Elevate Your Tech Stack and Your Tech Staff: How Knowledge Management Elevates Technology Adoption and Digital Transformation

SUSAN BRATTBERG: Hi, everyone. I'm Susan Brattberg, founder and chief customer officer at Global eTraining. And welcome to our AU 2024 presentation, elevate your tech stack and your tech staff.

I've got my co-founders, Holly Brattberg and Steve Wenzel, with me for this presentation. Holly is my co-founder and chief strategy officer, and Steve is our CTO. So we're all going to share our expertise with our strengths.

Me being the chief customer officer, I've worked with hundreds of AEC firms from around the world, helping them implement training and technology adoption programs. Holly, with her strategy background, has a design thinking expertise and has really had a lot of fun doing research for this presentation, and we're excited to share lots of tech trends with you. And then Steve is going to dive into the technology, and that's his passion.

So that is us. We like to have fun. For those of you that don't know, Global eTraining is actually a family business. Holly and I are sisters, and Steve is Holly's husband and my brother-in-law. So it is a family business. We've been around for 16 years. This is our 16th year at Autodesk University, where we launched. And that's us having fun in the Canadian Rocky mountains, where our headquarters is.

So a little bit about Global eTraining, we are the AEC industry's largest online training library. We have a project specific course builder with tracking and reporting to maximize your team's return on investment. It's the most effective training solution for the most effective teams. And we work with AEC and manufacturing firms from around the world. Before we dive into it, I just wanted to mention we're very proud to have received the top construction eTraining platform for 2024 from the Construction Tech review.

So the learning objectives of today's presentation, we are going to map your tech stack. This will be interactive, where you can actually map your tech stack and create a roadmap to elevate technology skills and adoption using a design thinking approach. We'll discover how to flip and elevate our perspective on knowledge as managed information approach and training as a productivity tool. And we will generate AI-powered custom workflow training to solve real world problems.

So here's the agenda that we are excited to dive into to elevate your tech stack and your tech staff, and we will consider the questions what if. What if knowledge is managed as an IT tool? What if knowledge is measured as a productivity enhancement tool? And what if knowledge transfer is accelerated with AI? And then we will get into an implementation plan and roadmap to your success.

So are you in the right place? Is this you? Are you a CIO or are you in the CIO line of business? If you are a digital delivery or BIM or VDC professional, if you're a software trainer, a tech stack stakeholder, or a tech enthusiast, basically, if you are responsible for technology adoption and training, then you're in the right place.

HOLLY BRATTBERG: Thanks, Susan. We should probably start with what is a tech stack. And when we started using the term tech stack, because a lot of our clients are using the term tech stack to describe the collection of apps and digital tools that are used across their business to support business functions, our software development team actually said, wait a minute, that's a really specific term in software development, and you need to use that carefully. So we said that we absolutely can do that, and we do have that background with our team in programming.

That being said, it is a very commonly used term to describe that collection of apps and digital tools that are used across the business. And when we're talking specifically about the audience of people here at Autodesk University and Autodesk University digital, we might be looking at the tech stack spanning the design estimating building or closing phases.

So some tech stack trends for you. 85% of CIOs and their line of business are the most involved department within an organization, leading digital transformation. So it's a very strategic role to be in and driving the future of the entire firm. At the same time, 75% of CIOs and their line of business say that it is challenging to find the right balance between business innovation and the big picture, long-term disruptive technology like AI and balancing that with the continuous drive for achieving operational excellence.

And this one, no surprises that the tech stack trends that the number one is coming out as generative AI as being the spotlight for 2024. The next two on the list, we get really excited about because these are published articles that are saying that the number 2 and number 3 priorities refer to people, to training, upskilling, and knowledge management.

That every time there's a technological advancement, a lot of us can just have a bit of a reaction that says, OK, we don't need people anymore. We don't need to do this ourselves. But it couldn't be further from the truth. The number one thing that we need to do is invest in human capital and continue to develop our skills to be able to really, truly leverage that groundbreaking technology that's on its way.

