Ground-Breaking Best Practices in E-Learning Uncovered -- Largest-Ever Study Reveals Business Impact of Blended Learning

Oakland, CA -- May 6, 2003 -- A comprehensive, largest-of-its-kind study examining best practices in corporate e-learning programs was released today. The study reveals ground-breaking best-practices in blended learning and found that e-learning is driving huge returns on investment -- upwards of 700% and higher -- and at the same time dramatically improving time to market and business productivity. Bersin & Associates, which provides results-oriented consulting, research, and analysis services in e-learning, conducted the research over more than a year culminating in the comprehensive report entitled Blended Learning: What Works".

Oakland, CA (PRWEB) May 7, 2003 -- A comprehensive, largest-of-its-kind study examining best practices in corporate e-learning programs was released today. The study reveals ground-breaking best-practices in blended learning and found that e-learning is driving huge returns on investment -- upwards of 700% and higher -- and at the same time dramatically improving time to market and business productivity.

Bersin & Associates, which provides results-oriented consulting, research, and analysis services in e-learning, conducted the research over more than a year culminating in the comprehensive report entitled Blended Learning: What Works".

This study demonstrates that blended learning -- training programs combining a number of modalities such as e-learning, live instruction, and tele-conferencing -- has broken-through as a major corporate application which is helping the worlds largest, best-known companies increase productivity, time-to-market, product and process quality, and revenues," said Josh Bersin, Principal and Research Director at Bersin & Associates.

The study was conducted during 2002 and 2003, spanning one of the most challenging business environments in decades. Implementations of blended learning solutions were studied at 18 corporations of various sizes, providing insight to program details, costs, tools, methodologies and best practices. More than 1.3 million individual learners were touched via these combined programs during the study period.

Companies studied include: Verizon (VZ), Cisco (CSCO), Kinkos, WW Grainger (GWW), Bell Canada, NCR (NCR), Siemens, Peoplesoft (PSFT), Roche Pharmaceuticals (RHHBY), Royal&Sun Insurance, and British Telecom (BT), and others.

Blended Learning Solves Problems of Scale and Speed

According to the What Works" study, these programs result in dramatic reductions in costs -- but they also go much further, solving problems of scale and speed which were impossible to solve in other ways. Examples include:

---Dramatic improvement in sales productivity through global product rollouts
---Change in corporate-wide accounting practices with minimal risk of error
---Reducing time to revenue" of service personnel in high turnover positions
---Increasing semiconductor product quality through global process certification
---Error-free rollouts of ERP applications which drive large business volumes.

Companies are deriving very large ROI from blended learning today," said Michael Brennan, Program Manager, Corporate Learning and Performance Research at International Data Corporation (IDC). The results of this research are impressive: blended and e-learning programs drive business impact in a much larger way than most companies realize."

A few examples of the high-impact programs include:

---Siemens: The blended learning solution it developed to train thousands of financial professionals in the companys new accounting practices was instrumental in its ability to become listed on the New York Stock Exchange;
---Verizon: A field-based service training program saved the company millions of dollars in wait time, training expense, salary and overtime for 100,000 field service personnel;
---Bell Canada: A switch from traditional training programs to e-learning programs saved millions of dollars in the first year by eliminating outsourced providers.

E-learning is a revolutionary approach to improving corporate efficiency," said Eli Munzer, Director of E-Learning at Verizon. Although e-learning requires new tools and methodologies, the impact on productivity and time-to-market is enormous."

For more information on Blended Learning: What Works", click

http://www.bersin.com/research/blended_learning.htm.