The new enterprise-learning environment must be ubiquitous due to the global nature of today's business. Training and learning requirements are constantly changing; the courses and content to meet those requirements must be quick and easy to maintain, or they become obsolete before achieving a significant ROI.  It must be cost-effective, delivering real, measurable performance improvement to the organization.  In addition, it must be instrumental in maintaining employees’ skills and loyalty to the company through continuous learning. Obviously, instructor-led classrooms alone will be insufficient to provide the competitive edge in the 21st century business environment. Corporations understand that a cost effective learning solution is mandatory. This requirement is also well understood by many government agencies. Effective learning support is so important to the U.S. military that it led to the formation of the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) initiative by The Department of Defense (DOD) and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). The objective of this cooperative work is to develop the 21st century training standards.

Knowledge Management Solutions, Inc. (KMSI) has recently delivered a new distributed learning platform to meet these challenges.  The product, KMx, includes an intelligent management system that maps one-on-one learning objectives with quality learning objects. It also offers an innovative new approach to content development, offering instructional designers and content authors a tremendous productivity boost without sacrificing quality or smothering creativity.  As a new company, KMSI was not burdened by old models for computer based training.  Instead, KMSI used the very latest technologies, including XML and the Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) standard for interoperability, to create its intelligent learning system. KMx was "Designed for Trainers".  This approach allows customers to monitor their learning materials and data at their own location.

The Challenges

The current business environment demands superior products and services to stay ahead of the competition on a global scale. One of the most important factors in achieving organizational objectives and competitive edge is to maintain a skilled, productive, and loyal work force that can react rapidly to changes in business climates and products.

“A company's most sustainable competitive advantage is ... the ability to learn and act on that learning.”          Jack Welch, Former CEO, GE

KMSI surveyed managers in a cross-section of enterprises in order to identify the challenges they faced, and how these challenges could be addressed with innovative solutions. Out of this survey it appeared that the e-learning market was not being effectively served even though numerous vendors were trying to deliver solutions.  The survey revealed the following weaknesses in the existing e-learning solutions:
 

• The high cost of ownership for many existing systems excluded non-Fortune 500 organizations
• Long deployment cycles added even more to the cost of entry for many of the existing products.
• A lack of quality course curricula (beyond those supporting information technology professionals) made e-learning unattractive to many markets and professional disciplines.
• The methodology used did not allow for rapid course development.
• Maintenance of course content was too cumbersome to realize the goal of a “just-in-time” learning environment.

As a result of this survey, the following challenges had to be addressed to allow any size of business to benefit from a new environment:

• Effectively building employee's skills had to be paramount
• There must be a quick response to changing business needs
• The product must be ubiquitous and easy to use
• It must be affordable with a relatively low financial commitment
• The delivered training should match the quality of one-on-one training
• The system developed must be open, flexible, expandable and technically state-of-the-art
• It must be designed to support both existing and future standards
• The system must be designed to communicate with other enterprise systems

KMSI achieved a solution to help managers deal with these challenges.   Today’s learning applications increasingly influence how we learn and accelerate the speed of knowledge transfer. The rewards are a more skilled and empowered workforce, an efficient and adaptable training infrastructure with incredible savings in time and money. Knowledge development inside the organization establishes an amazing competitive advantage for companies to get and stay ahead. An annual survey by the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) shows, for the fourth straight year, that there is a direct correlation between an organization's investment in training and its performance in the marketplace. The solution to the corporations' training challenges is KMx, an advanced distributed learning platform that combines rapid authoring with an intelligent learning management system. KMSI’s system incorporates the advances in technology in recent years, which have helped shape a solution for the training challenges many businesses and government institutions face. Among these are the emerging SCORM e-learning standards and the advances in digital technology that enable the creation of interactive, media-rich courses. The Web-Based training market is enjoying strong growth even in a sluggish economy because of the convergence of Internet/Intranet popularity and ease of distribution with the increasing need to efficiently train the workforce. It is a valuable part of the enterprise solution and no longer limited to IT-training. It addresses all sectors of industry, commerce and education and can be accessed worldwide.

A New Approach

KMSI’s new advanced distributed learning platform, KMx, and its innovative new learning development model address the corporations' training challenges, while driving down the cost of ownership. The system interacts with the users and scores them in real time.  It supports smart learning objects, existing courses and learning objects built with the emerging SCORM standards. KMSI’s pricing also makes KMx one of the most cost-effective e-learning solutions on the market. KMSI is committed to provide solutions to the training challenges corporations face.  KMx is positioned to be a leading enterprise application for distributed learning. It stands out from the crowd in several key aspects:

(1)   Designed and built with trainer specifications and includes a trainer-oriented authoring system.

(2)   KMx is the first step toward future intelligent learning servers, based on ADL - SCORM. It tracks and interacts with the learner and trainer in real time to approximate the effectiveness of one-on-one training.

(3)   KMx is an end-to-end rapid deployment enterprise solution. It includes the KMx Development and the KMx Performance Management systems and can be integrated to interface with many popular ERP and HRMS systems.

(4)   Lower cost of ownership than any enterprise-learning product on the market today.  Low, fixed annual costs without the overhead and expense of per-user seat licenses.

(5)   The complete tracking, scoring, and usage data provide a great knowledge base to corporations to evaluate their training effectiveness and return on investment, enabling skills gap analysis.

(6)   KMx gives corporations total control of their assets. KMSI licenses the software to be installed on the customer's own equipment or by the customer's hosting provider.

KMSI developed an innovative enterprise solution for corporate learning. It was designed and built for the trainer rather than the programmer. The platform includes two major subsystems, available separately or bundled: KMx Performance Management, and KMx Development.

