risks of workarounds.

Create a Comprehensive Security Policy

For most people, just being aware of lax practices that expose them and the company to data breaches will be enough. For the rest, you need a policy, rigorously enforced.

Work with IT to develop a policy and communicate it well. A plan that sits on a shelf is worse than no policy at all. Make it a centerpiece of your communication effort.

Chasma Place, is an independent source for solutions that will help you keep pace with changes in the way your people work without ripping and replacing your existing systems.

Immediate requirement in Sales team
Immediate update required for new hire training
New Compliance Deadlines this month
The Coffee Machine is broken!

Before you can get started, a manager calls to ask you about recruiting status on his engineer requisition.

Many times you miss parts of the conversations as you always have a mobile to your ear and eyes on an email on the monitor.

You turn your head to see a colleague at your desk wanting to chat - which ends with ‘Good Day’. This so-called ‘good day’ actually ends up with many regrets like forgetting to inform a manager about a skype interview schedule, falling back on priorities, tough times with your boss, going home late, and failing at your personal promises.

Your day ends just when you felt it had started. You hardly find time to work on building strategies that elevate your culture and engage talent.

Is more time all you need?

What if you had a tool that not only saves you time but also enhances your effectiveness - a technology tool that can wisely handle your routine tasks like recruiting and onboarding activities, monitoring training and compliance, and coordinating with managers and staff to communicate on updates.

Enhance efficiency by implementing AI in HR

Artificial Intelligence - where we make machines work, think and react much like humans, can be a boon if adapted well to your HR processes.  

And the fascinating fact about AI is, the more you work with it, the better it learns and adapts.

AI can effectively manage the day-to-day activities of your HR team and here are few ideas to help you start thinking about it.

How AI can help Recruiting improve candidate profiling

Implementing AI in your recruiting processes saves time. AI can help you identify the right candidate profile that matches your skill set. While you let your machine deal routine repetitive tasks, you can work on critical things like having one on one conversations with candidates and drawing insights to improve communications.

While you onboard, reach out to your New Hires with answers to their questions - before they ask

During the process of onboarding, you have to coordinate with the new hires right from day one until they establish strong relationships with peers and managers. Many times it is hard to reach out to every new hire and provide instant guidance.

This is where AI can help you. You can deploy an AI-based virtual assistant that will tackle new hire queries and offer answers so you can focus on tasks that need human intervention.

In your training, let AI recommend the right courses for your employees

AI can analyze the kinds of training that have been successful to make better recommendations for your employee development plans.

Achieve smoother communication flow

With AI, you can train your machine to respond like the way you do. Your employees need not wait for answers. They can get instant help with their questions.

AI will give you the gift of time to focus on elevating your company culture and improving the employee experience. Not only that - your AI will provide spontaneous service by finding answers much faster than a human can.

Chasma Place, is an independent source for solutions that will help you keep pace with changes in the way your people work without ripping and replacing your existing systems.

But testing is one of the most important functions, not only in your implementation but ongoing system management. The stakes can be high — from inaccurate regulatory reporting to a damaged company reputation.

You should include testing in project costs for the initial implementation and operating costs for the life of the software. After user acceptance testing (UAT), you will need to conduct regression testing for every software update. You should also perform weekly testing after system fixes and to test for security errors.

Automated testing

Fortunately, automated testing can be very cost-effective, and it has several advantages:

• It reduces the cost of labor-intensive manual testing.
• It eliminates the human error inherent in tedious, repetitive tasks.
• Many automated tasks, such as weekly security testing, can run unattended overnight.
• You can save and replicate test scenarios for automating periodic tasks like regression testing of software updates.
• By eliminating almost all repetitive testing, it enables your testing team to focus on critical test management tasks.

Manual Testing

Automated testing is not always the best approach. In many cases manual testing is more desirable and in some cases necessary.

Exploratory Testing. Manual testing is required when you are designing new processes and workflows. Hands-on testing validates workflow decisions.

Configuration Testing. Initial testing by the people who make configuration decisions gives them a first-hand look at the impact of their decisions and provides an essential training ground for the core team.

Scenario Scripting. Creating a new automated script requires a detailed step-by-step manual testing the entire process. Even though many testing tools give you the capability to record a test scenario and convert it to a script, that shortcut can lead you astray. What’s missing in a recorded script is validation. The process must check whether each sub-process stores the correct values in the right place. Use a recording only as a starting point for creating your test scripts.