The 2025 CIO vision report, this one, again, very fascinating that the number one item for the most instrumental investments to help companies to generate benefits from AI, number 1 is talent and skills development. So hopefully, we're just setting the stage that we all need to be paying attention to training and knowledge management.

And when we're talking about the tech stack-- this isn't new to probably anybody in the audience-- but technology adoption has been the ever challenge. It doesn't matter what type of technology is being implemented, but to roll it out across an entire organization is hard, and it takes a really strategic effort to continue to do that.

And the CIO line of business is the right place to be doing it. This is the group that has the most experience in rollouts. You could probably all think about your most successful technology rollout and what helped you achieve adoption in that situation. And you can think about the ones that just didn't get the traction that you thought it might.

So these technology adoption curves, theories, they've been around since the 1960s, and I think they hold just as true and relevant today. And then, of course, there's the add on here from Geoffrey Moore's theory of crossing the chasm. And that's the most difficult set, is getting past the people, who are those innovators and early adopters and getting into the majority and making it a real benefit to their everyday work.

So the problem statement that we've established for today, for this session is, how do we elevate both your tech staff and your tech stack to drive productivity and profitability across a digitally transformed project life cycle? And to do that, we want to use a design thinking approach.

So design thinking is a process and a deliberate approach to problem solving. So the step one is to frame the question or the problem statement, and then we can go through different ideas or brainstorming, be able to analyze those into tangible ideas, continue to test, learn, and iterate.

So Susan mentioned at the beginning that I've been really lucky that design thinking has been a big part of my background in business. That I was able to use it as part of my MBA studies but also just being surrounded within the Autodesk ecosystem for so many years and being at so many Autodesk University sessions live that I've been able to practice design thinking within our business.

And one of my favorite things about it is, to me, it bridged the gap for me between my science background and the scientific method and being able to apply a very strategic and deliberate approach to problem solving in business. So what we'll do today is we'll practice creative or divergent thinking and also analytical or convergent thinking. And as we get closer and closer to our solutions, what we see happen is that those iterations become smaller and smaller. And they become closer together, and we get to optimal solutions.

Also, from a software development perspective, if anybody has that as a background, if you're familiar with Agile project management and using the concept of user stories, design thinking is meant to be human centered. So we want to put ourselves in the perspective of the end user who is using the technology that we're adopting and aim to solve real-world problems.

So if we're talking about adoption challenges, we want to be thinking about what is preventing an adoption of a technology by the end user on a daily basis. And when we do that, then we see the Venn diagram that comes from IDEOU-- you can check out their website for lots of information about design thinking-- that the optimal solution is that intersection between our really great, creative ideas and then also the technical viability and the economic feasibility. And when we find that intersection, we know that we've narrowed in on a good solution.

So we thought we'd share an example of design thinking in action. Global eTraining was started, Susan mentioned, 17 years ago. It's our 16th birthday this year. So 17 years ago that we actually used a design thinking approach in a very strategic and structured way. We asked the question, we said, how do we replicate the best classroom experience in an online environment?

And emphasis on best classroom experience. So if everybody just does this exercise with us for a minute-- and Susan and Steve, if you guys want to think about yours, maybe share it here in a second. Let's close our eyes and just think about it. If it's in school, university, whatever, a professional development course, think about your very best classroom experience and what that instructor did do and how that might have been different from a different classroom experience. And let's just think about that.

Maybe that instructor used a combination of learning styles. Maybe they were very interactive. Maybe they helped you to get hands on to use a software or a product on your own. Susan or Steve, do you want to add any of your thoughts on that?

