Saba

There is a lot of innovation happening around the learning management space today—fuelled by the global competition, technology advancements and changing demographics of the workforce. Global enterprises are searching for novel methods to reskill their employees in line with new trends while promoting a culture of learning throughout the organization. According to Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends 2016 Report, corporate U.S. is surging towards enhancing their learning and development tactics. More than 84 percent of the survey’s respondents consider learning as a very important factor within their organizations. Why would companies continue to invest in learning technologies? Simply put, it pays off. An effective learning strategy places the companies at a higher competence level with increased profits and a well-informed, satisfied work force. Meanwhile, employees at all levels anticipate self-directed, dynamic and continuous learning prospect from their employers. To stay ahead, HR departments need a comprehensive learning solution that integrates latest technologies and makes it easier to build dynamic programs to not only train, but engage and energize the learners.

Riding on the waves of these requirements, Saba offers a unique Learning Management System—Learning@Work, that sets the standard in learning management. Part of Saba’s intelligent talent management solution, Learning@Work brings together captivating content, multiple delivery options and comprehensive reporting and assessment capabilities on a single platform. Built to make learning more personal, relevant, and engaging, the solution incorporates numerous innovations to engage learners with interactive, immersive programs that include social, collaborative, and mobile learning. “We have designed our solutions with predictive capabilities—similar to popular consumer sites such as Amazon and Netflix—to cut through the noise and prioritize the most important, relevant information the people need to thrive,” says Pervez Qureshi, CEO, Saba.

For instance, take the example of Thai Airways, a company that regards its corporate e-learning system as a key, highly versatile foundational IT infrastructure for its operations carrier-wide. All thanks to Saba’s learning system that supports more than 5,000 users across a number of training centers—tailored to the requirements of pilots, other flight crew members, IT staff, caterers, and various administrative personnel—all with quite different needs. The solution efficiently handles course notifications and registration, track course completions and certifications, and provide users a comprehensive personal view of their learning progress.

Collaboration at the Core

What is truly unique about Learning@Work is its collaborative, integration, intelligent capabilities at the core. In the collaborative capabilities, communities, contribution, meetings, discussions and recordings are woven throughout the learning experience, without separate user interfaces.

Saba’s learning management system features deep configurability, robust catalog and resource management, and workflow automation to support a particular learning strategy

For instance, the video component in Learning@Work not only lets instructors connect with learners and managers coach the employees, but also enables remote proctoring. The intuitive dashboards in the solution helps coaches keep a track of their team, monitor who has missed a deadline, alongside giving a number of ways to reach out to the employees—through instant messages, email, video chats or meetings. The Saba Meeting module in the cloud is a complete web conferencing system with video, voice over IP and screen sharing, so the coaches can teach face to face, even if the employees are not in the same office. The virtual classroom feature enables delivering live or recorded training sessions to employees, customers and partners, reducing costs and increasing the reach.

Learning@Work gives the learners greater flexibility by letting them use their mobile devices throughout the learning process. The coaching on the go option gives users and coaches convenient access to information, options and experts wherever the need arises. Saba’s applications for Android and iOS devices provide access to social groups, goals, meetings, recommendations, impressions and the team dashboard—enabling employees and coaches to connect and stay ahead on the learning curve while on the go.

Easy Accessible Learning

Learning@Work runs on Saba’s secure, highly scalable, and highly available global cloud. It supports captivating content—SCORM, AICC, Tin Can, web-based, and customer-hosted content, with courses from Saba Content Connect partners. The content can be easily used and managed, including “plug-and-play” courses from Saba partners, video, and other web-based content. Saba provides robust APIs and preconfigured connectors to integrate with other cloud and on premise platforms. It also features deep configurability, robust catalog and resource management, and workflow automation to support a particular learning strategy. Whether the learners are office, on the go or half way around the world, Learning@Work will get them the training, information, and connections they need to be successful.

Intelligent Algorithms

At the core of Saba’s Intelligent Learning platform is TIM, The Intelligent Mentor. It integrates a set of machine learning algorithms that make the solution smarter every time someone uses it. Far more advanced than rules-based systems, TIM sifts through all people data–profiles, performance reviews, course completions, communities, discussions, and even badges, finding similarities and affiliations with an eye on what leads an employ to success. By incorporating direct user input, plus observations on user behavior, TIM delivers proactive and personalized recommendations to each employee on content, connections and courses, as well as recommendations on candidates and successors to managers and HR.

TIM’s timely suggestions help employees and the company grow, adapt and thrive.

TIM also helps with performance reviews, recruiting, compensation, and succession. As the data changes and as recommendations are accepted or rejected, TIM continues to learn, so each employee will get more relevant suggestions over time, even as their personal circumstances change. At the conclusion of a performance review, TIM suggests next steps to help get the dialogue started. With these, the manager and employee can spend more time on a candid discussion and far less searching for classes and content. Knowing each person in detail, TIM provides HR leaders a deep understanding of the entire workforce. It even suggests people for the bench of any position in the organization, greatly simplifying succession planning. TIM can also find internal candidates from across the company that match well with open positions.

With its intelligent set of features, Saba’s solution finds use cases across numerous industries. For instance, Yum! Brands that own KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell as its subsidiaries was unable deliver consistent, high-quality, and standardized training to its large, geographically dispersed workforce and facilitate enhanced real-time communication and collaboration. By putting a single global system in place—which includes the virtual Saba Classroom for formal learning and Saba Meeting for real-time communication and collaboration — Yum! was able to achieve its objectives while still maintaining unique brand identity and training program flexibility for each of its restaurant chains. The system has erased the distance between different Yum outlets, allowing their employees to collaborate cost effectively in real time, regardless of where they are located. Yum! brands also witnessed remarkable improvement in the employee retention rates in areas where Saba’s Learning Zone was utilized.

"TIM delivers proactive and personalized recommendations to each employee on content, connections and courses, as well as recommendations on candidates and successors to managers and HR"

Learning@Work also makes it possible to not only engage, train and certify learners, but also tackle the unique needs of multiple audiences and groups, such as tiered customer and partner programs, in a single implementation. The regulatory compliant software encourages users to get the most out of their channel and client training efforts, by engaging and extending enterprise learners with a variety of content, tools and delivery options that are tailored to their needs.

Reinventing Enterprise Training

With nearly two decades of industry presence, Saba has been successful in achieving numerous goals for their clients. The distinct predictive capacity alongside the ability to furnish relevant information to 31 million users across 195 countries stand as a testament to the company’s success. To keep up with the market changes, Saba believes in iterating its offerings every year and layering them with better and robust upgrades. Furthermore, the firm’s focus is on delivering the solution that would revolutionize the learning experience as well as its customer success through new skills. In the words of Qureshi, “We can bring an exceptional level of experience, leadership, and strategic perspective to an organization and we are determined to play a critical role for our customers as we accelerate our plans for delivering market-leading innovation and value to our customers worldwide.”