April 28th, 2010 by Robin Green

As your company matures and expands, you’ll find your employees are handling more calls and emails from customers. And if this situation has begun to spiral out of control–too many calls and emails to track–you know it’s time to step up to the plate and implement a new strategy to deal with the influx of communicative traffic. This is a critical moment in the evolution of your company, and may be the perfect time for you to consider implementing a call center. Call centers and contact centers are efficient and help you organize, maintain, track, and improve your customer relationships. They also help cut costs–especially when training and other processes are taken care of online.

Once upon a time, before learning management systems (LMS) and other online training systems were used, training employees across distances was a chaotic, decentralized, and often inefficient process. Most of the time, a company was unable to confirm how much money it was spending on employee training across the enterprise. The training process in each group of the company could vary significantly.

Today, companies utilizing business process outsourcing (BPO) for call centers can cut costs if they are able to centralize, unify, and repeat the process of employee training. This is where LMSs are useful, since an LMS allows its users to develop and distribute their own training solutions. Companies can create and customize training, integrating their logo and applying the company colors. And the ability to pay-per-use makes it easy for companies to load and reload learning content as required for relevant and up-to-date training. This pay-per-use model provides companies with a way to train employees in a call center in an efficient and timely manner.

Coggno is now offering a limited time free trial on its pay-per-use LMS. Click here to try it out.

Outsourced call centers require online training, easily delivered via LMS. But why create and/or outsource your call center to begin with? There are numerous benefits to implementing a call center, or a customer relationship management team. First of all, a call center creates greater efficiency in your company. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a big operation, involving a separate office, although it often does. However, if need be, a call center may involve minimal employees, in any location in the world. In fact, you might not even need to hire extra personnel.

Second, call centers allow you to track business processes and progress. Using customer relationship management software, your office can track the number of calls and emails received and responded to each day by making them into simple and trackable cases. An ordinary helpdesk isn’t able to track these. A call center generates these statistics and allows you to use them for future reference and to take measures to improve your business processes and ultimately, your business.

This point leads to the next benefit: launching a call center strategy will help you get organized and up to date on the most robust technology–including LMS software and communication handling systems–available. For example, using the Software as a service technology delivery model, virtual call centers are the most recent phenomenon emerging to manage customer relationships. Oftentimes call centers operate using cloud-based services like Salesforce.com, for a monthly or annual fee, to integrate with their call center functionality. Software like Salesforce also includes ways to help call center reps stay connected, use feeds to keep up with the latest salesforce activities and record updates, and more social networking-style tools that are actually useful in the communication-handling world.

Salesforce’s up-and-coming collaboration platform, Chatter, includes a variety of cutting edge and useful tools for a call center. Status updates provide a way to quickly let others know what you’re working on, without having to post to a staff blog or send an email. And in addition to following other staff members (like Twitter, only the ones you choose) you can also follow individual records in Salesforce such as contacts, accounts, cases, or opportunities. For example, say you’re a customer service rep and you’ve got a case (an email or phone call from a customer) you want come help on. Now you can share a question, comment, link, or file about the case in your status update, and have the answer from your followers right in Salesforce.

Likewise, as more companies utilize LMS for training, such software has developed in sophistication. In some instances, educational software begins to look more game-like in its interactivity, and fun-to-use tools and interactive and practical features. Social networking features are an up-and-coming addition to online courseware and LMSs, with potentiality to transform learning and create more robust training modules.

Coggno is now offering a limited time free trial on its pay-per-use LMS. Click here to try it out.

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Coggno.com provides premier e-learning education.

April 20th, 2010 by Robin Green

Despite the media telling us that the economy is stabilizing, we all know many people are still jobless or working in a position that isn’t up to their standards, simply for fear that finding something better will be impossible. What do many people do at a time like this? They go back to school and cultivate some skills, so that when jobs begin pouring into the economy again, they’re are ready to snag a great one.

Consider picking up a vocational or other online course to increase your skills and become more valuable in the marketplace. Become more tech-savvy. LMS (Learning Management System) online programs are available in a wide range of career fields, and their self-paced format is designed fit to your life. If you are working as a service provider in an outsourced position, you may consider expanding your resume and offering a wider variety of services, or an altogether new service. Or, you may learn how to further develop the skills you already have.

