Enormous changes are taking place in every industry with information and services getting delivered virtually. Within a click, competition is at the doorstep. In such a fast-changing scenario, organisations need to change and adapt swiftly to remain viable. Companies that are managing change better are able to provide a more assured and consistent growth, thereby creating greater value.

The rapid rate of change in core competencies of the workforce, where resources are all over the place, traditional training methods are proving inadequate. Organisations able to learn on an ongoing basis and make better use of human resources are the ones that are able to provide better performance.

A virtual university scores in this regard as it gives organisations the ability to provide efficient and effective learning opportunities for the professional development of employees.

The demand created by corporations and the supply provided by academic universities is far apart. Similarly, there is an ever-changing huge gap in corporate requirements and what the academic certification provides. A virtual corporate university fills this void by providing just in time training.

This paper attempts to answer most of your questions regarding a corporate euniversity
and the outsourced model.

Q. 1. Reasons why organisations are inclined towards a Corporate e-
University?
Here are eight reasons that have necessitated the adoption of the Virtual University concept by organisations to fill in their training needs.

1. On-going continual career progression paths supported by a corporate university can be an attractive retainer for good employees;
2. The ability to increase the rate of learning within the company to match the increased rate of change in the environment;
3. The ability to respond to the challenges of globalisation, including the use of technology;
4. The ability to align the business goals and learning strategies;
5. Consistent training delivery along with necessary speed across the organisation while maintaining the corporate culture;
6. Adequate marketing of courses among employees and hand-holding during the entire cycle to make the learning stick;
7. Requirements of tracking and communication for making learning more effective;
8. Certification that provides a sense of achievement and pride among the participants.

Q. 2. What is a Corporate e-University?
The term 'university' suggests academic education, attending classes, grades and certificates. There is a void between the supply side of the equation from education providers and the demand side of the equation from organisations.Corporate universities have got necessitated due to the need for a combination of self-development, career development, management development and leadership development. This corporate university trend started in the USA during 1981 with Disney and Motorola. They both, for example, run their training departments as businesses, involve leaders as teachers, influence what people in the company learn and how, measure the value of their investments in education, and experiment and coordinate innovative new partnerships with universities, business schools and specialists.

The ‘E’ in the e-university is about imparting training electronically. Technology enabled training or online education is designed for self-study. It has a methodology of teaching that leverages upon technology to deliver effective courses that make sense. It is available anytime, anywhere and delivers value at a far lesser fee than the classroom training. E-Universities are not just about providing e-learning courses. Instead, it's a whole system, tracking and hitting people with communication with possibilities for interaction over time.

Q. 3. Are there issues with starting a corporate e-university?
Yes. There are issues with such a set-up, but they are not insurmountable. For example, if the employee on the shop floor has a high-school education, using ‘university’ is the exactly wrong word under given circumstances.

Many countries often prohibit the use of the word without the proper accreditation. To avoid legal issues, organisations have started naming their training set-up with inspiring names such as “Centre for Learning and Development”.

Corporate universities take many different forms; have multiple aims which differ between organisations. You may come up with your own name that conveys pride to the employees. Or, better still, have a competition within your organisation to coin a term for such a set-up, which suits your objectives.

Q. 4. Can Corporate University courses be in a blended model?
Yes, provided the offline portion is less than 20%. Now, training is more of a solution with measurements around actionable performance indicators. The new mantra is to take the best of both worlds – online and offline and blend it.

Q. 5. What type of training can be done in a Corporate e-University?
Training will include – induction training, product training, process training, competency training and so on.

Q. 6. Does a Corporate e-University Certificate have the same value as compared to attending a regular university?
A regular university certificate has more value when compared to an academic online university certificate. They both are catering to different academic segments of the market. Likewise, when it comes to corporate
e-universities, they are catering to a niche requirement of a particular industry segment, which cannot be fulfilled by academic bodies. It may not only be qualifications that corporate universities will compete to provide. Research is already a key activity for some organisations, although it isnot considered a key activity within the corporate universities themselves.

