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Tanner Montague came to town from Seattle having never owned his own music venue before. He’s a musician himself, so he has a pretty good sense of good music, but he also wandered into a crowded music scene filled with concert venues large and small.But the owner of Green Room thinks he found a void in the market. It’s lacking, he says, in places serving between 200 and 500 people, a sweet spot he thinks could be a draw for both some national acts not quite big enough yet for arena gigs and local acts looking for a launching pad.“I felt that size would do well in the city to offer more options,” he says. “My goal was to A, bring another option for national acts but then, B, have a great spot for local bands to start.”Right or wrong, something seems to be working, he says. He’s got a full calendar of concerts booked out several months. How did he, as a newcomer to the market in an industry filled with competition, get the attention of the local concertgoer?

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by Sarah Brouillard
February 2006

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Firms enlist computers to aid employee, customer training

For years the only point of contact between a computer and a company trainer came via the PowerPoint presentation.

And what a passionless marriage it was.Thousands of employees can attest to their boredom during such company-mandated courses as safety training and sexual harassment prevention. No matter how compelling the topic, or how vital the knowledge to their jobs, human nature dictates that people won’t always pay rapt attention to a stranger clicking through screen-projected slides.

The emergence of e-learning, however, has made training much more palatable to employees and business owners alike. Instead of cramming inside a classroom, employees take interactive Internet-based courses at their own desktops at work or at home, at their own pace.

Built on the educational maxim that people learn best while using all their senses, many courses incorporate sound and vivid graphics along with text, and prompt users to click on the mouse and type at the keyboard.

“Your retention is going to go up because you’re hearing it, seeing it, touching it — you’re actively involved,” says David Janiszewski, CEO of Hopkins-based Convenience Learning International, a company that provides computer-based learning, including e-learning, in technical and trade skills.

Frequent quizzing keeps participants on their toes, but also allows the course to monitor progress: Multiple wrong answers might trigger a remediation mode, while correct answers may yield a speedier course. Ultimately, employees dictate how they’re taught, say e-learning experts.

“You can’t learn somebody — they’ve got to do the learning,” says Michael Allen, CEO of Allen Interactions, a Mendota Heights-based e-learning company that develops customized courses for clients. His book Michael Allen’s Guide to E-learning was published in 2003.

Employers — especially those in blue-collar and hard-science industries where companies are subject to unannounced OSHA safety audits — can rest easier knowing their workers aren’t passively taking a course, but are retaining information. And it can be a cheaper alternative to hiring a live on-site trainer, or sending groups of employees to a half-day community college-hosted course, say e-learning experts.

Making it relevant

E-learning has become so effective that some traditional live trainers are moving their courses toward that direction.

David Hunt, CEO of Critical Measures, a Minneapolis-based human-resources and diversity consulting and training company, launched his first e-learning course, on the topic of cross-cultural medicine, in May 2004.

Hunt had originally conceived it to be a live training course. But after much consultation with his core audience — doctors and nurses — he concluded he needed something his busy clients could take on the fly.

With e-learning, health professionals can view the course in spurts, and quickly bookmark where they left off when duty calls. They can access the course on any computer with an Internet connection by pulling up its Web site (hosted separate from Critical Measures’ home page) and plugging in a company-specific ID number and password.

“It’s really designed to meet their needs,” says Hunt.

Also compelling is the ability to customize, he says. He can quickly alter content to make it client-relevant: Staff members at pediatric hospitals are shown simulated medical encounters that involve children, while staff at cardiac centers view heart cases.

And since racial demographics vary region to region, Hunt may depict Somali and Hmong patients in courses taken by Minneapolis-based doctors. Their colleagues in San Antonio, meanwhile, may see almost all Hispanic patient interactions portrayed on their computer screens.

Hunt outsourced production of his e-learning course to Allen Interactions. One of his clients, health insurance company Aetna Inc., covered the expense, which exceeded $100,000, says Hunt. His company, which grosses between $500,000 and $1 million annually, owns the license to the course.

