I am a huge fan of Business Insider and their articles.  They posted  the

10 YouTube Videos Every Entrepreneur Should Watch

and I thought everyone who is in business for themselves should watch each and everyone of them.  Click on the image to be taken to the Business Insider page for all 10 videos.

Summary: Planning for the future takes much more than a University-centric view. You must go out into the world around you to see what’s going on – and create a proactive communication path that keeps you informed as things change.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make after successfully building the University is to become isolated. Even with the best assessments and surveys, you still have to keep your pulse on what’s going on within the organization and in the industry in general. If things are running smoothly, it’s easy to forget why the University exists – and all of the hard work you’ve put in to get it where it is.

The first step to consider when planning for the future is the formation of an advisory committee or board. Whatever you call it, the group should be made up of key stakeholders throughout the organization and should also have executive sponsorship. If you are the Chief Learning Officer, consider bringing in another c-level executive to sponsor the group and keep it completely objective. This advisory group should take it upon themselves to map out possible future direction, be in touch with changes in the organization and its structure, and to maintain the buy-in you’ve worked so hard to obtain.

Next, push for an executive sponsor or presence at high level planning sessions. Again, if you are the Chief Learning Officer, you’ll provide the presence. But if you aren’t at the executive level, find a sponsor and be sure to brief that person at least monthly on what’s going on – and vice versa. Your executive representation should always be able to put the University into a discussion about planning. For example, if expansion plans come up, the University should be a consideration due to training an influx of new employees and possibly adding locations. Or, if new products and services are in the making, your executive representation should at least be able to tell you about it – and let you plan for the deployment of resources to meet the new need.

When you’re looking at an organization-wide presence for the University, the key is communication. But here’s where many Universities go wrong: they wait for the organization to communicate with them instead of taking a proactive approach. Think about this: your stakeholders have departments to run and goals to meet just as you do. When you’re not in front of them, they are probably not thinking about you. Have your key managers set regular meetings with University stakeholders, if for nothing else than to “catch up” and remind the stakeholders that you are their strategic partner. As you do this, you’ll find that when changes come down, your stakeholders begin to get in touch with you to bring the University in. But remember that the communications for the University are not reactive and not “in waiting” for someone to come to you – be completely proactive in communications all the time.

Be sure to find out what’s going on in the industry, not just in the training and development “industry” but also in the organization’s industry in general. You can learn quite a bit from what’s happening in similar organizations throughout the country and the world. Subscribe to industry publications so that you can be aware of trends, new technologies, and economic changes. Watch the evening news with your well-built University in your mind – this can help you focus on what could be coming down the road.

Back within the organization, continue to assess and survey – the evaluation, re-evaluation, and reinvention should not stop at any time. As you move forward, you’ll see that the information you’re gaining from these activities will help you plan for the future. You’ll also be able to identify trends in course usage, brand perception, and instructor usage. These trends will help you identify what changes to make as you move forward. In that line, be sure to have an infrastructure plan in mind. In other words, you need to know how you’ll change your organization if an expansion comes around, or if a contraction begins. You’ll also know how to handle changes in strategy, new products and services, or new organizational initiatives. Try coming up with scenarios. For example, if the organization introduces a brand new product line, how will you move to develop training, deliver it, assess it, and make it part of ongoing training programs in the future?

Take all of these things into consideration when you’re planning for the future. If you do your part, get an executive sponsor, and keep communication proactive, the University will continue to be a strategic partner at all times.

Summary: Every business has to reinvent itself, even in small ways, over time to stay competitive. The Corporate University must take steps to reinvent, as well. Here are some things to look at when considering a fresh, new approach – even after a short period in business.

The reinvention of the Corporate University should occur, even in small measure, regardless of what you’ve discovered in an assessment or re-evaluation. You’re not looking to change the overall brand, because you want that to stay indelibly identified with the organization and its University. But you do want to make small changes and publicize the successes or coming successes of the University.

First, look for ways to “freshen” the marketing. One way to do this is to look for ways to tie the marketing into achievement of goals for the past year. For example, if the goal to open 5000 new accounts was met, congratulate the organization in your marketing – and place the University as a partner in the journey forward. Think about the ways the organization has been successful, partner with the marketing department, and come out with a fresh approach that congratulates on a job well done and positions the University as a strategic partner. If the organization’s goals have not been fully met, concentrate on the goals that were met – and capitalize on those in your marketing.