These days, educational systems are increasingly preparing students for a tech-infused workplace. And as more institutions use LMS courses, such software has developed in sophistication. In some instances, educational software begins to look more game-like in its interactivity, and fun-to-use tools and interfaces.

Educational software with game-like characteristics (such as virtual worlds) has begun to creep into higher education and the professional world. For example, some universities have either begun to implement, or are making plans to integrate, a virtual world into their education systems. And research firm eMarketer reports that 24% of the 34.3 million internet users under age 19 use virtual worlds at least once a month, a figure that they predict will jump to 53% by 2011.

As more students gain experience with e-learning, and as online education becomes more sophisticated, their experience becomes more easily translated into a professional setting. And given the benefits that studying online and collaboratively with an LMS provides students, more schools are seeking out and integrating advanced technology. As a result, more and more young people graduate high school prepared not only for more education, but for an increasingly competitive job market which values ICT skills more and more each day.

However, most students are still graduating high school with little idea of what they want to do with their lives. Furthermore, many students graduate from university with the same problem. It often takes years of working in different jobs to decide what you like best, and this is when many people decide to gain more education.

Unless you are in your twenties or younger, you may not have had a great deal of experience with online education. High school didn’t prepare my generation for the business world as directly as it does today, and for this reason, now might be a good time to increase your value in the workplace by taking online vocational training.

More and more colleges and universities, technical schools and institutes are answering the call for online education. Courses provided online allow students to work towards certifications and degrees. In some cases, they also supplement face-to-face learning.

Vocational courses are related to a particular skill or kind of work. Students complete a series of tasks and assignments which prepare them for real work experience. Certification programs include a variety of professional fields including like social care, health care and childcare; hospitality and catering; leisure and tourism; media and design; construction; business; information technology; and animal care. Vocational courses traverse a vast landscape of professional possibilities.

Coggno is one LMS with a simple interface and a variety of professional skill-building online courses.

Enter Coggno’s marketplace and discover LMS online courses for cultivating your professional skills. For a limited time, Coggno is offering a free trial on their Learning Management System.

Furthering your skills might involve enrollment in a technical or community college program, an online certification course, or an LMS training program. Regardless of form your studies take, developing your skills is the first step on your path to new and better employment opportunities.  Take advantage of the flexibility offered by online courses to gain the skills and/or certification that will take you where you want to be.

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Coggno.com offers premier e-learning education.

March 16th, 2010 by Robin Green

Whether you are a business or an individual joining the world of internet marketing, now is a great time to invest in LMS online training and/or certification.

What exactly is internet marketing? It involves both technical and creative features of the internet, including design, development, advertising, and sales. It also refers to various stages of the customer engagement cycle via search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), banner ads, email marketing, and Web 2.0 and social networking strategies.

If you are a business seeking greater exposure on the internet, you may consider a variety of internet marketing techniques. To implement these techniques, many businesses use outsourced service providers to develop their internet marketing strategies, along with other outsourced business processes such as website design and programming.

Unfortunately, what happens all too often is that service providers take on projects they can’t support. They have too much on their plate, or they simply can’t do all the work you need them to. Too often, business owners end up wasting thousands of dollars choosing the wrong service providers when they are first starting out in their internet marketing campaign.

Therefore, your company’s success in internet marketing will depend on the winning combination of two factors: finding the right people, and training those people to maximize your marketing budget.

Internet marketing training will ensure that your team is well equipped to develop and implement your business’s internet strategy. Luckily, there are a growing number of LMS courses and online certification programs available in internet marketing, for both individual and group learning.

Despite the qualifications your service providers possess, the vibrant and rapidly-expanding world of internet marketing is continuously producing more techniques to be learned. There are many skills your service provider can learn from LMS courses in internet marketing. For example, in a course dedicated solely to SEO, your service providers will learn, among other things, how to top search engine rankings and be listed more often on Google, what keywords customers are searching with, how to improve link popularity, Google ranking factors, and how to create effective Google AdWords ads.

The internet has forever changed the landscape of the business world, prompting a sweeping change from traditional exposure and advertising strategies to more complex online techniques, often with immediate and easy-to-measure results. Companies want to see those results–especially given the troubled economy and many companies’ financial worries.