STEVE WENZEL: I can definitely think of the classrooms where I learned the most, but I can also think of the classes where I learned the least. And maybe that's not the greatest place to focus, but the ones where I learned the least were the ones where I sit in a lecture hall--

So I graduated from university with an engineering degree, and you sit in a lecture hall, and somebody's lecturing you on math or mathematics. And just being lectured on mathematics when you're not actually sitting there doing the practical application of it, it didn't make any sense to me. I'm pretty strong at math.

So being able to go home and actually then study the books and do it in a variety of different learning styles, definitely resonated more with me versus those classes where there were the hands-on exercises, whether it was in the mechanics classes, where you're actually working with a-- I did mechanical engineering classes-- or whether it's working with a vehicle, and you're actually applying what was learned. That was so much more powerful for me, and I can actually retain that knowledge.

SUSAN BRATTBERG: I agree. For me, it's anything that was applied, where I can actually apply to real-world examples, like even Global eTraining. It is our MBA project, where we got to create a company and launch a company and apply the lessons we were learning in our MBA class into a real-world example. So for me, applied learning is the best way to learn.

HOLLY BRATTBERG: Thank you so much for adding that. So what we did as part of our design thinking method-- and again kind of aligning to the scientific method-- we need to have a hypothesis, put it into practice, and then test it, measure it, and continuously look at the feedback loops to make it better.

And many, many years later, many thousands of survey respondents later, we see the results being just absolutely excellent and in user feedback. So the model that we see on the screen is called Kirkpatrick's training evaluation model. And this is a standard ROI method in the learning and development space.

So when we look at it, it's structured as a pyramid because typically what's seen, especially if we're talking about traditional training in a classroom, you get a very high level of reaction. So did the learners attend? Yes, you can track that. Did they enjoy it? Yeah, you can ask them that, and you can track that.

But as we go up the pyramid, we see the results typically narrow down. That if we start asking them about, what did you learn? Were you able to apply those new skills into a real world environment and were you able to measure and track that that training led to improved business performance and results?

And when we have the Global eTraining results from this, we actually see that taught. That 94%, it shouldn't be a pyramid at all. It's really a column. That we're able to track all the way through that entire Kirkpatrick's model the learning and the application of learning. So just an example of how important that problem statement is. And then, of course, putting something into action and measuring and tracking it.

So our problem statement for today, just to repeat it, it's, again, the most important part, how do we elevate both your tech staff and your tech stack to drive productivity and profitability across a digitally transformed project life cycle? So a tech stack diagram, you can get as fancy and complicated as you want with whatever type of flow charting software is available to you. I think it always helps to start simple and then to get more detailed.

So what you want to do is just to identify the high-level categories within your project life cycle or within your business from front end to back end. So if you including the full business front end, you're going to be including more of your marketing and sales type functions, estimating, and bidding on projects, and then to the back end, you are potentially going all the way through your ERP system and your accounts receivable systems that might be used even by your finance team.

And there are many people from multiple departments that are stakeholders in the tech stack, but more and more, what we're seeing is that the tech stack is owned by that CIO line of business or digital delivery and innovation leaders. So this is an opportunity. This template is in your AU handout. So you can go into this, and you can actually map your own tech stack in your own company. And then what you can do on top of those categories of the different functions is put what technology applications or software you use.

So we're at AU. Everybody's using Autodesk software for a lot of these functions. So go ahead and put the name of each software that you're aware of that you use in each phase, and you might be using other software applications as well. So put them on there so you can get a whole picture of the tech stack.

And once you're able to visualize it like that, then we're able to identify some of those areas that, again, are really good bright spots of excellent adoption and other areas that might have adoption challenges and how we can learn from the bright spots to help the blind spots. So our first step-- Susan and Steve, I'm going to ask you guys to help with this one again.

SUSAN BRATTBERG: All right.

HOLLY BRATTBERG: So divergent thinking or brainstorming is probably the more well known term. What are some challenges that limit the adoption of your tech stack and achievement of digital transformation? So I've got some examples on the screen here that we had a really fun brainstorming session to be able to come up with these in advance. And a lot of these have actually come from Global eTraining customers that we're talking to on a daily basis.

