Passageways Blog : Transforming Enterprise and Industry Knowledge into New Success

If you could save 10 minutes each time that you did a chore, would you do it?  If you could save 10 minutes each time that you do yard work, shuttle the kids, clean the house, work out,  and drive; why wouldn't you?  Actually, you more than likely already do.

Over the years you have already figured out how to be more and more efficient when it comes to your personal, daily, and mundane responsibilities.  Think about the simple things that you probably don't even register.  You probably found the quickest route to/from numerous places that you travel weekly like the grocery store, supercenter, hardware store, restaurants, coffee shop, fast food, and so on.  Have you found the quickest and easiest way to mow your grass?  You know you have, and now it probably changes rarely. 

Now think technology. What do you do that wasn't used 20 years ago simply for the ease.  The concept is otherwise known as Gaining Efficiency while Saving Time.  A few of these off the top of my head are microwave, computer, cell phone, dishwasher, and cordless home phone.  Now go back 200 years.  Things like automobiles, gas stoves, bicycle, washer and dryer, refrigerator, movies on dvd's, the INTERNET, are so basic and common that you don't register them. These have because utterly importantly and are used on a daily basis.  The idea or concept is that advancement and technology has always been here and continues to affect us moving forward. 

With the above in mind, why are we not utilizing this same mindset and advancement at the workplace?  What is the most critical need of your enterprise?  Is it all of the widgets and gizmo's?  No, it's Time.  In a day, your enterprise is constantly working, making calls, emailing, sharing/publishing information, managing, meeting, writing, and so on.  It all has to do with Communication and it all takes Time.  If you could use today's technology to streamline this communication and gain efficiency, than why haven't you?

A portal is the modern intranet.  These portals are designed to allow your enterprise and/or board to communicate more effectively while decentralizing management.  Today's technology no longer requires an IT staff to run its daily operations, saving invaluable amounts of time for the unit to work on the more critical aspects of the business.  Such portals allow for and many include tools that specifically help with documents management, workflows, streamlining business processes, knowledge management, vendor management, expense reporting, board packet creation, help desks, instant messaging, user profiles, bulletin boards, discussion boards, reservations, blogging, rich text editing, and so on.  These tools are designed to gain numerous efficiencies while saving critical amounts of time per employee. 

Let's put it in mathematical terms.  Let's say you have 100 employees.  Each employee works 2080 hours or 124,800 minutes per year with an average annual compensation at $40,000.  That breaks down to an average CPM (cost per minute) of $0.3205 per employee.  Save each employee just 10 minutes a day of time and that equates to a weekly savings of $1,603 and an annual savings of $83,333.  How about saving 15 minutes a day as opposed to 10 minutes?  That's a weekly savings of $481 and an annual savings of $125,000.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The American way has always been to utilize advancement in technology to save time and money. If your enterprise or board could gain such efficiencies while saving such substantial amounts of money simply by using a portal, why aren't they?

Check down, Zebra 33, Monkey-Monkey, on two, hut one, zebra L, Zebra L, Loui, Loui, tap on the bottom, left leg lift, Dallas, Dallas, hut two....and the ball is snapped.

Sound funny?  These are not typos.  This is a quick example of what Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts might say at the line of scrimmage prior to beginning a play.  Peyton is one of the only quarterbacks, if not the only quarterback who has the intelligence and leash to run the entire offense completely by himself.  For the casual fan this might not seem like much, but it is so much more.  Running an NFL offense is extremely complex and there are many responsibilities.  Reading the defensive set, looking for the blitz, realigning the line, the receivers, the tight end, the running back(s), reading the defense again, possibly changing the play, and taking the snap.  Not to mention, he has only 40 seconds to do it all.

What exactly is Peyton doing?  He is organizing, giving orders, re-aligning, adjusting, shifting, giving direction, providing direction, etc.  Most importantly, he is communicating!  Incredibly similar, enterprises do the exact same thing....just in a different manner with a different play clock.  The only difference is that Peyton understands the value of organized communication and content management.  Why do some enterprises not act on these same values? Let's take an enterprise portal for example.  There probably is not a hard number to calculate your return on portal investment.  However, if you used technology to organize and manage your enterprise communication and content, what is the benefit?  Circle Bank, CA, is one organization that has seen the light. 

