So, what is it that analytics are promising? According to the vendors, the analytics tool enables organizations to precisely measure how a given training event impacts business results. It enables the user to drill down through the learning data and extract information. Unlike traditional learning management systems’ reporting tools, the analytics tool can connect with and extract data from other enterprise systems, allowing the users to identify correlations between training events and business results. The ability to identify these trends better enables managers to correctly focus their training efforts. For example, an analytics tool can show a Sales manager the measure of a sales training course completed at the end of May and how it correlates with his employees for the month of June. This allows the manager to see how, if at all, the completion of that training course affected his group’s sales. This information can then be used to determine if a course should be continued or if it needs to be modified or discontinued.
Analytics is still a very new concept in the learning management space so it is not surprising that there is a lot of confusion surrounding what it actually does. Specifically, there seems to be questions pertaining to the distinction between analytics and reporting module of the learning management system. How exactly do they differ? Is the reporting module not supposed to be able to tell you how the system is being used? How successful is the training program?
Well, the analytics tool is really an extension of the reporting module. While vendors do sell their reporting modules as tools which enable organizations to demonstrate how well training is working, in reality, the reporting module has a limited ability to do this. First, the reporting module of a learning management system is limited to reporting on data within the learning management system, which makes it difficult to correlate your training initiatives with business results. Second, it limits your ability to target specific data and to slice and dice the information. In other words, any real “analytic” capabilities that the reporting feature can supposedly provide require a lot of work and customization on the customers’ part.
So, why are the vendors releasing analytic products? Learning Management Systems’ vendors, like other technology vendors before them face the uphill battle of proving their products'' worth and making their products indispensable to their customers. In order to do this, they have to be able to clearly demonstrate the value that their products can bring to an organization. In simpler terms, they need to be able to clearly demonstrate how their products affect the bottom line. In providing training managers with a way to measure the effectiveness of their training programs, vendors are making it easier for training managers to articulate the vitality of training initiatives, which in turn will make the vendors'' products indispensable to the training organization.
So far Docent and Saba, two of the leading LMS providers, are the only two vendors to have released packaged analytics solutions. However, in such a competitive landscape you can be sure that the other vendors will not be far behind.