Corporate certification fulfils the need for completion of training and showcases the employee’s achievement. It gives them a sense of pride and belonging among the participants in the organisation. As long as skills are relevant and businesses accept these certifications, they make sense. That is the reason corporate organisations have come up with their own e-universities that cater to their niche training requirements.

Q. 7. How the traditional university sector can benefit by collaborating with corporate clients?
The traditional university sector can also benefit if they offer the right services and collaborate and offer certification through a corporate university. The Deakin University supplies 26 per cent of all MBAs registered in Australia (Dickson, 1999). They have established Deakin University Services, which partners with industry players to give them access to the university’s courses. For example, the partnership with the “Coles Institute” (Coles being a supermarket chain) meant that 55,000 of its employees had access to Deakin courses through flexible education. They also have partnership arrangements with Shell Australia and Coca-Cola, Amatil. The key to Deakin’s success in this area could be their use of the participants’ workplace as a major case study, the development of customised programmes delivered how, where and when it suits the customer.

Q. 8. Why do we require e-university portal to integrate the LMS?
Especially, on the corporate front, the university's primary presence in the learners’ lives is virtual. It connects them by using a mixture of delivery for learning, both virtual and fixed.

• This way, everything about training is in one place to track and monitor for the organisation
• The tracking of classroom training and online training is done virtually
• By networking both online and in person, collaboration and communities of practices can be built
• The users are better informed as all their training requirements and achievements are posted in one place. The learners are informed regularly of new developments and given adequate time to grasp the new delivery methods
• It is a wonderful tool to motivate and market the courses

Q. 9. Why an outsourced model of Corporate e-University?
To be competitive in a fast-changing corporate world, it makes absolute sense for organisations to do what they do best – Manage their business and leave training to the experts.

Businesses partnerships are the way to go in a specialised world. With domain experts on your side, you can concentrate on your strengths. The C&K Management Limited comes in here to understand your organisational goals and invest in your employee training.

Q. 10. What are the advantages of an outsourced model?
When corporate clients are looking for world-class know-how, they approach us.

• We, as vendors, always keep ourselves abreast of the competition
• Have the domain expertise
• This model provides to achieve your corporate
• Integrated approach
• Free consulting

Q. 11. What are the implications of a complete outsourced model?
In a complete outsourced model, the vendor develops the training, hosts it, markets it, tracks, gives reports, certifications and administers and maintains it for you. This model is customisable to suit your requirements.

• Based on your requirements, off-the-shelf courses will be sourced subject to availability and custom courses will be built based on your specific needs at competitive pricing
• Classroom training, wherever necessitated by your requirements, can be conducted by yourself or we can provide the experts to impart training. This scheduling is also tracked online on the university portal

Q. 12. Why C&K Management Limited?
We have end-to-end capabilities in the Digital Learning Services space, which encompass strategy consulting services, learning management systems, authoring tools, custom e-learning content development, portal solutions, roll out and change management. Our learning solutions are not a classical industrial age production line business.
We focus on reliably producing effective and practical learning solutions that are creatively designed, meaningful and engaging.

We understand your requirements. We have the ability to develop courseware across a wide spectrum of domains. This is possible because of the availability of a large pool of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who are empanelled with us

• Aggressive cycle times
• Processes in place. They hinge on collaboration, communication and clear expectations throughout the project
• Based on standards to facilitate interoperation, accessibility and reusability
• We allocate a dedicated team for each client and have the ability to scale up in quick time
• Robust development and hosting environments with state of the art technologies
• Support and maintenance
• Tracking and reports generation
• Marketing

Q. 13. What is C&K’s experience?
We at C&K have successfully developed and implemented such technologies with iGuru that caters to the Indian insurance segment. We have a dedicated team that supports the learners and maintains the records for certification. NCEDEX commodities portal is another example of collaboration and partnership. Similarly, ISA and ETQM work on modified models of outsourcing.

