ELT provides online training solutions to help employers manage their most important workplace compliance challenges, including sexual harassment training, ethics and code of conduct training, EEO training, and wage and hour training. The quality of their content is what makes ELT different. Working hand-in-hand with Littler, the world’s largest employment law firm, ELT creates programs that maximize legal defenses while creating a culture of ethics, inclusion, and respect.
Challenge
Traditionally ELT had used their own custom-built in-house Learning Management System to deliver their training courses. A strategic decision was taken for ELT to focus on its core competency of developing compliance courseware. ELT decided to license a third-party LMS rather than to continue to customize and support its own in-house solution.
ELT’s main business challenge is to deliver company specific versions of their courseware to a client base of over 1000 companies. They required a solution that would give them the flexibility to automatically deliver different versions of courses to employees based on their job role. For example, an employee would see one course and a supervisor would be presented with a different version. ELT also wanted to brand the solution for each client, allowing clients to access a branded learning portal with their own color schemes, look and feel, login page and welcome messages.
The contract and licensing management model was another key challenge for ELT. This involved the setup up of flexible license pools for clients that could run over 1 to 5 years and which could apply to any number of courses for any number of users. Clients could then draw down the licenses in these pools over time, but would be prevented from further enrollments once the license pool was used or had expired.
Given the significant number of individual clients managed within the solution, ELT was keen to empower clients to a significant degree, lessening the central administration required. A solution that allowed each company to have its own client training administrators (CTAs) who could batch upload or manually create users, enroll them in classes, create their own custom notifications, manage their employees training history, run reports and manage their licenses via a license dashboard, was necessary.
A critical success factor for ELT was the seamless migration of their existing client data (companies, users, enrollment rules, notification templates, etc) from their old custom LMS to the new solution with as little downtime as possible. This involved the transfer of data for over 1000 clients and approximately 3 million learners.
The Solution
After an extensive vendor selection process, including a full review of available LCMS options, multiple product demonstrations, review of post-sales service history and follow-up on several client references, ELT selected TopClass from WBT Systems. Two key differentiators in the selection of TopClass were its flexibility and its ability to use powerful group joining operations to assign courseware to users based on each of ELT’s clients requirements. From a functional perspective, ELT clients needed the capability to set up their own enrolment rules in TopClass, which would enable them to carry out local system administration.
WBT’s collaborative approach to understand ELT’s business requirements during the selection process provided ELT
with the confidence to move ahead with WBT. Both teams worked together to develop a prototype to illustrate
proof of concept, resulting in the implementation of a full enterprise version of TopClass.
The data migration project required a complex integration of all relevant data from ELT’s existing LMS to TopClass.
This involved a detailed mapping of information from the old LMS to the TopClass data model. WBT built a custom
batch operations tool which allows client training administrators to create, modify, delete and enrol users by
uploading a text file. In parallel, the client’s current license pool status could be automatically checked to ensure
there are sufficient licenses to allow the requested enrolments to be performed. Client training administrators
could perform batch synchronizations with data from their own HR system such as SAP or Peoplesoft. These
operations could be run in real time or scheduled to run nightly, providing further flexibility.
The solution allowed each of ELT’s clients to have their own custom data fields, which could be used in batch operations, on user management screens and appear in reports.
The Results
- ELT now has a scalable solution which can meet its current needs and provides ample room for future growth
- The entire solution was successfully outsourced, freeing up ELT resources to focus on developing their award winning courseware.
- The learning solution has been positively received by ELT’s clients, who have been particularly pleased with the new functionality that allows them to self administer their training needs
- All clients and associated training data were migrated successfully with minimal down time
- The system has been very stable with uptime of > 99.999%, exceeding the agreed SLA
- There has been an overall drop in the number of support tickets received from clients, allowing ELT staff to focus on core activities
The Future
ELT and WBT are currently developing a number of new system features aimed at continuing ELT’s mission of
empowering clients to run successful training programs with minimal amounts of effort. Future enhancements
include general customer interface refinements, new reports (for both clients and ELT), business rule
enhancements, and new features for email the notification system.
Quote
“With TopClass, we implemented an improved and more scalable system, which is much easier for our clients to use and has provided them with fantastic tools and options. We look forward to developing new solutions with WBT and continuing our relationship as ELT grows.” Shanti Atkins, President & CEO, ELT
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