How it works

KMSI's enterprise solution includes the functionality to support various resources within the corporation. It provides a solution for the trainers, the administrators and corporate-wide learners. In addition, the KMx Performance Management system interfaces with the customer's enterprise resource management system to send training and knowledge results, and retrieve learner profile information. In every corporation, employees are involved in training at different levels. Some of these employees are categorized as subject experts who produce training courses for other employees.

Building learning objects: To the trainer, KMx Development provides an authoring system designed for the trainer and simple to use. It takes advantage of popular Windows applications such as MS PowerPoint, MS Word, Macromedia Flash, and Adobe Acrobat to provide a familiar environment in which to do his work. However, the result is always high quality multi-media learning material automatically produced by the authoring system. On completing the course, the system produces HTML code, packages the training materials and publishes it to the server.

Leverage Existing Learning Assets:  Many corporations have made huge investments in development of instructor led, classroom training.  Much of the supporting material for this instruction was prepared with common document development tools like MS Word or MS PowerPoint.  With integrated support for MS Office and Adobe Acrobat, KMx ensures that previous investments in instructor led training can be easily converted for electronic delivery. This extends the life of existing learning assets and further reduces the initial investment associated with implementation.
   

Learn Anytime, Anywhere:  KMx Development is more than a world class e-learning development platform.  Learning takes place in many places, in many contexts, and any enterprise solution must support the learner when and where he needs it.   KMx is the only solution that will make the same object available for use in an e-learning course, as part of a classroom curricula, or for incorporation in a knowledge base as a performance support tool available to the knowledge worker when he needs it most….  while he’s working.

Administration: The KMx administrator uses a standard browser to access the administration and configuration module of the KMx Performance Management and KMx Development systems. An administrator can be the same person as the trainer but tasked with the responsibility to manage the curricula, the learners' assignments, track the results, and generate training and knowledge reports.

Learners: The learner uses a standard browser with the KMx Performance Management system and has access to all assigned training courses defined by the administrator. In addition, administrators can expose courses for self-enrollment by authorized learners. KMx Performance Management launches the course, then guides and tracks the learner through the curriculum. The server interacts with the learner; tracks each step, scores the tests, and determines the number of times he or she attempted to take the course.

KMx Performance Management reports the learners' results to the corporation's ERP system, in many cases essential to meet certification requirements. Administrators also can use all tracked information about each learner experience as a knowledge base for improving the training experience. KMx Performance Management allows you to run legacy learning material as well SCORM conformant materials imported from other systems.  Computer based learning has been developing and changing in the last ten to twelve years. It went through several stages that parallel the change in the computer industry. Migration through different computer paradigms resulted in the SCORM recommendations; with operate on the premise that the learning material is controlled through a run-time program at the student machine. However, KMx Performance Management controls learning objects from the server with no run-time at the learner's machine. In addition, the server will run any learning objects that the server will recognize, or users can define to the system, with different degrees of intelligence, tracking and controls.  KMx Performance Management is a server driven learning system that gives an organization the `best-of-breed' in Learning Management System. It supports existing training materials, the emerging SCORM standards and together with KMx Development has applications for rapid development of quality learning material limited only by your imagination.

Technology Architecture: The KMx Enterprise system is an open and scalable enterprise application developed with MS .NET for multi-platform support. It was built for fast deployment with friendly installation and configuration management.  KMx integrates an XML messaging system for configuration, web-services messages content management functions and report customization.

Foundation: The KMx system is based on the latest technology standards. It is built using the power of MS .NET with XML and Web Services components. It separates the application layer from database, security, and presentation layers for easily extending the application or adding new modules to the existing system. KMx Performance Management and KMx Developer operate on Microsoft Windows 2000 server and use MS SQL Server 2000 database server.   Future releases plans include extending support for Oracle and other RDBMS systems. KMx is more than just an LMS or an LCMS.  KMSI refers to KMx as an Advanced Distributed Learning platform because it delivers so much more than the traditional LMS:  It is a complete enterprise application that includes many capabilities:

• KMx is an enterprise level system with course management and registration modules.
• The system includes an intelligent services module, which establishes a session for each learner, presents dynamic HTML to the learner's browser, tracks the learner, scores the learner and eventually will report the results to a corporate ERP.
• KMx builds a detailed knowledge base during tracking of the learners' sessions, which is a valuable source of information, statistics and knowledge to the company.
• KMx includes sophisticated curriculum management tools to fulfill competency gaps with the extended enterprise and provide skills gap analysis.
• KMx can be used as an integrated work instruction system because of its ability to maintain a persistent session with the learner, and because of its ability to produce dynamic HTML to the user's browser.
• KMx supports the re-use of content in many learning contexts, including e-learning, instructor led training in the classroom, and performance support aids.

Summary

KMSI developed an innovative, end-to-end enterprise knowledge platform that solves organizations’ training challenges. It includes KMx Development, for rapid development and deployment of learning objects (course materials). Output of KMx Development is SCORM conformant content package that can be automatically published to KMx Performance Management, which will manage the intelligent adaptive delivery of your curriculum, the registration, the interaction with the learner and real time tracking and scoring. Content prepared with KMx Development can also be used to support classroom instruction and performance job aids.  KMx solves the challenges that the manager encounters with today's workforce and achieving training objectives. It provides a platform for remote training through Internet or Intranet, in addition to its adaptive server power of delivering legacy course material, emerging SCORM standards and intelligent adaptive delivery for learning material that is built and managed by KMx Development. The KMx platform makes sense as a solution to your corporation. Please call us to learn more about our enterprise software product.