• Over eight years of experience in implementing training projects
• Over 1,000 e-learning hours have been developed by us
• Over 15,000 custom content pages have been written by us
• Over 10,000 students take regulation-based courses developed by us
• Over 4,000 students take masters’ course designed by us
• Over 30,000 people are trained using our custom content

Q. 14. What is the role of C&K?
A virtual university need not be started from scratch, it can be built step by step. As your consultants, we can find ways to use your old LMS if you have one and/or sometimes even do without it and begin in a very small way and build upon it. The courses can be hosted in-house or at our end. The same goes for the portal technology. We can get you off-the-shelf courses when they are readily available or create custom courses. By taking this approach, we save time and money and honour the people who had worked hard to put training and technology together originally in your organisation.

Q. 15. Who will make the investment?
We look at your requirements to understand your current set-up before providing a solution. As serious players, we support you with initial investment to an extent as partners to kick off the training. As we build courses, host and maintain them for you, we charge you by the users wherein we expect a minimum number of users.

Q. 16. Buy V/s Build – who makes the decision?
We can get you off-the-shelf courses when they are readily available or create custom courses. In this direction, we work as your consultants. We align the offerings with the organisation's business needs or mission and then drill down to the performance of the people the university is for so that the content is tailored to their needs.

Q. 17. Who will provide the LMS and the Portal?
If you have an LMS we will use it or else we can provide one. Portal will be developed by us and integrated with the LMS.

Q. 18. What are the pricing models?
There are two hosting models. The courses can be hosted at your place or at our end. They can be hosted on your servers or on our servers. Pricing will depend based on the above. In both the cases, billing will be based on the number of users logged for a particular course, subject to a minimum number for each of them.

Q. 19. How will we take care of learner motivation?
When we design courses we don’t look at interactivity as just a design element. We look for ways and means of creating experiences to make the learning engaging and useful. The key components of engagement are:

• Creative (in that they allow people to make something, communicate with others, share something of themselves, or offer help in the creative process)
• Interactive (they don't require users to be passive and they encourage and reward initiative)
• Adaptive (they offer unique, personal experiences and treat each audience member differently based on their behaviour and interests)

More the questions that we worked along with the client and answered, the more
successful we have been.

Q. 20. How do we plan to take care of training issues and their management?
Based on our extensive experience in training, several key factors have been found to be critical to the success of training. These factors encompass the focus, marketing and operational elements that ensure a well-used and credible Training Program.

• Program tied to business direction
• Link to personal objectives
• High quality courseware and services
• Proactive leadership/champion
• Proactive marketing programme
• Optimised facilities
• Wide accessibility
• Evaluation and measurement of learning systems

Q. 21. Learner registration and reports – Who will do it? What is covered?
C&K Management will manage the set-up, will do the registrations, follow-up and track. The tracking reports cover the courses the users have registered for, the time spent, scores, course completion report for issuance of certificate and so on.

Q. 22. Who own the IP rights?
Client shall retain the title and copyright to all client-supplied materials and information.
C & K Management shall retain all right, title and interest in all its proprietary products and content, copyrighted material or proprietary information of C & K that have been used in building the training product for the client. C & K grants to the client the right to use such C & K materials within the product for training its staff.

Q. 23. What is the minimum duration of engagement?
The minimum duration of engagement will be for a period of three years.

Summary
“The decline in IBM was not the result of a declining demand for computers, and Pan Am did not go bust because people stopped flying. The failure of these companies followed not from the disappearance of their markets, but from their inability to see or respond to the changes taking place within them (Mayo and Lank, 1994). ”

Learning is becoming an increasingly important function for all companies to develop and maintain the individual and organisational skills needed to create a competitive advantage, increase efficiency, and improve bottom-line results. To secure the companies’ best interests, protect its market positions, and retain its best people, an organisation needs to invest in learning. When the leaderslook at the fast-changing markets as an opportunity and learn new strategies to carry on and succeed, they open themselves and their organisations to learning
and newer possibilities. To know more as to how we can leverage the virtual university for your training needs and business advantage, call or write to us. E-mail: janakiram.hyd@cnkonline.com