STEVE WENZEL: I'm happy to start sharing some of those that have come to mind. So for me, it's like new software is complex. And of course, it's ever evolving in those waterfall releases, whether it's Autodesk software or whatever you're using. So the learning curve on those is steep, and it's continuously changing. And we have to ask yourself, where is the time to learn all this new tech and all these new releases that keep coming out month after month after month?

SUSAN BRATTBERG: Well, then, not to mention, it's not just the software that's ever changing, but the way that you use it is ever changing as well, because there's unique workflows and processes for every project. So we're in a position where we want to use the right tool for the job in the right way for the project. So it really is a requirement for continuous learning.

For me, the most common issue that customers have that they tell me is the resistance to change or adoption of new technology. There's a resistance to change, and that really stems from the organizational culture, in my perspective.

STEVE WENZEL: Well yeah, there's often a culture there of if. It's a, why fix what ain't broken? So if it worked the old way, why try and move to a new way? So again, definitely, that's a cultural shift and can often come from not having enough time to embrace those changes or not the right resources in place to enable that, embracing the change.

And so that ties into the organizational culture, and that does start at the very top, with the CIO, to ensure that those right tools are in place to allow for adoption and to provide those tools out to the organization. But I think another one is sometimes, the tools that are provided, the software that's provided, the out-of-the-box software, let's say, it's pretty rigid.

The tools that we get provided are crazy powerful and have so many capabilities, but sometimes if they're chosen by the leadership without necessarily the input from the staff or the staff that are going to be using them, then sometimes the staff can't understand how this is going to solve their real-world problem that they have right now. Again, if it ain't broken, don't fix it. So that can delay that adoption, and that adoption is halted, for sure. Try anything else, Susan or--

SUSAN BRATTBERG: Well, I think we've got the list here on the screen, and we could get into a whole long conversation about every point here that we've heard. These are issues that every customer faces when they're implementing and driving adoption of any technology. And some are real physical limitations, geographic distance. Do people not have access to the technology? Do they not have access in the language that they speak?

So there's actual, real things that we can mitigate, making sure that everybody has access to it, making sure that everybody has a culture to embrace technology and embrace change and embrace learning and continuous skills improvement, but I think what's really important to know is that there is no one size fits all approach or wave a magic wand. But there's lots of things that we can recommend that will have a big impact.

HOLLY BRATTBERG: So let's jump into [INAUDIBLE]. And I just wanted to point out that we've already started in the design thinking process. We've started to narrow our thinking. So we've actually put some structure onto the page. We've divided these ideas into people, process, and technology using some of Autodesk's processes here.

And one of the things that stood out to me is that when-- we first went through the full list of ideas to put on here, and I'm sure that the audience here has many, many more ideas of what might be a barrier to technology adoption in your organization, but what really stood out to me is that, over half of the pieces that we came up with were people related.

So we like to be able to look at, within our business, if we have a new addition to our tech stack, we look at the technology and we look at the process, and we think that that's going to solve the technology adoption. But really and truly, we need to be able to put ourselves in that end user perspective, just like design thinking says, and say, how do I make this helpful, useful to my everyday to be able to drive that adoption?

So into the solution part-- so we're still in that brainstorming divergent thinking-- what are some ideas that could remove the barriers and elevate adoption of your tech stack to enable your digital transformation?

SUSAN BRATTBERG: Well, again, here's a long list of ideas. There are excellent ideas and things that we can highly recommend. I'll let you guys have a read of the whole list. Again, we could have a whole half hour conversation on every bullet point. We just don't have that time.

Some of the things, obviously, that pop out to us in addition to clear communication and ensuring great collaboration, it comes up time and time again, the online training and support, AI-powered onboarding tools, promoting a culture of technology and knowledge, and then leveraging analytics to track performance, productivity, and return on investment. So these are things that are recurring and keep popping up.