If you are individual thinking of taking an LMS certification course in internet marketing, it’s a great time to do so. Internet marketing is growing and is a business you can begin to develop while keeping your day job.

The opportunities for marketing professionals and organizations with thorough internet expertise are vast. As an individual taking up internet marketing, consider taking an online training program for advancing your knowledge and securing the credentials you need to become an interactive marketing expert. You can learn about web analytics, social media, blogs, Web 2.0, website usability, SEO, affiliate marketing, and more. Enrolling in a certification program will help you not only learn internet marketing strategies, but also develop and implement your own strategies to offer to companies.

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Coggno.com provides high-quality online training.

February 23rd, 2010 by Robin Green

The Learning Management System is currently taking the lead in helping over a thousand companies to use in their application processes. There are some who find it a relief to acquire such program and there are a lot of people who commends the computer based training program as convenient and user-friendly. Here are some more reasons why it is very important to acquire this type of software for your organization.

First of the advantages that Learning Management System can provide is that it has a comprehendible course management feature. Anyone or people who are not that equipped with such knowledge regarding high end technologies can easily comprehend every single detail of the process being assessed as the system can sort and organize courses and lessons.

You may have noticed a lot of companies have already adapted this kind of system online. It is just in your discretion on which one has caught your interest or which system provides you better outputs. However, it does not matter what company you select. Comparing it to traditional ways of learning programs, it is better by a mile. Your stressful task has just been solved through these types of programs.

These programs are generated through hard works of the best programmers and developers in the world. They were able to come up with various courses from a set of fields ranging from health, education, computer courses or accounting and other. An organization has the option to choose the specific field they are interested to deal with in this type of technique.

Learning Management System also manages to have a systematic compilation and organized documentation of ever course and lecture a company or an organization has, which makes it easier to understand. Not only that, it is more convenient for people as they can allocate time by considering their pacing in understanding the course. Bid farewell to piles of lecture notes as Learning Management System do everything for you by not compensating the knowledge you would be getting from the program.

With the best things Learning Management System could provide, it just proves why it is leading the current trend of computer based training programs that companies and organizations love to use.

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Coggno.com is a leading provider of high-quality online training.

February 8th, 2010 by Robin Green

Although there’s no denying that the education trend (not only online learning via learning management systems, but non-virtual learning as well) has shifted toward an independent, self-guided mode, people still require incentives to learn just about anything. For this reason and others, monitoring trainees’ learning processes is critical.

Despite the widespread pedagogical pressure to believe the contrary, intentional learning doesn’t happen for most people. Or perhaps it does in some areas, but not for all kinds of content. Of course, anyone can get excited about learning a particular skill or topic that interests them. There’s no need to keep tabs on a teenager’s learning of their new video game, for example. The intention already exists.

But the hard truth is that although company training certainly can be fun and engaging, it’s often not centered around the most exciting topics trainees can imagine.

At its core, learning is about always wanting something. For people in a classroom setting, that something may be good grades. In a company training session or learning management system (LMS) course, the desired objective may include rewards for good performance, or simple verbal encouragement and acclaim.

People of all ages–both children and adults–are typically responsive to simple words of encouragement from a respected superior. Along with a user-friendly training program with its own system of points and rewards, employees benefit greatly from human motivation. A leader who motivates trainees not only facilitates the learning process, but instills a sense of team unity, which improves work relationships.

But beyond encouragement from a supervisor or training leader, another way to aid effective training is to monitor student progress. Some LMSs have features like the Activities monitor, which helps solve a problem all too prevalent in online training. The Activities tool makes simple the administrative responsibility of overseeing and guiding students in their learning process. It provides training administrators with a simple tool to track, in real time, the online course activities of students through a tab in the LMS interface.

The Activities feature serves a practical purpose. Using the feature, administrators can track student activities to find out where each one is exceeding, and in what areas extra attention may be required.

Monitoring trainees with the aid of a feature like Activities helps ensure that students are actually absorbing the content they are learning. Why is this important? First of all, ensuring training effectiveness saves organizations and educators valuable time and energy. In what ways? Many–and each depending on the kind of training you’re delivering.

On the other hand, some kinds of training may not necessarily benefit from such a feature. For example, training material given to new employees, teaching them the ins and outs of their new position, may not cry for a feature that monitors student progress in such an active way. After all, newcomers to an organization are typically excited about their new job–they want to learn. They are intentional learners.