Circle Bank is utilizing a hosted corporate portal which helps with overall efficiency, workflows, business process automation, document management, product and services, help desks, and more.  Let's make one thing clear; an employee portal is much more than a static front page intranet.  Bank Technology News has noticed it when it recognized Circle Bank in their 2009 Top 5 IT initiatives for Community Banks. A portal is a relationship, a growing and evolving product that is designed to mature with your outfit while providing the necessary permission strings.  It also allows for flexibility, centralization, and decentralization of content management.  What does that mean for your business?  Simply that a portal allows you to take the burden off of the Information Technology staff and put the responsibilities on the individual departments or business units.  All of which does not require an IT Guru, coders, techies, developers, consultants, or any other specialized staff.

Now for the soft ROI, let's say that you have 100 employees averaging $35,000 in annual pay.  What if you technology could save each employee just 5 minutes a day.  That's a daily savings of $140.22.  That might not seem like too much, until you calculate that total annually.  That same 5 minutes per employee saves your enterprise over $38,000 annually.  What if you have 200 employees?  Double it.  Those 5 minutes not wasted per employee saves you over $76,000 annually.  Let's also talk about the time saved.  If you have 100 employees and each saved 5 minutes a day, that equates to 124,800 minutes saved.  Think of how many tasks those employees could have completed utilizing those 124,800 minutes more productively.  You may also see exactly how two other enterprises used similar technology to save both time and money.  T Bank and Bank of American Fork were acknowledged in Bank Technology News as 2 of the top 5 Community Banks for Information Technology Initiatives.

You tell me.  Peyton Manning uses innovative communication tools and does it extremely successfully.  With an extremely simple and underestimated ROI calculation, is it worth it?  If others are doing it, you might want to think about using the portal tool as a strategic benefit to your organization.

 

So I am extremely confused on this topic.  In today's business world, and in all of the business world for that matter, the concept is to provide a management platform of which you might have; chairman of the board, directors, president, CEO, CFO, CMO, CTO, CIO, CCO, VP, SVP, AVP, Department Directors, Managers, Assistant Managers, and so on.  The idea being that you have decentralized management in hopes to departmentalize....thus allowing individuals with special accolades and responsibilities to own their specific "section" or "piece" of the business.  In essence, this is a bicycle chain where the President or CEO might be considered the sprocket that holds everything together.  The president then relies on specifically appointed individuals to maintain their links within the chain.  These individuals then rely on their additional links to maintain their section of the chain.  Ahh...a chain of command or management structure.

So the question I impose is this, if almost, if not all business relies on some sort of management chain model for day-to-day operations, then why do these enterprises rely on one or two departments for the overall organization of employee communication and content management.  Simply stated, when it comes to an employee portal or intranet, why is it so common to rely on one voice to speak for all?  As opposed to relying on each department or unit to rely solely on themselves for their own internal communications and content. 

Does today's technology not allow for such an idea?  It does, and it is referred to as a portal.  A universal platform designed to allow "non-techs", or everyday employees, to manage and maintain their section of the enterprise.  Employee portals have replaced the traditional front page and static intranet.  These portals are very flexible and provided numerous organizational and collaboration tools.  Just to name a few off the top of my mind; role-based access, various permission strings for decentralized content management, flexible interfaces, custom landing pages, navigation trees, banners, page templates, modules, primary and secondary business applications, document access, full text search, rich text editing, discussion boards, voting, polls, calendars, alerting, notifications, read receipt, tabbed islands, blogs, wiki's, links, access to external web pages, and so on!  Did I forget to mention that you may also find portal vendors which provide extendable platforms built in languages as common as .NET.  For the "non-techie" types think of it like this, you are not stuck with an off the shelve product, WYSIWYG or "what you see is what you get".  Not with a portal built on an extendable platform.  These products are designed to grow and morph with your entity, allowing for custom work, modifications, and applications which will help to expedite or streamline your business processes.  Modern portals are designed to make the user experience much more involved and fun.  A friendly user experience that if implemented correctly, will have the end-users wanting to be more involved.