HOLLY BRATTBERG: So our convergent thinking is our next step, and that's where we actually want to put some sort of analysis or framework into our ideas. So when we're brainstorming, we don't want to have any limitations. And then what we can do in design thinking is start to converge the ideas based on some sort of a framework.

So what we've done here is a pretty simple analysis, but into a 2 by 2 matrix, saying in the top right, what might be high impact, low cost. That's in green. Great idea. Let's do that. In the bottom left and red, low impact, high cost or maybe low impact immediately. Maybe it takes longer time to be able to make that impact. And then the two in orange being kind of in the middle. So, Steve, did you want to take a stab at putting those ideas into our framework?

STEVE WENZEL: I think I can take a stab at putting some of them in, for sure. So we've talked about things like company culture, making sure that there's a company culture of driving technology adoption, but if that's not in your company culture, which that's not a bad thing, it takes a lot of time and therefore is quite expensive to change a company culture. So that will have a low impact off the get go and have a high cost. So immediately out of the get go, that's in the red.

But let's be honest, if you can change your company culture, it's still going to have a high cost, but it will have a high impact with time. So that one, to me, can sit in the red and in the bottom right orange.

Another option that you've got here is you could customize all the software that you have so that what you buy is 100% tailored to your solution. That is certainly going to have a high impact because it's tailored to you. It's tailored to your organizations. It's going to serve the purpose of the staff, but that is extremely expensive.

So again, right out of the gate, that has a high cost, high impact, and it's slow and expensive to implement. So it's not always an option for every company, unless you have those huge budgets, which not everybody does. And that's, again, not a bad thing.

But then we can talk about some of the low impact or low cost items that could help you with your technology adoption, things like hold a webinar and tell people that they just need to adopt it. Doesn't cost much to hold a webinar for your staff and telling them, just to get on with it is going to probably have a fairly low impact, though.

So that's a low cost, low impact item, or just saying, pointing them to YouTube videos. Again, cheap because it's free. It's generic, it's free, self-paced, but again, it requires that amazing culture of learning if you're actually going to get that off the ground. It's not trackable, no real ROI metrics, so again, low cost but probably a fairly low impact actually to drive in that adoption of your tech.

Another option that gets brought up to us a lot is, I'll just bring in consultants and training specialists. Great options. Hugely high impact that you can have out of consultants and training specialists coming into your office but high cost. So again, bottom right hand quadrant. We still haven't had anything in the green yet because consultants are expensive, cost money. Secondly, everyone has to go through the training in that group style environment.

The group is going to move the speed of the average person, so might go too slow to engage those that learn fast, might go too fast to actually allow the slower people to keep up, and not to mention the cost of travel and the downtime from projects. And then what do people do after the consultant or the sales specialist has left the meeting? Where do they go?

So now maybe let's put something in the green box that we feel is certainly being Global eTraining. We feel that it fits the green box. High impact and low cost can be customized online training. It can come at a fairly low cost. It's efficient. It's available immediately. It's collaborative. People can actually work together on training, providing links, sharing what they've learned, sharing modules that might be useful.

It is 100% metric driven. I think that's such a huge focus for us. Being metric driven because it's online, you can see what people are doing, which means it's focused around ROI. And the training can be tailored to your specific needs. It's applied, and it's just in time.

So for us and from what we've seen in previous bits of this talk, online training can hit that green box with that high-impact, low-cost solution to drive technology adoption into your tech stack. So we should probably talk about what is it, unless-- sorry-- Holly and Susan, open that up to you guys, if you want to add anything else.

HOLLY BRATTBERG: I thought that was great, Steve.

SUSAN BRATTBERG: Let's dive into--

STEVE WENZEL: Thanks.

SUSAN BRATTBERG: --high impact, low-cost options here.