If the organization’s strategy has changed, it may be time to look at changing the University’s position on certain aspects. For example, if the organization has moved operational efficiency up in the strategy, you may have to look at your own efficiency. This goes back to the re-evaluation and assessment – if you have locations that are not being used, consider closing them and reassigning the staff. In the same way, consider moving classroom courses or parts of classroom courses into online formats to bolster the University’s efficiency. Just take a good look at the organization’s strategy and change the University’s strategy accordingly – you’ve built and developed a staff that is capable of handling the change.

Consider your infrastructure, as well. If you make strategic changes that have a public impact, capitalize on them. For example, if you’re reassigning instructors, do a communications piece that highlights the instructor and his or her expertise and background. If you’re migrating courses to online formats, this is a great way to create some buzz surrounding the programs on offer. The idea here would be to look at changes to strategy as strategic in themselves, as new ways to publicize the University and its programs. Above all else, your publicity of changes will show that the University is marching right alongside the entire organization. This is target marketing at its best.

When you originally rolled out the University, you may have decided to phase in other curricula, courses, or focus areas. Part of you reinvention, even on an annual basis, can be to start work and roll out these new phases. If you have the resources to create training and career paths for certain groups, go ahead and do it. This will play into your marketing as well, not only to the intended audience but also to the organization’s population as a whole. You can publicize new programs, showcase them, and point out that each department within the organization has the opportunity to take advantage of learning services.

Finally, look at your staff and determine what they need to be “reinvented”. Did staff members get the kind of development they need, or did they miss out? Are there certifications or licenses the staff members can get that can be included in the fresh marketing of the University? If you reorganize the staff in order to roll out new programs or keep up with organizational strategic changes, can you promote from within? And if you do promote from within, can you pull promising talent from the organization itself into vacant University positions?

Reinvention does not have to be a full-scale overhaul – it can include simple marketing of new programs or programs that have not been as successful as intended. The main thing to remember is that the University must keep its image and its programs fresh, in touch with the organization, and in step with the organization’s overall strategy and mission. And by doing this, you’re firmly establishing the University as a value-added partner.

Summary: After any maintenance phase for the Corporate University, you must take the time to re-evaluate all aspects of the program. This re-evaluation is bigger than an assessment, so let’s look at how to accomplish it.

First, you must take the information you’ve gained in the assessment and analyze it. Are courses being utilized, both online and in the classroom? Are additional resources, such as Quick Reference Guides, being accessed and used as well? From the course assessments, you should be able to determine if the course materials and content are useful and appropriate for the job functions, especially if you surveyed participants and their managers after thirty or forty-five days. You can also determine if the online course deployment strategy is working. In addition to the courses, you must determine if the staff is being used appropriately. Instructors should spend 70 to 90% of their time in the classroom, depending on the amount of “desk work” or coaching they have to do afterwards. Are all instructors being utilized to that degree? If not, it’s time to re-evaluate the strategy for all of these aspects. Course materials and content can be changed or “revamped” and instructors can be reassigned to the areas that may need them.

In relation to University usage, take a look at which classes, either online or classroom, are being used the most and determine why. Are classroom courses barely meeting the minimum number of participants? If so, is this related to the organization itself or due to material that is not quite relevant at the time? When you look at the courses from this perspective, you can consider allocating them to different times, turning them off, or saving them for a future time period. Be sure that anything and everything that is on offer from the University is timely, appropriate, and is moving the organization toward its overall goals.

When you look at the organization’s strategy, though, be sure to analyze it completely. Sometimes, even if a training department is in “good graces”, they get left behind on cutting edge decisions and new strategy implementations. For this reason, it’s important to keep up with the executive team and their decisions – and in turn, keep up with the mission or strategy. If the organization has very detailed goals, such as “open 100 new locations by 2015″, you’ll need to make sure the numbers are still the same. If not, consider how much more new hire training or sales training will have to go into use in order to keep up with the change. Also in relation to the organization’s strategy, are the courses you’ve provided having an impact on the numbers? It may be difficult to tell, so look at the general trend. If the organization is performing, you can make the assumption that the University’s programs may have had an impact.

