The Hindu Business Line : Deloitte thrust on e-learning solution

THE e-learning business, estimated at about $ 9 billion, is projected to grow to about $ 24 billion by 2006 as per the IT market research firm, International Data Corporation's estimates.

Mr Nick van Dam, Chief Learning Officer in Deloitte, a $12-billion consulting group, spoke to Business Line about how knowledge management has become a key differentiator for globally dispersed organisations. Mr van Dam who authored The e-Learning Fieldbook and is a consultant in helping MNCs to leverage e-learning methodologies, sees knowledge management as the next wave. "If you thought that e-learning is yet to create the impact as projected, you are both right and wrong. Right because it did not grow fast enough as per early projections; but as things stand now, it is heading to be a major technology space where this would become a differentiator for corporations to bring in cost efficiencies."

Already these new approaches are beginning to be used in a big way in financial services, pharma, and Government verticals.

Deloitte is in the process of weighing the options to address this space and grow this business in the outsourcing mode. This will include even the help desk space where India can play a strategic role for global corporations, he said.

For instance, within Deloitte, "We have brought in an estimated savings of about 50 per cent through e-learning tools and methodologies and about 75 per cent of the employees in Deloitte leverage these to upgrade their skills"The reason we chose a technology-driven approach was to meet the challenges that fast paced technology space opens up for a large dispersed company having diverse clients across locations in 50 countries.

"Therefore, we decided to bring in best technology practices and have developed over 4,000 courses and this has yielded significant results. The content is developed both in-house and sourced from leading vendors such as SkillSoft, Harvard Business School, and developers such as Maximum Learning, based in Pune. We, in turn, now offer similar solutions to our major Fortune corporations," Mr van Dam explained.

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