After all, does the IT or Marketing department know, understand, or even care what other departments such as Operations, Human Resources, Finance, or Legal do, let alone, even need on a daily basis?  Why not take the responsibility and accountability off of the IT or Marketing staff and put it where it should be.  If technology allows for specific departments to maintain their section of the intranet or portal, then that is how it should be.  Let Operations and the other departments take care of themselves.  It only makes sense to have the people with the most knowledge of what content, communications, and materials that Operations use and need on a daily basis.  You guessed it, the Operations team would know.  And now if this department uses inaccurate, dated, and/or incorrect materials and information, well, then it is their fault.  Not to mention that this also frees up a tremendous amount of time and resources for the one or two departments which have traditionally maintained the intranet.

So, if you are relying on a management chain structure for your enterprise to stay profitable, then why in the world are you relying on one department to be the voice for all of your internal communications, collaboration, and content management?  You shouldn't.

 

We know some of you are still trying to decide about PowWOW 2010...well here is a good list for staters! 

1. Hang out and meet Passageways Staff - Don't you want to learn why we are called Pathfinders? You need to come and shake hands with the people behind your portal. It's more fun to work with friends!

2. Learning about award winning projects and products- Did you know Passageways won 7 awards last year? And 4 different products won these awards...come join in the celebrations.

3. Be the first to get all major Passageways Announcements - Don't you what to learn how P4 fared last year? Want to know about Community Portals are we now working on?

4. Peer to Peer networking - Need to talk to peers who have the same goals and challenges? PowWow is the place to do it! You'll gain a few Facebook friends at this conference for sure!

5. Best Practices - You know some other organizations have some nuggets you can borrow and look smart back in the office, right? Or perhaps you come and share your own success stories!

6. Developer Track for Dev - want to learn more on how stuff comes together, meet the crew themselves. Object Oriented Programming is the name of the game! .

7. Indianapolis is more than just a race track! Check out downtown Indy and a enjoy America's newest airport! The conference is walking distance from a mall and several restaurants!

8. Get to broaden your horizons and be away from the office all at the same time! How does a casino night full of surprises followed by quality gaming time sound?

9. Just the Speaker line-up and some prominent attendees are reasons to come!

1. Mark Meyer, CEO Filene Research Institute

2. Randy Karnes, CEO of CU*Answers

3. Prof. Patrick Duparcq, Kellogg Management School

4. Doug True, CTO, Forum Credit Union

5. Bob Falk, CEO, Purdue EFCU

6. Ken Burnett, Director, Bank of American Fork

7. Thad Hutcheson, CIO, T Bank

8. Andrea Stritzke, Regulatory Counsel, Policyworks

9. Gordon Gregory, VP Technology, Mazuma Credit Union

10. Jackie Buchanan, CIO, Genisys Credit Union

11. Mike Atkins, CEO of OTS

10. "How to" Lounge - Hand's on learning -lounging is good, especially at this one. We don't teach you how to lounge around.We teach your how to get things done!

11. Meet the Developers- Don't you want to hang with the developer of our new Sales management Module and Vendor Management Module?

12. Certification Programs - Want some tangible credibility points? You're the portal expert. Earn something that proves it too...just 6 seats left!

 Here is the conference page and of course the Registration page

What did we miss?  share you thoughts if you have some more ideas..

 

by Ken Burnett 

This month I want to spend a few minutes on the topics of blended learning, reporting and Mark Twain.  I hope you will find all of them interesting.  The blended learning section is to introduce you to a learning strategy that is critical to your organization.  The reporting section is a quick look at some guidelines for doing reporting.  Mark Twain's short stories are included, because on a cold winter day here in Salt Lake with 32 days before pitchers and catchers report to spring training, it seemed like the right thing to do. 