STEVE WENZEL: Sure. So this is my area of expertise. What do you need to get started with an online training solution? And just the basics, which we'll go through first. So out of the box, you need a way of being able to pair a learner up with some content. This is referred to as a learning management system, in most parts, and lots of people here will be familiar, some not so familiar. So a learning management system allows you to add a group of users and pair them up with a course or courses.

Lots of you might already have a learning management system in place, or you'll go to a decent provider like Global eTraining, where we'll provide you with a learning management system out of the box. But it's essential for you to be able to track who is doing what and what people should be doing. So that's the bare essentials.

Then moving on, you need to make sure you actually have something for people to learn. So you need some decent content. Good training provider that you select-- Global eTraining being an example of that-- can provide you thousands of courses out of the box that are applicable to your industry or applicable to what it is that you need to learn. So whether that's the Autodesk software. We're at Autodesk University. So make sure you're picking a provider that has out of the box Autodesk training that you can leverage.

Then you need a way of saying, well done, whether you're saying, well done to those who have taken the training internally and having a way of measuring that competency, but you also want a way for your customers to say, well done to you as an organization for embracing training and having a trained workforce.

So badges of completion or certificates or some form of metric to say-- so that you can reward your employees for gaining that knowledge and being an expert in their field, but also you can outwardly show your customers, hey, we know what we're doing. We have a trained workforce. You can trust us. So again, bare minimum, badges of completion or certification of some form.

And then finally, again, bare minimum. I said that you could talk to-- send your people over to YouTube, but that's kind of a low cost, low impact. And the reason I say it's low impact is because if you're just doing video based training, you're probably only talking to the 3% of us that actually are visual learners, can learn by watching.

If you ask me what I learned from the last YouTube video I watched, I probably couldn't even remember what the YouTube video was that I last watched, let alone what it taught me, because I'm not that type of learner. You want to make sure that any learning that you're providing isn't like that example that I gave of being in a lecture hall where somebody's talking mathematics at.

You want to make sure that you have the practical, the visual, the read, the lesson, the practical examples, the exercises so that you can actually learn no matter what type of learning style you are, and you can retain it. And most of us will retain more knowledge by having multiple learning styles provided to us that we can interact and engage with. So then that takes us through the bare minimum of what you need from a learning platform.

SUSAN BRATTBERG: Thank you so much, Steve. So let's talk about elevating your tech staff. I think we can all agree with all of the information shared. That there are huge benefits to online training, whether being a low cost, high-impact solutions. Benefits from the fundamentals include getting immediate answers, attracting and retaining top talent, which is huge.

If you look at that stat here, 90% of organizations are concerned about employee retention, and providing learning opportunities is the absolute number one retention strategy. And that is so important right now when companies around the world are focusing on attracting and retaining top talent. Onboarding and engaging your team is an important benefit, advancing career paths for individuals, and then, of course, employee satisfaction.

So we're in a position now where an online training option in your organization is no longer a nice to have. It's a must have. So now let's talk about how can we elevate beyond the fundamentals to a knowledge management platform that spans the entire organization, the entire project life cycle, and includes powerful data and analytics.

So let's talk about elevating to that next level of training. What if-- what if, in addition to information being considered, knowledge, knowledge is considered information and this big data is compiled, managed, and analyzed As an IT tool within the tech stack? Adopting a knowledge as information approach will help to elevate tech adoption and team software skills to enhance productivity and project success.

HOLLY BRATTBERG: That's great, Susan. And get elevated. Elevating training to knowledge management, that's the topic of the day. And very exciting stuff. So there is so much more literature that has been coming out talking about knowledge management in the construction industry and in the broader AEC manufacturing industries for sure.

So when we talk about knowledge management, that means compiling all of the knowledge in an organization. So the benefits that you just shared on the screen were very much from an individual view. So an individual can learn and an individual can apply that learning, and that is all fantastic. But what if we can elevate that to a higher level of organizational learning? And that's what knowledge management is referring to.