Now that his first big push into e-learning has been a success, Hunt says he’s talking with clients and prospects about developing e-learning courses in other areas, though he wouldn’t offer details.

Even computer-based trainers who also use CD-ROMs and intranet to deliver their courses say they’re paring down their arsenal in favor of just e-learning. That’s where vendors say they see the most growth.

Though he didn’t come out with his Web-delivered courses until 18 months ago because he says the bandwidth on most client Internet connections wasn’t suitable, Janiszewski of Convenience Learning International says his ultimate goal is to move all of his products online.

The process might be slower than vendors would like it to be. Though the opportunities are greater, the licensing is easier to manage and the margins are wider, says Janiszewski, some of his clients still prefer the old standards.

Sixty percent of his clients are schools, and educators are hesitant to let kids on the Internet with the risk they’ll get into inappropriate material, or corrupt systems by accidentally downloading a virus. Of his 2005 corporate clients, however, 85 percent are doing e-learning.

Overseas clients are also slow to pick up e-learning, says Steven Shamblott, co-founder of Adayana Inc., an Edina-based training company that does e-learning for many high-profile agriculture and government clients, including the USDA and NATO.

Many countries lack the necessary infrastructure to support a high-speed Internet connection, not to mention a state-of-the-art e-learning course, he says. These clients still prefer CD-ROMs.

Adayana may have to expend more energy issuing 20,000 new CDs every time a change to a course is required, but it’s the convenience of their clients that’s most important, says Shamblott. “How you deliver the course, frankly, isn’t as important as the fact that you’re delivering quality training.”

Customer training, too

Many small businesses are also hesitant to ride the e-learning wave, say e-learning experts. Though their size and youth make them nimble and technologically savvy, small employers are more likely to stick with a live trainer or CD-based course, whereas large corporations, such as American Express and Motorola, are going gangbusters with e-learning. Small businesses make up a tiny percentage of e-learning trainers’ customer base, in numbers and sales volume.

Part of the reason is economies of scale, says Janiszewski. Vendors are more willing to pitch to large corporations because they’ll pull in bigger contracts with less effort. “It becomes a factor of time and value from a sales perspective on the size of the opportunity,” he says.

“It can be a lot of work to sell a small business on stuff.” A vendor could spend 15 hours courting a small business and get a $1,000 order, while a large corporation might put in a $40,000 order for the same amount of time. Instead, vendors typically use e-mail blasts to advertise to small businesses.

And small businesses often have the knee-jerk reaction that e-learning is far too expensive, although it could be less than half the cost to hire a trainer or register for a community college course, says Janiszewski. To make e-learning courses more attractive from a budgeting standpoint, he’s recently offered a deal where clients can buy a block of course viewings in advance, instead of paying per use.

Large corporations also have employees spread out all over the place, which makes e-learning’s instantaneous availability a better fit for their needs, says Shamblott. A small company may only have a handful of employees, so they’re not searching to reinvent the wheel when it comes to training.

“It’s not really on their radar screens as much because the issue isn’t at their forefront,” says Janiszewski.

Where e-learning might have the greatest appeal to small businesses is not so much in employee training, but in customer training, says Shamblott.

The Internet, after all, is the great marketing equalizer, where small businesses have the same footing as their larger counterparts. A polished, detailed Web-based presentation that trains a prospective client on how to use a product can trump any large corporation’s sales fleet, he says.

“That’s how small companies become national companies, and how small companies grow to be large companies,” says Shamblott.

[contact] Michael Allen, Allen Interactions: 651.203.3700; mallen@alleni.com; www.alleni.com. David Hunt, Critical Measures: 612.746.1375; dbhunt@criticalmeasures.net; www.criticalmeasures.net. David Janiszewski, Convenience Learning International: 763.559.4500; djaniszewski@clearning.com; www.clearning.com. Steven Shamblott, Adayana: 952.830.0600; sshamblott@adayana.com; www.adayana.com.