Re-evaluation should also involve some industry comparison. Start with the big organizations, such as the American Society for Training and Development, the Society for Performance Improvement, or the Society for Human Resources Management, to look for benchmark organizations. Alternatively, you can easily research organizations within your industry to determine what their Universities are doing. Keep in mind that there are also cross-industry University standards, such as Motorola, Disney, 7-Eleven, and Pfizer, which can provide some ideas on performance. But don’t confine your research to training organizations that call themselves “Universities”. Organizations within your industry may be providing state of the art content and delivery methods without a Corporate University structure, so be sure to examine what they are doing, as well. From your research and benchmarks, you can determine if your content is fresh and if your delivery methods are comparable. In addition, you can find out whose learning organizations are leading the industry – and why.

After the undertaking of a re-evaluation, you must take a look at all of the other resources you have, such as staff, marketing, and infrastructure. If you find that efficiencies are lacking, make adjustments to your infrastructure. Or, if you find that your courses are not being utilized but the content is fresh and appropriate, look at your marketing, branding, and delivery systems to determine where the fault lies. Just remember that no Corporate University functions perfectly and that annual assessment and re-evaluation is the only way to stay healthy and adjust to changing markets and organizational strategies.

Summary: You’ve built the University, opened it, and now it’s up and running. It’s never too early to look at the maintenance of the University and its programs, so let’s decide which areas should have your focus.

The first area you should look at is the evaluation of the learning programs themselves. Your evaluation of the programs should start at the basic level, with immediate reaction surveys. These surveys, sometimes referred to as Level One on Fitzpatrick’s scale of evaluation, measure the participants’ responses immediately following training. Did they feel they learned new skills? Did the instructor have the appropriate professional outlook and enthusiastic presentation skills? Were the materials useful? All of these questions will give you an idea of how courses are immediately perceived.

But don’t stop there. In order to get a true idea of how the learning programs are adapted on the job, you’ll need to evaluate further down the line. Start with behavioral evaluations at 30 to 45 days after the training. In these evaluations, you’ll need to ask participants if they were able to apply what they learned in the course. Use the course objectives as a roadmap for the survey questions, using the same action verbs as the objectives. To get a further view, survey the participants’ managers or supervisors to see if they have an idea about the application of skills on the job. Remember that many times how things are trained and how they are accomplished in the field may be different – if you encounter these differences, be sure to investigate them thoroughly. The whole idea behind this type of evaluation is to find out what is useful and what is not – in other words, what parts of the training programs are helping participants achieve the organization’s strategy?

Customer satisfaction is another area of focus, but don’t confuse this with program evaluation. You’ll want to find out what the University’s service is like to the participants. Have they made phone calls to the University and what type of experience was that? When they visit locations in person, were they greeted promptly and shown into clean facilities? If the organization has customer service surveys, consider modeling the University’s surveys after those. In fact, if the organization utilizes a mystery shop approach, consider implementing one for University participants. Your goal is to have a picture of the customer service abilities of all the staff at all times. This is another way to show that the University is not isolated and out of touch, but is completely aligned with the organization’s service mission.

Customer satisfaction can also sample the technical aspects of the University. You should certainly evaluate online courses from the content perspective, but add to that a quick survey about the online experience. Did the user have trouble signing in? Was he or she able to locate the course or information needed easily and quickly? Was the navigation user friendly or not? Was the speed of the online course progression too fast, too slow, or just right? When you survey for technical satisfaction as well as customer satisfaction, you’re getting a good picture of all users – not just classroom attendees.

What about the University staff? Part of maintenance is the coaching and development of the existing staff. Are certain staff members in need of certifications, such as instructional certifications or design certifications? Do the online designers need to be trained on a new version of Flash? Do the content designers or instructors need to go to educational conferences or continuing education? Determine if staff members are receiving regular coaching and feedback on their performance from managers or supervisors. If not, be sure to circle back with those managers to find out why. In the midst of all of the maintenance, don’t forget to start your succession planning process, as well. Are any senior staff members in need of leadership or management training to make them ready to take over if necessary?

Finally, your maintenance inspection should include resources and costs. Are the locations fully used or are the classrooms sitting empty? Use your Learning Management System (LMS) to determine if instructors are being used efficiently to teach classes, learn new classes, and enter class data into the LMS. If not, go back to the managers to find out how to make the usage more efficient. From a budget perspective, conduct a good audit on how the money is being used – and don’t be afraid to spend earmarked money if it’s necessary. You don’t want a budget cut in the next fiscal year because you didn’t spend necessary funds.

