2 easy steps in measuring eLearning effectiveness with KPI

Your investment in a learning management system should be able to pay-off in a visible way. Yet, many companies face difficulties in pinpointing at what metrics to look for in their LMS platform. Once you’ve chosen your eLearning solution, it’s time to determine the key performance indicators (KPI s) you want to track.

Have you defined yours? Read on to uncover only a few easy steps to take.

The success of your eLearning programs depends on successfully tackling two main phases:

1st phase: Building momentum

During initial phase of project implementation you should focus on tracking usage & volume. You want to see if the setting up initial objectives are being met: people login, discover the platform, start performing actions. This holds true also when on-boarding new users.

It is a key phase in developing habits around the platform, how to use it, what to expect etc.

Here are some examples of numbers you can track to get you started:

opens per period
new answers / comments per period of time
courses/lessons completed

2nd phase: Measuring impact

Once the initial phase has passed it’s time to add qualitative and more advanced KPIs. This will connect the eLearning activity to company KPIs and to offline training.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are numerical ways to track the progress of a business. Thus it makes sense to create a measurable connection of your eLearning performance to your business performance. Therefore KPIs have to be something you can count and measure objectively. This will make tracking of progress easier.

There is a wide variety of KPIs you can track for a training program. Examples go from how many workers complete or how many are overdue, up to key business results. These might be comparison of profits or production before and after a training program. Therefore, it is important to select KPIs truly relevant for your business and industry. Also it is important to correctly link them to your training material.

When paired with a learning management system (LMS), overall training programs benefit from a greater insight of employees’ learning behaviors. It also facilitates the assessment of e-learning behavior. What is more, it helps with pinpointing knowledge gaps and areas for improvement.

How to choose KPIs

Your training goals should always align with business goals. Take a look at an example of aligned goals provided below.

Example

Business goal: In Q4, the sales team will close 15% more deals than were closed in Q3.

Training program goal: In Q4, each employee part of the sales team will finish 3 courses to learn the latest trends in sales techniques

Learning objective (for a specific course): By the end of this course, you will be able to conduct a successful client visit.

The example above showcases how you can link the KPI you want your training to impact to the business goal — close 15% more deals than last quarter. The training program goal is the qualitative goal of the entire training initiative. That is: educate salespeople on the latest trends in sales techniques. In particular, each course needs to have one or several learning objectives. In this example, the course’s objective is to make salespeople more successful on clients visit.

All goals should correlate with each other and follow the SMART approach:

Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound

Looking at the example above, for a particular course, the learning objective is: you aim to improve visits to clients.

The goal is specific. Also it is time-bound: it has a specific time-frame (eg.: 2 days).

It’s relevant: the goal is to make sales team more successful on clients visits.

It is measurable as you can integrate assessments into the course.

Additionally, the results of future clients visits can be measured.

The objective is achievable to the sales team due to the fact that an increase in the no of deals closed is within reach.

The learning objective contributes to the overall training program goal.

By learning new sales techniques salespeople will advance their selling abilities.

The training goal is specific and time-bound because it requires salespeople to complete 3 online courses on the newest trends in Q4.

It’s measurable because you can easily track the no of courses completed by users in your learning platform.

Also we use in-course assessments to determine competency with the topics (as mentioned previously).

The goal is also achievable and relevant as it has been decided that 3 courses per quarter is doable.

Rounding up:

Once the sales team accomplishes the training goal, they should be able to reach the main business goal of closing more deals. Therefore they will help your company drive more revenue. Training goals are particularly important to continually improve your training program.

When you don’t see improvements in your business goals at the intended rate (or whenever you’d like), you can dive into the training metrics to deduce where the weak areas are. These are the areas you should target in future iterations of your training program.

In any case, training metrics will be useful at some point in your training journey because there’s always room for improvement.

Your learners’ feedback is crucial in helping you optimize your training program to its fullest potential.

Get inspired with these Categories of business KPIs you could link to:

1. Bottom line

Examples:

Number of sales orders secured
Dollar value of sales made
The number of new prospective clients enlisted

2. Improvement

Time spent prospecting a client
Number of errors/omissions during the sales process
Effectively identifying a prospects’ needs (product selection)
Time spent revising quotes (due to staff induced errors)

3. Quality

Fewer customer complaints
Less scrap material produced during the production process
Reduction in the percentage of returned goods
Declining customer order cancellations
Increase in customer compliments/referrals

And below, some examples of eLearning KPIs:

Activity Pass/Fail Rate
Average Test Score
Number of Executions (How many times does the average user need to take a test in order to succeed?)
Course Completion Rate
Competency Increase Rate
User Satisfaction Rate

If the content and LMS used help address all (or most) of the relevant KPIs you had set out to deal with, then management will consider it to be a great return on their investment.

It is very important to be realistic in what the training content can indeed achieve. The issue to be addressed as well as the improvements being promised through training should be easy to quantify.

Start measuring your eLearning effectiveness with the right LMS for you!

Book a free consultation with an Accelerole instructional designer now. Find out more about defining the right eLearning KPIs for your business and how to track progress.

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