With compliance training, however, that story changes. Here organizations save money in the long run if they ensure successful training. Conflict can be avoided, and employees can be protected. And of course, productivity is always increased when employees are well educated on workplace issues which are meant to facilitate communication and prevent conflict.

Automated tracking of learning allows trainers and educators to concentrate on teaching and administering content. Trainers can focus on the content and guiding student interaction with the material, rather than actively keeping tabs on them.

However, the most effective way to ensure that learning is taking place is the existence of a strong and engaging training course. It’s not enough to create satisfactory content, get it out there, and expect students to eat it up. A complete and flexible learning management system which provides a variety of robust features is the best way to create content that entices all learners to become intentional ones.

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Coggno.com is a leading provider of world-class online training.

February 4th, 2010 by Robin Green

It may be an understatement to say that for distance learning and online training, a big hefty tool like a learning management system (LMS) is the most efficient and cost-effective means of delivery. In fact, online tools may be the only method to deliver training for companies with distance learning requirements. As extended networks of employees become the norm, with employees working in Singapore, London or New York, an LMS becomes vital to manage online training.  It not only delivers learning content, but companies can use an LMS to keep track of employee achievements and ensure that the training delivered is really effective.

Of course, managing a distance learning classroom or training program is simply too much for one person or even a group of people to handle.  An LMS takes care of content management, collaboration techniques, agendas and announcements, assignment and coursework management, and learning path development, among other things. It allows for online classrooms to be organized internationally, linking a company LMS to its various human resources departments and ERP systems, to perform long distance, cost-effective, and efficient training.

Collaboration is the newest wave of our increasingly service-oriented business world, and therefore a must in training. Oftentimes, both in training and product development, collaborative groups are composed of a loose group of individuals working together to achieve a common goal. These may be a group of individuals with different backgrounds, cultures, education and languages. For collaborative learning, an LMS serves a crucial role in its ability to track members’ individual and collective progress in an online course.

One way that collaboration may be utilized to benefit a company is in introducing a new product or service. For example, if the employees in training are in customer service or sales, a company could introduce the new product, delivering training on the product through the LMS, and prompt trainees to work together to develop strategies and solutions to given situations when dealing with customers, etc.

For this, companies that have been experimenting with virtual worlds like Second Life to provide trainees with a 3D meeting space and collaborative educational space have experienced mixed results. Educational software like Second Life still has many challenges to face in offering an efficient and robust learning experience.

Training for a role in a service team is something easily charged to an LMS, with video tools, simulations, and audio tools like those used by Coggno, to create situations where an employee must deal with a customer. Some systems are even multi-lingual, providing a number of built-in languages to personalize each employee’s training.

Distance learning collaboration isn’t always easy, of course. We’ve all experienced the frustration of technical problems with the very same tools intended to facilitate group collaboration. Inevitably, a conference call is interrupted by technical problems, or one or two team members aren’t familiar with how to use a new technology. Web 2.0 tools like conferencing may sidetrack members and draw them into a distracting cycle of tool experimentation. Some tools may take hours for users to get the hang of, and ultimately may not even function efficiently.

Although some tools like virtual worlds can help virtual teams achieve goals, introducing these technologies can also impose distractions which waste valuable time. A slick new piece of technology is only as effective as the effects it produces.

An LMS is able to automate many training processes that would otherwise cost organizations a great deal of time and money. Learners all over the world are able to access online training via an LMS any time, without complicated plug-in software. Learning management systems take care of staff orientation and induction programs, reaching out to employees from all around the world.

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Coggno.com offers premier LMS platforms.

January 29th, 2010 by Robin Green

As online training continues to get accepted in the corporate world, other industries are also looking at it as a solution. In sports, injuries to head are most common. When the head injuries are not serious, it is vital to evaluate sport related concussions before allows playing to return to play. Many injuries are not reported because of their mild nature and are overlooked by coaches, team mates and athletes as well.

Using online training as an assessment tool with parameters like reaction time and memory it is possible to assess cognitive function. The assessments ask the patient to identify shapes, words, and colors for at least thirty minutes. With the help of concussion guidelines and comparing the results, it is possible to categorize the severity of concussion.