Usability Testing. The purpose of usability testing is to ensure that the software is intuitive and efficient from the perspective of the user. The feedback you get from users will be invaluable in improving the user experience, and they may have suggestions for improvement that will make your processes more efficient. Involving people from your organization in usability testing also creates an opportunity for you to co-opt them as evangelists in your change management efforts.

Both manual and automated testing have an essential place in your testing strategy. Let machines handle the routine work so your people can focus on critical thinking and design.

Chasma Place, is an independent source for solutions that will help you keep pace with changes in the way your people work without ripping and replacing your existing systems.

• the H-1B worker’s rate of pay,
• description or summary of the wage system,
• the prevailing wage rate and its source,
• documentation proving you satisfied the notice requirement,
• a summary of the benefits offered to both US and H-1B workers,
• a list of entities included in the definition of the single employer, and
• documentation related to a change in the corporate entity.

Besides those documents, and H-1B dependent employer or a willful violator must also include:

• a list of FLSA-exempt H-1B nonimmigrant workers, and
• a summary of recruitment methods, if the employer hired any non exempt H-1B nonimmigrant workers.

You will need to upload at least for copies of your LCA:

• two copies for the required notice postings for each of your locations along with your certification that the notices were posted.
• a copy of your unapproved application, since you are required to have the signed application in the file one day after you submit the application but it takes up to seven days to get an approval. (It makes little sense to us, too.)
• The approved application, printed and signed by your company.

You don’t need us to give you more information on how to be compliant. The U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour division provides all the resources you need on their website at https://www.dol.gov/whd/immigration/h1b.htm. When you maintain paper files, your labor attorney will give you good advice on best practices.

Risks in Manual File Management

Our area of concern is the administrative overhead and likelihood of errors in manual processes, where human frailty can have severe consequences. Humans make mistakes; errors and omissions will happen. You also must have someone available to retrieve the files for any member of the public who requests them, and should purge records when they have reached their expiration date.

Introducing Chasma Trek

You now can relieve the pain and worry of maintaining your H1B Public Access File. Chasma Trek is the new online application that reduces your administrative costs by creating segregated and secure online document management for your H-1B files.

You can now provide online access so members of the public , investigators, and auditors can access the records without your support beyond providing the file location. For visitors who come to your offices to view records, you can provide a tablet or workstation at your reception area with restricted access.

Automate to Reduce Errors

You have several options to maintain the record for each employee. Scanned documents can be pulled directly into Trek. You can upload files for each employee profile, integrate with your HR system to automatically pull data into Trek, and synchronize data input with your system of record to minimize data entry.

To help you manage and display the records, trek also provides

• an auditing function to notify you when any file has missing documents, and
• a filter that allows you to display and purge expired records, and
• an easy-to-navigate user interface that makes it easy to view supporting documentation.

It pays to automate the process as much as you can and let your machines do what they do best — repetitive data processing, tracking, and reporting. Let Trek give you the peace of mind of knowing your H-1B file is always audit ready.

Chasma Place, is an independent source for solutions that will help you keep pace with changes in the way your people work without ripping and replacing your existing systems. 

But if we take the latest ATD learning measurement survey as an indication, the profession has made no progress in measuring results or ROI.  The study, conducted in 2015, actually showed decreases in those measurements since 2009.^[1] It also shows us that most organizations still measure at Kirkpatrick levels 1 and 2. Only 36% of respondents said their evaluations were "helping to a large extent with meeting organizational business goals."

Why so little progress? The world of HR analytics, including L&D, has become one of haves and have-nots. Big companies developed in-house analytics teams an iron consulting companies, while many others waited on the sidelines for analytics to become viable for them.

Analytics vendors jumped into the market, but most organizations still sat by waiting for industry leaders to prove the value of a significant investment in HR analytics. Vendors responded by working with HR software vendors to embed their analytics engines into cloud HR platforms. Thus was born the idea of the “democratization of data.”

The advent of embedded analytics created a new wave of hype, and in the last two years or so we have seen some progress, but the number of organizations that come to us looking to span the gap between analytical tools and usability continues to grow. Embedded tools are a far cry from a robust library of reports and visualizations, and many companies find they just don’t have the resources or the expertise to build them.

Fractured Analytics 

A host of conflicting agendas contributes to what Tracey Smith,  author of many books on analytics,  calls a fractured HR analytics world. She  explains that with data scientists pulling in one direction and vendors in another, with some people advocating for regulation and publication of HR data and others clamoring for certifications in HR analytics, practitioners have lost focus. Smith encourages us to overcome this with focus and prioritization.