So we are talking about knowledge generation, knowledge capture within the organization, knowledge transfer between individuals, departments, geographies, and more and more. So we're talking about knowledge transfer between generations. We're talking about organizational knowledge retention.

So again, people are retiring, or if people are moving, there's mobility between organizations. For that period of time that someone is in the organization and they have a specialized skill set, it's a perfect opportunity for them to be able to capture that knowledge and publish it through the entire organization.

Really important when we're talking about knowledge management is quality of knowledge. So how do we vet? How do we know that we have the true subject matter expert that is sharing their knowledge and how do we have those standards in place?

And next, the culture. And we've kind of talked about this a few times throughout the presentation already, culture of knowledge and culture of technology. And those are probably two of the most important pieces here that we'll be talking about, is bridging the gap of knowledge culture and technology culture between the technology group, the CIO line of business or the tech stack, and the HR or learning and development groups, who are both very important stakeholders in knowledge management.

And then finally, what we're looking at in knowledge management is, how do we use and exploit the knowledge and technology that has been established? And so if we elevate training to knowledge management and our view of training to organizational knowledge management, it becomes a mission critical function of digital transformation.

So the benefits elevate from those individual benefits that we talked about, of increased learning and attracting top talent and retention and onboarding and those things that are excellent, but now what we actually look at is, we take all of that tacit information or knowledge in people's minds. That means that I know something that I may or may not even be aware of knowing, but I am the only person who knows it. Once I put it down on paper or in a system like the generator, it becomes explicit knowledge, something that I'm able to capture and share.

The training is able to span the full project lifecycle. We're able to track that and manage it through the systems, like Steve talked about, through learning management systems. And we now look at data and analytics that provide measured outputs and productivity. We have headlights and insights into technology adoption. We have a measurable ROI on both training and on additional adoption from software investments, and we're helping to bridge that chasm of technology adoption across the entire tech stack.

And with all of that happening, surely, we also have increased competitiveness by having project ready teams. So digital transformation requires digital knowledge management as being part of the tech stack. And to be part of the tech stack, really important piece, is to bridge that gap.

So technology and learning and development. So learning and development has very much a culture of knowledge. That is, we don't need to preach to the choir on that. Learning and development also has big responsibilities, for example, leadership development that have to span the entire organization. The technology group very much has a technology culture and needs to embrace a knowledge culture. How do we turn knowledge into information?

So how do we use the expertise of the tech team to roll out L&D systems and how do we use the knowledge culture from the learning and development team to be able to spread through the entire team? And it's that teamwork approach that we're going to find as being really successful. Knowledge management implementation in the construction industry is essential to attract more clients and improve the quality of construction projects. So couldn't be said more succinctly than that.

STEVE WENZEL: Thanks, Holly. So I think the question now comes down to is, how do we achieve that elevating, what we discussed as the bare minimum of the learning management system, what we just went through, to be an advanced knowledge management system?

So we talked about a learning management system, mapping users to courses, a little bit of data, but take that basic LMS to the next level and make it customizable, make it branded and tailored to your specific needs.

Provide the quick links to the company specific training so that people can get instant access to what they need to know, and ensure it has that built-in reporting functionality and the ability to track engagement of the learners into the courses in which they're taking. So it's not just that, here's a person, here's a course enroll, sit back, hope, and keep your fingers crossed approach, but you're actually tracking it and making it customizable and manageable.

Then, if we actually look at taking the training further rather than just adopting that classroom style approach, where you provide access to all the content and everybody has to sit through everything, what about if we can actually take that training and assess people's skill gaps so you're providing them just training that is customized to them?

Learners can challenge, again, through Global eTraining, through the product called GeT Insights, can challenge tailored exams that will then provide custom training plans focused only on the areas of weakness or areas that require improvement. Exams can be customized and tailored by the organization, with the links to learning content that's either provided by a training provider such as Global eTraining or whoever else you're working with, or can be training that has been built in-house.

