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Learning Portal Essentials for the Knowledge Economy
The knowledge of their employees is a critical asset for every organization, and one with considerable impact on the bottom line. Analyst firm IDC has estimated that at least $31.5 billion is lost annually by Fortune 500 companies due to failing to adequately share knowledge.
As the modern enterprise learning platform feature set continues to expand, many of the most important new developments are built to help companies better preserve and manage their institutional expertise.
Building The Foundation Of A Learning Organization
A learning portal is imperative to businesses seeking to build the foundation of a highly adaptable learning organization. Often a first step towards creating a culture of learning, organizations that adopt a learning portal that does the following are better-equipped to make knowledge sharing a core value within their businesses early on:
Social-Enabled
In the knowledge economy, everyone is an expert in something. The practice of social learning is enabling organizations to preserve all that knowledge, help others in the organization learn more and faster, and in turn, speed up the activities driving their business forward. The best learning portals will provide a hub for this information, making it centrally accessible.
Curation-Enabled
Information is nothing without organization. Whether you’re learning and development team is working to bridge skills gaps, roll out new processes, or just highlight something new and useful, your learning portal should make it easy to spotlight selected content. Strong search capabilities provide a smart complement curation features, enabling employees to find specific details on-demand.
Video-Enabled
Text-based social learning and knowledge management processes all share a fundamental flaw — writing detailed documentation is difficult and time-consuming. Video can be a better option, enabling experts to present information the same way they would in person, and preserving it for everyone else to benefit from when and where they need it. Whether supported natively in a learning platform or connected via integration with your “corporate YouTube” video platform, video is quickly becoming an invaluable part of how today’s knowledge economy leaders manage employee expertise.
Finding The Tools That Help Maximize Learning
While most organizations make knowledge sharing a priority, it’s less well-known what technologies are needed to create a customized learning portal that maximizes learning. Two of the most common technologies that break down barriers to enable corporate learning at scale are the learning management system (LMS) and the video content management system (video CMS).
Used together, the LMS and video CMS can help knowledge managers and executive leaders develop a learning portal designed to sustain a company’s leading edge in the knowledge economy.