The evaluation tool when used in an online training environment can be used for individual athletes or to a group. This assessment is designed to aid trainers and athletic physicians to make decisions of allowing players to return to play when they are unsure. The online setup provides easy access and quick administration of the test and has a reliable baseline. The result of the players can be sent to neurophysiologist for quick consultation.

The data provided is comprehensive and can also include processing speed and attention as parameters.  By repeating the tests, the data can be compared and ensures that the decision to play is safe. There are a number of tools that use online training setting to administer during play to identify cognitive deficits.

Besides athlete’s, children are also prone to concussions and neuropsychology focuses on assessment and management of concussion. Today, using assessments in an online training environment has proved to be reliable to distinguish between individuals that suffered from a concussion. The neuropsychological tests to baseline and identify post concussion syndromes include word discrimination, design memory, x’s and o’s, matching symbols, color match and three letters.

ImPACT is one such tool that evaluates concussions and post concussion syndromes along with Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) and Sport Concussion Assessment Tool (SCAT). Some other online training environment based neuro-cognitive tests available for the evaluation of concussions include and the Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metrics, CogSport and Headminders.

In order to teach doctors and sports trainers more about concussion or effects of mild traumatic brain injury, online training has been quite effective. They have provided clinicians with the knowledge required to understand the severity of concussions and suggest the duration for rehabilitation.

When athletes that has symptoms of concussion over one to two weeks is considered to have a post-Concussion Syndrome. In such situation, it is best to treat the individual by an experienced physician and facilitate quick neuropsychological testing. Using an online training setup, it is possible to take a quick test and use the data to baseline in case of injuries during a game.

Over the last few years, a lot of literary research has been conducted to manage head injuries and identify concussions.  There is a not too much controversy surrounding this simple and quick method of identifying concussion in online training by sports physicians and trainers to avoid further complications.

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Coggno.com provides high-quality online education.

January 29th, 2010 by Robin Green

Using a learning management system provides organizations with an end-to-end approach to develop talent and guarantees visible priorities of individuals, activities and events. We are aware that a LMS can perform a number of functions, administrative requests from scheduling trainings, to strategic requests like training gap analysis, aligning training modules with business goals etc.

In a classroom environment, we lose out on a number of features that can provide a lot of flexibility to the learner and trainer. Organizations are aware that they can leverage the use of a learning management system to improve productivity, reduce costs and achieve business goals efficiently. Once training modules are deployed on a LMS, trainers and learners can benefit by getting access to a variety of e-learning modules.

Activities are much easier to update and these can include tasks like assigning budgets, enrollments, managing assessments, generating report, classroom logistics etc. It is easier to measure the ROI on training. An LMS allows you employees to develop career paths, and managers to identify the development paths based on employee goals. In fact, assessments to measure competency that can be linked with performance appraisals can be managed via a learning management system for employees and managers

A learning management system allows clients to examine the workforce and provide skill management and analysis. It also provides automated certification for safety programs and supervisory roles. For employees that need to take mandatory training - training requests and progress tracking to achieve competencies for a particular position is available.

After completing a module, employees are requested to provide feedback about the effectiveness of the training module. This enables management to review the training results and measure improvements in employee performance.

For organizations that have a workforce which is spread over a number of regions, a learning management system allows overall tracking of skills sets and identifying development needs. It empowers managers to approve training requests, monitor employee progress, generate reports to understand employee readiness and relate job performance to identify employee development needs.

In a classroom environment or without a learning management system, organizations incur additional costs to manage training requirements. They do not have the flexibility of generating detailed reports and the data accumulated can be inaccurate. As employees undertake training courses that are available on a LMS, managers can assess employee strengths; compare skills of an employee with their performance objectives.

In summary, a learning management system implements state of the art training modules that allow self service requests for employee training, managing content, support for learning, updating courses to sync with positions or employee competencies. Instructor availability, training effectiveness, scheduling classes, hours spent training etc can be managed with ease with the help of LMS. For management, tracking employees and maintaining a history of their training, identifying the budget for training and other bottom line figures necessary to business can be easily acquired with a LMS.

With these advantages, using a learning management system can ensure compliance with business goals and quality training to improve employee performance.

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Coggno.com provides a wide variety of online training courses.