Focus on Internal Customers

We wholeheartedly agree.  We find, in our practice, that those issues melt away when we focus on the needs of internal customers. When you are trying to help the operational leaders in your business get better results, it doesn’t matter that data scientists think you need a Ph.D.  to do analytics and vendors believe analytics ought to be for everyone. Nor does it matter that regulators and social scientists disagree on what information we should be collecting and how public it should be.

If you been a learning professional for longer than a few minutes, you know about “smile sheets,” the feedback forms we like to use at the end of an instructor led training course. Their purpose is to capture learner reaction at level 1 of the Kirkpatrick measurement model.

Smile Sheets and Assessments for Data Collection

E-learning and SCORM standards have enabled us to take that simple tool and make learning assessments useful, and xAPI shows promise in enabling measurement of any type of learning. Every modern LMS has the tools to push out assessment questionnaires at any point in the learning cycle. We can create assessments to evaluate what takes place post-learning and whether formal or informal on-the-job learning is reinforcing classroom or online training. And we can request feedback from anyone at any time.

With that in mind, here a few recommendations for assessing the impact of learning on the business.

1. Begin with a business problem or opportunity. Operational leaders in your organization have responsibility for organizational performance and have KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) or OKRs(Objectives And Key Results) they must meet. It makes sense for them to want to determine whether learning programs are having an impact on their metrics. Focus on what is important to them, and you will gain their support.
2. Include your internal customer in the design or selection process. Help them meet their objectives.
3. Plan your measurements and design your assessment tools before you launch the program. Include short, quick assessments for every phase of the learning lifecycle, and include learners, coaches, and managers in your assessment scope. Include assessments of retrieval practice, spaced repetitions, formal and informal on-the-job coaching, and social learning. Work with your internal customers to determine how you will capture performance data.
4. Upgrade your smile sheets. Start by junking the Likert scales. Weed out weak questions and get specific about what you want to assess and how you set standards. Consider also what impact the questions you ask will have on behavior. For example, asking specific questions of learners about how much or how well supervisors provide time and resources to put skills into practice will set the standard for supervisor support of learning.^[2]
5. Get feedback on performance improvements from learners, coaches, and supervisors. Use your LMS assessment tools to capture the information.

If you follow these steps, you will have all the data you need to show the impact of learning on performance and will be able to use the visualization tools in your LMS embedded analytics to show the result.

Creating those visualizations starts with asking the right questions. Here is a sample to get you started:

• Does learning retention have a positive correlation to performance?
• How does learner feedback on supervisor support correlate with learning retention?
• How does social learning interaction compare with learning retention? With performance?
• How does each of the post learning activities impact learning retention?

We hope we have shown here that you can measure the impact of learning without investing in more expensive technology. You can use the tools you have to get an excellent idea of how your learning and support programs are impacting business performance.

References:

1.  "ATD Research Presents - Evaluating Learning: Getting to Measurements That Matter." ATD. April 2016. 

2.  Thalheimer, Will. Performance-focused smile sheets: a radical rethinking of a dangerous art form. United States: Work-Learning Press, 2016.

Chasma is dedicated to helping clients solve business problems, improve the capability of their people, and achieve better results.

SumTotal 18.1 isn’t the leap forward that 17.2 was. At our first look, it appears to be improvements in those features and some new tools to make admin easier and learning more accessible.

Here are just a few of the highlights:

• It’s now easier to address one of the most pressing problems business face today. SumTotal Learn is now integrated with Harvard Business Publishing, making the entire spectrum of leadership development courses available.
• The new Library is now easier to manage with permissions to manage and organize taxonomies. Administrators can now associate multiple activities to a single topic and associate entire topics with audiences.
• Users can now manage skill matrices, and administrators can connect one skill to another to develop learning paths.
• Your administrator can assign permission to update statuses for all open child activities from the parent activity roster.
• Learners now have a calendar view for searching for activities, and you can put the calendar on their dashboards using the calendar widget.

Of course, these features come complete with the admin tools to manage them.

Getting Ready for the Update

A little preparation can help you make the most of the coming updates. Here are three suggestions to help you start your planning.

Tune up your data files. Before the update is an excellent time to clean up your records. Take this opportunity to archive old content and clean up user records. Check your support records to see if there are issues you need to address before the update.

Prepare your test scripts. Review changes in your organization, processes, and configurations. Document any changed workflows to make it easier to record and edit new scripts.

Evaluate new features to assess how they can help you improve service. For example, if you have beenconsidering investments in leadership development, HBR integration may be just the opportunity you need.

As always, if you have questions, please contact us.

