Professional Education

I have worked closely with ShoreTel Sky, the leader in unified communications, and have witnessed firsthand the innovative techniques they’ve adopted to improve learning and training throughout their company. From encouraging employees to learn to play an instrument through the School of Rock to offering classes on Jujitsu, they’ve created a flexible environment where employees are eager to learn and become more entrepreneurial in their daily work.

This year, ShoreTel Sky launched Blackboard Learn for Salesforce to effectively connect and measure learning and development programs within Salesforce CRM as an alternative to old-fashioned training with PowerPoint and conference calls.  I encourage you to watch the video below to learn more about ShoreTel Sky’s success and their professional development strategy, as it’s critical to their growth.

How quickly can you tell if a new hire is “getting it” before you need to take action? Should you trust a rookie sales exec with your most important customer? What key indicators are you using to determine early training success?

In our upcoming webinar, you can join Jim Ninivaggi, Service Director, SiriusDecisions, as he provides insights on how organizations are adopting innovative approaches to strategically support new hires and to deliver superior results.  Blackboard will also present best practices for training implementation and ROI measurement.

By participating in this webinar, you will:

• Find out what’s changed in on-boarding and how to improve productivity
• Learn how companies are using various productivity metrics
• Hear about best practices in virtual learning and utilizing social platforms

Interested in learning more about leveraging best practices in onboarding at your organization? Here are the details for our upcoming “Onboarding Best Practices: Ramp Up, Report Out” webinar:

Who: For sales executives/management, learning and development management, and human resources leaders.

What: A live, interactive webinar hosted by Blackboard.

When: Thursday, November 29, 2012 1:00 p.m. EST

Register: http://bit.ly/XJAwr0

One of the best ways to reach today’s active, tech-savvy students is to deliver learning where students already are: on smartphones and tablets. Since studies show that smartphone users spend the majority of their phone time on apps, and nearly half of all students already use smartphones for school-related tasks, leveraging mobile platforms is an easy way for schools to connect with students whether they are on campus or on the go.

That’s why we developed Blackboard Mobile Learn and Blackboard Mobile Central, two robust online platforms that give learners, educators, and school communities access to all aspects of the educational experience on their mobile devices. Blackboard Mobile Learn extends the experience of the online learning management system, Blackboard Learn, onto mobile devices.  Blackboard Mobile Central is a suite of features in a single mobile application that provides campus life resources and information – like student and faculty directories, news, brick-and-mortar campus maps, dining menus and more – on mobile devices.

If your professional college or university is looking for ways to go mobile, here are my top 5 reasons to choose Blackboard:

You don’t need to work in the education space to see that technology is playing an increasingly important role in higher education.  These days, it isn’t unusual to see innovative tools such as Smart Boards, e-books, and even mobile devices in the classroom. This pervasive state of technology in higher education is especially evident at professional colleges and universities, which have been leaders in bringing disruptive technologies to the classroom.

Just as career colleges have been leveraging new technology for education, we at Blackboard have also been working to drive innovation in our own solutions. We’ve asked ourselves:

• How can Blackboard course administration become more efficient and effective for instructors?
• How can our solutions give instructors more insight into their classroom and help them retain students?
• What can we do to improve the student experience on Blackboard?

Though some of the greatest opportunities for today’s sales teams can be found on the social web, there is no “one size fits all” strategy for social sales.  For example, there are some unique characteristics of business-to-business (B2B) sales that have an impact on social marketing:  B2B sales involve multiple stakeholders, typically involve longer-term relationships between the buyer and seller, and oftentimes exhibit stronger brand loyalty than consumer markets.

As a result of these and other distinct characteristics of B2B sales, I recommend the following best practices for sales teams engaged in B2B marketing:

1. Don’t separate social marketing from “real” marketing. I believe we will soon reach a point where “sales” is synonymous with “social sales.” In most industries, it is already critical for sales reps to have at least some online presence, and potential clients are increasingly likely to search for their vendors’ information on the social web.  With this in mind, it is a mistake for marketers to think that they can only spend a few minutes online each day before returning to “real” sales – social selling is should be tightly integrated into the daily sales strategy.