In the last blog, I introduced you to our products and services approach.  In this blog, I thought we would look at blended learning overall, and provide you a few more examples of blended learning approaches  that we use at the Bank.  Some of the more critical blended learning approaches we have at the Bank are our core skills and our approach to teller training.  I will talk about classroom, self-paced online learning, and structured OJT.  Let me spend a few minutes on blended learning, before I focus on some specific examples.

Blended learning is a lot like what Mark Twain said about the weather.  A lot of people talk about it, but no one does anything about it.  My view of blended learning is that it shouldn't be the goal of a training program, but the output of a program that is well designed.  Before I get too far into this, my definition of blended training uses a mix of various types of media to accomplish its training goals.  During our February webinar, I will spend a little more time on discussing blended learning approaches. 

Blended learning provides the training designer the option (I would argue requirement) of using the most appropriate media for each section of content.  For example, we deliver bank wide core skills training in a classroom environment for many different reasons.  Effective classroom learning provides a good way to deliver cultural messages about your organization.   Having employees learn from each other and get a consistent voice around a topic is another advantage of classroom learning.  The instructor can also hear if the learner is having trouble with a topic, and adjust the class to meet their needs. 

Classroom learning is not the most effective way to deliver all types of content.  For basic knowledge or to mimic a system for practice self-paced, online learning is effective.  We also use online for proficiency testing, because of the options for randomizing questions, record keeping, and reporting the data, and for the ease of test delivery. 

Let me tell you about the specific training approach we use to train our tellers at the Bank.  We hire employees in groups of 2-5 per month, so it is very difficult to have a teller training "class."  We had to figure out a different model.  The approach we came up with is structured OJT (On the Job Training) with one-on-one mentoring for specific job skills, classroom for other skills training and online proficiency testing.  We blend these training approaches to effectively train our associates. 

The reason I call it structured OJT, is that for many of the core jobs at the Bank, we have built task lists.  As part of those task lists, we also identify outputs for each task. Rather than just have the new employee sit with their coach, and they learn random tasks, structured OJT, provides a script or list of things the employee must learn.  Unstructured OJT is, in my opinion, a waste of time.  When the new teller sits with another associate to learn a job, the associate teaching the job is required to teach the new associate a specific list of tasks with the accompanying outputs.  The task lists should tie into a knowledge management system similar to the Passageways knowledge management system as common repository of knowledge. 

The next step in the process is to deliver skills like presentation skills or customer service skills in a classroom environment.  We use the Passageways Learning Management System (LMS) for this part of the process.  The last piece is the online proficiency testing part.  To assist with randomizing the questions, and making sure the test chooses from the right types of questions, you need a test generating piece of software. We use the test generating tool from the LMS.  The outcome of this strategy is a blended learning approach that meets the goals of effective training while taking into account the limitations of the organization and advantages of the software.  We also use the same type of approach for the Bank's compliance training.  To learn more about the compliance approach, please come to our next webinar. 

Reporting

When you design reports for managers regarding the learning that happens in your organization, the most important questions to ask are why you are reporting the information, and what do you expect the person to do with the information you are giving them.   I make sure that I have the audience, and the learning and performance expectations understood before the class, and that I am able to design reports to meet those needs.  I will talk more about these and other reports during my February webinar. 

 

Mark Twain's Top Short Stories (according to Ken Burnett)

I have long been a fan of Mark Twain.  I think his short stories stand up to his novels.  This is by no means a consensus. 

• The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg

• Eve's Diary

• Cannibalism in The Cars

• Experience Of The McWilliamses With Membranous Croup

• The Stolen White Elephant

• Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven

• The Carnival of Crime in Connecticut

• The Curious Dream

• A Ghost Story

• The Coyote

by Ken Burnett 

Organizations now more than ever value highly skilled employees.  Cross-training, employee development, job-sharing, and changing roles due to downsizing are commonplace in today's economy.  In order to manage the learning function, organizations must have a flexible system for employees to manage their development, and for organizations to report and monitor their progress.  Because of the criticality of the changing needs of the workforce, a robust Learning Management System (LMS) is vital to any organization's success

            As your organization makes a decision on an LMS, the options vary as much as they do at a car lot or computer store.  You need to be aware of the critical differences before you make the purchase on a LMS. 

