02/10/2019
The research on trends, and foresight strategies based on those trends, has become one of the most popular tools in predicting the future of any industry. According to Docebo (and Ambient Insight) research on trends in corporate Learning and Development, the demand for eLearning content will fall by 7 % in the next five years, and it will be replaced by simulation and game-based content, respectively: Interactive instructional simulations.
"When students use a model of behavior to gain a better understanding of that behavior, they are doing a simulation. For example:
Interactive instructional simulations are models of behavior of tools, processes, products, and/or services. They are real time how-to's, a simulation of (company) tool functionalities or process behaviors. The "real time" part is very important: An interactive instructional simulation presents bite-sized parts of a process in the moment the micro-need occurs. If that sounds too complex, let's see how an interactive instructional simulation solves a problem every company has.
Growing organizations have to confront the fact that by becoming more complex, both employees and clients have to learn more services, products, processes and tools they need to use to deliver sound value experience.
Current educational models are obsolete and inefficient; they are too slow in knowledge distribution and fail at knowledge retention. Its content is overwhelming, complicated and boring: It fails to capture learners attention and sacrifices quality of knowledge on account of limited time to learn. The expense of it is having insufficiently educated employees, clients and thus: inefficient business performance.
The intention of interactive instructional simulations is to shorten the time, quality and quantity gap between obsolete educational models and to increase employee productivity.
The difference in employee productivity before and after the usage of interactive instructional simulations has exponential effect due to the lack of need to distribute huge amounts of information.
Let's say your company has more than fifty services and you manage a customer service of two hundred people. In order to serve sound value proposition, you would need all of those two hundred employees to know everything there is to know about those fifty services: their descriptions, their pricing, trouble shooting, if there are any discounts, should the potential client be interested in combining two or more services, whom to call if the service is faulty, whom to send a lead should the customer be interested in buying it, how to send it and what tools to use, how to report a complaint, etc. You get the point...
You might manage the huge amount of information all those employees need to know by training them, but you do not have unlimited resource of trainers. So you resort to your best service agents to serve as trainers also. But, there is a catch; if your best service agents act as trainers, they aren't doing their job, so your service level drops. You might want to implement eLearning, but eLearning also takes time, and since you probably have employee turnover of 30%, it takes several months to train all those new employees to a satisfactory service level of 80%.
Interactive instructional simulations allow all those new agents to have the access to knowledge of tools, processes, products/services and all other know-hows instantly, and they can solve all the problems and have all the answers to all questions without the need to learn them in the first place. Your service level rises, and you've solved the problem of employee turnover by having instant knowledge distribution.
If you manage an IT company, you probably know the horrors of implementing and/or selling your software to a new customer. Your Project Manager leads the project, and hands over to your customer a huge manual of two hundred pages, where everything about your software is explained. Your company organizes an ex-cathedra education in which you try your best to explain all the functionalities of the new tool your new customers will be using.
But, after a while the knowledge fades, and your customer is left with a two hundred-page manual which nobody reads, because it has two hundred pages, and they do not have the time to search for information they do not understand anyway. So, they start calling your Project Manager, and soon enough, instead of leading another profitable project, your Project Manager is acting as customer service.
By giving your clients access to interactive instructional simulation, not only you have solved the distribution of knowledge issue, but you have also created an ambassador of your product or service that will be satisfied with the value you have offered him.
Being a part of digital transformation is great. We get to use brand new and shiny tools, participate in new organizations and processes, we get to handle great new products and services.
But what good is it if we do not know how to use them? What good is it if our customers do not know how to use them?
That is why digital transformations of anything starts with innovations in digital transformation of education: Interactive instructional simulations.
By Branimir Trosic