Chasma Place, is an independent source for solutions that will help you keep pace with changes in the way your people work without ripping and replacing your existing systems.

In what may be an indicator of the state of digitized HR, in 2016, Gartner estimated that 55% of its clients were in the “getting started” phase of their integration development. If you are just getting started, you are in good company. It’s not important where you are, but whether you are on the right path.

In the new digitized HR, no single vendor can meet all our technology needs. Organizational structures are fluid, and everything is becoming data-driven. Managing integrations becomes essential as the foundation for coordinating how people interact with machines and machines with each other.

Integration means many things to many people, depending on the context, but we can define  integration in two equally important ways:

• The data exchange required for two or more processes, applications, systems, platforms, or businesses to work together (interoperability).
• The data flow required to aggregate information for reporting and analysis.

Microsoft became the world’s leading purveyor of office software because it focused on interoperability. Each application in Microsoft Office works with the other applications in the suite, at least to some degree, and with many different business applications.

Integrations are invisible to business users, and when you mention integration to a project team or a room full of people, they look like they want to lose their eyes and stick their fingers in their ears, or look at IT to make it go away.

We can get an idea of why integrations are so involved if we think how much easier human communication would be everyone used the same medium and the same language, and every word had only one meaning.

The logistics industry has been using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) for decades. What makes it work is the definition of electronic documents. The structure of the data has been defined by the agreement, and large retailers drove adoption by requiring their trading partners use to EDI. Information flow is much easier to manage because no translation is needed. As people in the industry say, an invoice is an invoice.

In human resources, and in many other business functions, there is no such agreement. While we may have our standard set of best practices, we have no formal agreement on what constitutes an employee profile, succession plan, or any other talent management data structure.

Every software developer, vendor, implementation partner, and the customer has a unique perspective on what the data structure should be, but that is only one component of data transfers. To integrate these disparate entities, the parties to the data exchange must agree to three primary considerations:

• Transport — How data will be sent from one computer to another. There are dozens of transport protocols, the most popular of which are FTP, HTTP, SFTP and Webhooks.
• Format – How the data will be formatted. If two entities are not in agreement on the structure of the data, some mediation is required, and that adds another level of complexity.
• Meaning — what each datum in the dataset means. We can also think of this as semantics.

The technology industry has worked through many ways of coping with this. In the ERP of the 80s and 90s, businesses attempted to force all data into one database structure. The problem was that technology is continually changing, and we are always adding new capabilities, applications, and platforms. Since ERP vendors found it difficult to keep up with the pace of change, we often ended up with an unwieldy system of satellite applications integrated (or not) with the ERP.

With the growth of big data analytics, the next trend toward centralization was to dump all the data into a single data warehouse. That proved to be difficult and outrageously expensive.

The current trend is toward a hub-and-spoke kind of architecture, where, instead of a single repository for all data, we have hubs that handle integrations with related applications and platforms and with each other.

We see a lot of potential in this approach. The problem with the master data approach is that many organizations thought master data meant all data. The reality is that some data are master data, but most are not. For example, payroll does not need all the information in an employee profile, nor does it require the entire chart of accounts from finance.

Strategy First

We urge you to resist the impulse to buy a “complete” integration solution immediately. As we discussed in “How to Get Control of Your Disconnected Data,” it is best to chart your course before you decide what will carry you on your journey. And integration platform may eventually be the answer, but ask the right questions first. Too many organizations bought technology solutions expecting them to solve their business problems when technology was not the problem.

Begin by asking these questions:

• What is the best source? What data is most reliable and should be the data source for other functions and applications? Everything in finance stems from the chart of accounts. Everything in HR begins with the employee profile.
• What information does each application need to operate? Payroll does not require the entire general ledger, nor does it need the whole employee profile.
• In each integration, which system should rule? How should conflicts be resolved?
• What information do you need for operational reporting and analytics? Instead of capturing all data and trying to make sense of it, you can add data to analytics as it is required.

When you are starting out, application-to-application integrations will most likely be most comfortable and least costly to manage, but as your infrastructure grows, you may need an integration platform.

As we do with every technology project, we recommend you start with a business problem. The most common issues we see are excess administrative overhead when people must enter the same data in two or more systems. The most straightforward solution to that is an application to application data feed, where, for example, your LMS retrieves new employee data from the employee profile in ADP.

Start small and simple and think big. Solve one problem at a time, but keep your eye on the whole picture.

Chasma Place, is an independent source for solutions that will help you keep pace with changes in the way your people work without ripping and replacing your existing systems.