            As with most software programs, the differences that influence your ability to use the product invariably focus on:

1.  Flexibility
2. Ease of use and content delivery
3. Price

            Passageways LMS was designed by a generous input from a corporate trainer (yours truly, Ken Burnett) with over 20 years experience in delivering training and providing recordkeeping for a financial organization, who will talking about the LMS at a Webinar hosted by Passageways.   

Flexibility

            The Passageways LMS provides the Training Department flexibility and ease of use as they set up courses/sessions and administer the learning functions.  Many other LMS offer course set up functions, but the Passageways LMS provides you the option of adding audience by groups you define, then excluding specific members of that audience based on need.  You can also set prerequisites for the training that will direct courses only to those employees who meet the requirements.

            The system is flexible enough to use that I have assigned over 1300 compliance courses to 30 unique groups in less than an hour.  I can setup a course that has 16 different classroom sessions each with unique times, dates and locations in 30 minutes.  Many LMS systems have similar features, but it is Passageways unique design of filtering the learning directly to the person who needs it that will improve your ability to deliver training. 

Ease of Use and Content Delivery

            The manager functionality in the LMS is designed to fit today's working environment.  The Passageways LMS provides managers the opportunity to sign their employees up for courses, view the associate's transcripts, and note which courses the employee is requesting.  Most of the other LMS have only two levels of access, one for the administrator, and one for the user.

            I'm sure many of you have been to a restaurant trying to decide between items, when the entree looks good in one meal, and the vegetable in another, and you wish you could take the best of everything.  Well, with Passageways LMS you can author in not just one program, but many types of software.  At the Bank of American Fork we use several different types of authoring software delivering courses to our employees (Lectora, Adobe Captivate, and Rapid Intake among others).  Not only that, but you can choose best in class courses from many different vendors.  In our LMS, we currently have courses from six different vendors all running through the Passageways LMS.  This type of flexibility allows you to find or author the exact content you need for your course. 

            In many of the other LMS systems out on the market the learner/administrator/manager has to make multiple clicks to perform a function, but Passageways LMS is designed to minimize the number of clicks to get you the information you need quickly and efficiently.  Many of the other LMS systems on the marketplace bury critical information in layers of menus.  The Passageways LMS system has a minimal menu structure. It has to be efficient, because I use it too!   

Price

With all the functionality offered by the Passageways LMS, you'd think it would be the most expensive in the marketplace.  Well actually Passageways LMS is priced very competitively and good value when money is tight.  You can't approach the Passageways LMS functionality for twice the price.  I'll be happy to discuss these in the webinars with you as well.

            The Passageways LMS is the best product on the market if you are a bank or a credit union. Admittedly, the reason I can say that is that my organization uses it to manage our training function, and knows the difference this makes over our prior experiences.  If the system can't meet the needs of my organization, I am accountable.  I am continually getting feedback from my users and other organizations that I coordinate with Passageways to keep the system up to date and ahead of other competitive products.  I hope you'll take a look at the system to see how it will help your organization.   Don't forget to sign up for a session where I will be available to talk more about all these aspects of LMS. Hope to see you!

 

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/816021291

 

 

About Ken Burnett

Passageways Evangelist for Learning Management System

Ken Burnett has over 20 years experience in the Training and Workplace Learning Environment.  His focus is on helping organizations and individuals change behavior to achieve business results.   He is currently the Training Director for Bank of American Fork.  As the Training Director for the Bank, Ken focuses on customer service, sales, systems, compliance, products and services, and policy and procedure training.  Prior to joining the Bank, Ken worked at Fidelity Investments in various training functions in Salt Lake and Boston. 

Ken's perfect day would be to take Mark Twain to a Boston Red Sox.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Congratulations to everyone who contributed towards this solution especially Community Credit Union of Florida and Educators Credit Union.

To find out more about this Innovative solution click here! 