So that not only speeds up the training process, because you're only learning what it is that you don't know, but it also makes it feels personalized and improves that efficiency and the adoption process.

SUSAN BRATTBERG: What if-- what if knowledge management is considered a productivity enhancement tool that fits within the tech stack, integrates with any existing learning technology, and acts as a catalyst to elevate adoption of other technology? Productivity enhancement as a key line item in project planning and execution that will ensure that time and resources are used efficiently.

So going into productivity enhancement tools, we're talking about making training a line item in your tech budget because training and truly is a productivity enhancement tool. So three times, that's the statistic, three times the average tech stack budget versus learning and development budget per person. So the tech budget is three times more than the L&D budget and is continuing to increase. And this is across all industries.

So what we see in this industry, in architecture engineering, construction, manufacturing, that our technology heavy, we're seeing that that is even greater. So what's a large item in the learning and development budget and can easily get cut, we all know the first line item to get cut in any budget is your training budget.

It's actually relatively small item in your tech stack budget. And the way I like to look at it is as an insurance policy, a small insurance policy. So a fraction of the price of what you're paying for this technology to drive the adoption, ensure the successful implementation of the technology for [INAUDIBLE] is your training budget. So really, we've got customers that are saying, we don't call it training. We call it productivity enhancement.

So here are four steps to manage and measure your knowledge management return on investment. So going back to when Holly mentioned the Kirkpatrick's four level training evaluation model, number 1 is your training return on investment. So we like to say , at Global eTraining, we help you learn fast, to retain more, save time, and apply skills to real-world training better. So that's that pyramid. Remember, we're at the top of the pyramid where you're actually able to apply your skills, is where you see that return on investment.

So the first level that people have access to training, did they learn it and then did they apply their skills? And that's how you can see that return on your training investment, if they're getting more efficient in their projects.

Next is hours saved. So from our surveys that we rolled out to thousands, many thousands of learners, our surveys show that the average learner saves approximately one hour per week, and that's net hours saved. And so it significantly reduces the downtime and the rework. So when you can calculate that, that's a huge return on your investment. And the time savings of the fastest way to learn and apply skills saving downtime and less rework has a massive impact on ROI.

Next, let's look at data and analytics to drive and measure the tech stack adoption. How we can look at this is as the training data to show that skills training does in fact drive technology adoption. It's not rocket science. How are you supposed to use a new technology or a new software product if you haven't been taught how to use it? But now, we can actually really prove that the skills competency tracking that skills competency shows that skills training truly does drive effective use of your technology and your workflows and your processes.

And then lastly, when you use skills competence as a competitive advantage as well as an efficient track record of being project ready and efficient and profitable projects, you'll win more bids. You'll be more competitive against other companies in this industry. So when you add these all up, it compounds to have a really impressive return on investment.

So here is a template, an illustration template that you can use with your team to help evaluate alternatives to achieve the highest ROI. So various options and alternatives to consider. You have your instructor-led classroom, we're all familiar with that, in-house development, basic online training, which we all agree is not necessarily just a nice to have anymore. It's a must have. But then taking it to the next level with your knowledge management system, where you're using knowledge is information, and you're managing that information to be more competitive.

So instructor-led classrooms or virtual classrooms, even Zoom meetings, like we're doing here, can be slow to develop and roll out and lacks the data. So that's that first level of that Kirkpatrick's evaluation. So it lacks the data to truly track a return on investment, you might say yes, they attended a class, but you're not actually able to show, did they learn anything and can they effectively apply those skills and then to track that against real business results?

In-house development can be very high in cost. It's the longest timeline and requires a great deal of content, a great deal of staff and resources, with continuous updates that are very hard to manage, and it also requires a very sophisticated LMS to track learning outcomes and business results. Not to mention that, really, we haven't found a company yet in this industry that has the time to develop all the courses and has all the in-house expertise without taking people out of projects and having that downtime to make the training.