For marketing analytics, you can use the same tools as every other successful eCommerce business, whether you sell to the public or only to your channel partners. You may have those tools embedded in your LMS or could be using a tool like Google Analytics.

If you sell certifications, you are probably tracking certification status and certification paths so you can fine-tune your messaging based on the next logical step for each user.

But If you are selling learning activities through your LMS, you have a tool at your disposal that other eCommerce businesses don’t have: the learner experience. It would be a strange customer indeed who would want to track goals, progress, and future activities in athletic socks, books, or Bluetooth headphones, but people seeking to learn are future oriented and focused on accomplishment. You can use that to create a unique experience.

People engage in learning because they have goals and aspirations. Whether you use a website, landing page, or learner portal, you can use tools at your disposal to create a user experience that builds on both their sense of achievement for what they have already done and their hope for what they can do in the future.

Consider how these page elements can help you create an experience your users will want to repeat.

• A relevant picture or graphic to create an initial welcoming experience.
• Progress indicators at the top of the page, like certifications completed, number of hours, courses completed, and other indicators of achievement.
• Announcements of upcoming new courses, certifications, or fields of study.
• A color-coded to-do list with direct links to the target activity.
• A user-customizable list of documents and resources.
• News and announcements on topics of interest based on the user’s activities.
• A training calendar synced with the user’s calendar.
• A display of courses in progress with progress indicators for each.
• Suggested courses based on the user’s job role, interests, or learning path.

Many learning management systems provide tools or widgets to help you build portal or landing page. Others provide a placeholder for you to create a custom web page.

If building your page requires programming and design skills you don’t have readily available, there is a better solution. Chasma, a newcomer to application platforms, is a marketplace for apps, integrators, visualizations and dashboards that can help you create a learner-centered experience without programming. The layout tools and components are designed for you, and the Chasma team helps you plug them into your landing page. You can create a unique user experience without the expense and development time of a custom solution.

Traditional training in the business enterprise is rapidly being replaced with learning delivered from a variety of sources to “where employees are.” That same trend is growing even faster in the extended enterprise and learning eCommerce. Whether you use your LMS, design it yourself, or use a plug-in tool like Chasma, the engagement, repeat business, and brand loyalty of a learner-centric experience can be well worth the effort.

Chasma Place, is an independent source for solutions that will help you keep pace with changes in the way your people work without ripping and replacing your existing systems.

Your learners and their managers want a simple, user-friendly experience. When they don’t get it, they want help — right now. When it gets to be too much of a pain, they call you, your support staff, or your support vendor.

It can take twenty minutes or more for a staff member to refocus after a five-minutes support call.

If you outsource user support, it can eat up your budget. Support services can cost up to $55 per hour for each support agent, depending on your location. And how much time do you spend managing support vendor services? How much do you spend on support when it’s not being used?

Are robots the answer to LMS user support?

Having virtual personal assistants that cater to our every whim is still in the future, but today we have cyber-assistants that can do many of the routine tasks that can take us away from critical work.

Cognitive computing can now be embedded in the systems and software we use in every aspect of our lives and is rapidly coming to our business software systems, using natural language processing to respond to typed or spoken commands and act as virtual assistants.

But before you hire a robot, you need to know what it can and can’t do for you. If you have had the same struggles we have with Alexa, Cortana, and Google Home, you know what we are talking about.

Right now, chatbots can do this for you:

• Handle troublesome but straightforward tasks like resetting a password — if you have defined the procedure.
• Find any training resource in your catalog or on your intranet — if you have indexed the content.
• Provide alerts and notifications you specify, like upcoming training and tasks. It can’t yet decide what you do and don’t want to be notified about.
• Suggest the next best training course in an individual learner’s development path – if you have trained it to know your development path structure and the individual’s training history.
• Search the Internet for a video course on active listening. The first time, you will get a much longer list than you want, but over time it will become more accurate.

Some LMS vendors are already working on developing virtual personal assistants for their products, but it may be some time before they are universally available. Many small technology innovators have already developed these virtual assistants and can deploy them in your software right now, and they will help you teach your chatbots what they need to know.

Seize The AI Opportunity

We hope we have given you a realistic idea of what chatbots and textbots can do for you right now and what they will do for you in the near future. Now that the technology is available, the hard work of adapting cognitive intelligence to our processes is well underway. Getting in on the ground floor now, you can get substantial cost savings, reduce your administrative overhead, and improve your learner experience.

Chasma Place, is an independent source for solutions that will help you keep pace with changes in the way your people work without ripping and replacing your existing systems.