Not to be outdone by their sister bank, Fort Still National Bank hosted a peer webinar of their own last Thursday.  Ruthy Dailey and Mylinda McClure, a double threat of portal power, discussed "Bridging the Communications Gap" to an audience of over 35.  Instead of an in-depth topical presentation like some of our former webinars, this was a more general look into various business process automations that the portal can entail.  Immediately following the presentation, the duo fielded a variety of Q&A and demonstrated their mastery of all things portal (or intranet).  Out hats are off to them both.

Ruthy and Mylinda peeled the curtains back on their private world to the delight of all, showing how to connect employees through simple, fun, and effective strategies within the portal.  Topics included (with Passageways modules features in parenthesis):

• Making an attractive and interactive communication platform (Form Builder, and Products and Services Modules)
• Dealing with and resolving various business processes through numerous portal applications (Help Desk, Products & Services, and Expense Reports Modules)
• Making the portal the reference point for your users (Read Receipt and Knowledge Management Modules)
• Unique uses for common modules to increase overall employee engagement (Auction and Learning Management Modules)

Ruthy and Mylinda openly admit in the webinar to spending "only one hour a week" for maintenance and updating their Passageways employee portal.  For a network of over one thousand users, spending only one hour a week in maintenance is almost unbelievable.  This shows how portal administrators can spend very little time maintaining an intranet with over 1,000 users, and focus that saved time on additional projects.  Contact us for your own copy of this peer webinar and see it first-hand for yourself.

That winds up the May peer webinars.  Stay tuned for the coming months, where we expect even more great peer webinars.  If there's a topic you'd like covered in a future webinar, please post below.  Even better, if you would like to host a peer webinar of your own, contact us!  The schedule is filling up, but there are still slots available.

Wow! We make it to another annual list, but this one really counts since this list is based on Impressive ROI from projects!

The only thing more impressive than making it to this short list of 5 projects is making it twice! 

For those of you who did not get the latest issue of Bank Technology News magazine, you must see the top 5 projects list..well, we are proud of being a big part of 2 out of 5 projects from across the industry!

Big Congratulations to Bank of American Fork, (especially Ken Burnett) and T Bank (especially Thad Hutcheson), for being named as a true industry best practices.

For a complete list, please visit:

BANK OF AMERICAN FORK, American Fork, UT - Passageways Learning Management Implementation.

T BANK, Dallas, TX - Passageways Board and Extranet Portal Implementation.

NORTH SALEM STATE BANK, North Salem, IN - March 2009

THE BUSINESS BANK, Appleton, WI - March 2009

BANK OF TENNESSEE, Kingsport, TN - March 2009 

Not that we did not know about the high ROI from our projects, this list just brings it home for all of us!

Congrats to Bank of American Fork, T Bank and everyone else here on this list.

Cheers!

Passageways Team

 

 

Passageways today announced that Reno based First Independent Bank of NV ($350 Million in assets) has chosen Passageways portal platform as their collaboration platform.  First Independent Bank of NV has almost 100 employees.

First Independent Bank of Nevada went through an extensive process to choose "solution that would meet our requirements for an internal communications solution. It was important that the solution would be comprehensive, yet easy to install, use and maintain". There were two factors that really swayed them to choose Passageways: Excellent support offering, and the Board workspace feature. They also purchased the Products and Services Module and Help Desk Module.

Jocelyn Zarubi, Vice President/ Project Administration says,  "The breadth of knowledge and  Passageways' willingness to help us in any way possible throughout our selection process demonstrated that they would provide excellent support and would partner with us during and after our implementation.  In addition, the Passageways product provides a secure area to share loan documents and other information with our Board. This feature saved us from having to purchase another, more costly, solution".

She adds, "As First Independent Bank continues to grow, our new portal, named FirstConnect, will help us connect will all our colleagues to help continue and build upon the shared culture and banking experience that makes banking with us your best experience".

Paroon Chadha, Co-Founder and Vice President Business Development says "Top Financial institutions are realizing that they can not build everything they need especially when there is an industry specific solution available that offers most, if not all, of the functionality a Bank would require. We are excited to add another bank to our growing client list and are determined to make this into another roaring success."