After considering these aspects, you’ll have a consistent picture of how the University is functioning.

Summary: When it looks like the Corporate University is ready to go, it’s time to think about marketing and promotion. The University must be promoted like any other part of a business, so let’s look at some of the aspects of making this happen.

One of the first considerations to make in advertising and promotion for the University is the “nuts and bolts” of marketing: logos, branding, and color palettes. This is another time when you’ll need the assistance of the internal marketing department or the external consultant. Think about branding in general. Your organization probably has a “look and feel” that is both internal and external. For example, when you walk into a popular chain restaurant you usually know where you are just because of that “look and feel”. Is this something you want the University to reflect? Many Corporate Universities, just like traditional universities, create a logo that goes on all materials, both online and in print. This furthers the look and feel and ensures that when someone in the organization uses an online reference, a quick reference card, or a course manual, they know they are accessing the University’s knowledge base. Logos can also be used on business casual clothing for instructors. Along with branding comes a color palette, a definition of the colors and color combinations that can be used in all University materials, both online and print. The marketing department can help you come up with all of these great tools.

After the “nuts and bolts”, think about the overall marketing plan for the University. Is the budget sufficient to produce constant marketing and promotion, or does it need to be confined to the ramp-up and general start of University programs? What methods can you use for promotion? Some state-of-the-art organizations use closed-circuit flat screen TV’s to keep associates in the loop, while some organizations are still effective with paper memos and emails. What will work for your organization’s population? Are there alternative information sources you can use, such as internal communications or “intranet” websites that can create a page just for the University? When it comes to the overall marketing of locations, consider “grand openings” where key people can give tours, answer questions, and “talk up” the great programming that is planned by the University. Are there any regular or special events coming up within the organization that may give the opportunity for promotion? You should sketch out your marketing plan, along with your marketing department or consultant, well in advance of any grand openings or new promotions for the University.

Within your marketing plan, think about creative ways to use the organization’s existing advertising and promotion to your advantage. Does the organization have an overall advertising “feeling” that is used with external customers? If so, there are great ways that the Corporate University can capitalize on that theme. Think about all of the great advertising campaigns you see every day on the Internet and television – and consider how a Corporate University internal to that organization could use those campaigns. Also, your promotion certainly doesn’t have to be limited. Think about the possibility of “road shows” that take the new University and its benefits out to the organization’s population. Use the University staff to give talks to managers and supervisor groups, sales meetings, and even smaller staff meetings to let people know what’s coming. This type of personal promotion also ensures that the University doesn’t get the reputation of being out of touch. After your rollout, start collecting testimonials from satisfied participants to use in future promotions.

The final consideration is your actual “go live”. Can you phase this activity, i.e. go live with major areas and market them while phasing in other program areas as you go along? Also, you must “define” your go live: will it be through online courses, classroom courses, new quick reference guides, or a combination of all three items? In addition, how are you going to “cover” your go live? Is there an internal communication or Intranet website that can create news about the University’s first day or days in operation? Think about all of the media you may use to promote the University and be sure to use it to make the go live a real organizational news event. Be sure to have the development and delivery groups survey every participant, whether they take courses online, in a classroom, or access new learning aids via the Learning Management System. This can be a great way of measuring success in the short and long runs.

Now that the University is “live”, it’s time to think about how to maintain it.

Summary: It’s time to consider the staffing needs for your Corporate University. You’ve assessed learning and determined resources, so you have a good idea of what parameters you’ll need to work within. Here are some ideas on hiring the right staff to move your project forward.

When considering the staffing needs of the University, there are two major considerations to make. First, go back to your original learning assessment and look carefully at the range of knowledge, skills, and abilities the University’s programs will be teaching. When you look at development and delivery staff, think about how you can match their knowledge, skills, and abilities to those uncovered in the assessment. Do you need a large group of strong sales trainers and designers, or is the need more operational? Is there a pool of strong coaches, achievers, or experts that you might be able to pull into the University?

Second, consider the infrastructure you’ve taken the time to create. How does the staff you’ll need to hire fit in with the reporting structure you’ve built? Does the available talent pool work with that structure, or do you need to make some changes to move forward? Do the needs of the population warrant a phased approach to your staffing, i.e. can you hire the operations group first and get them rolling, and then move to the sales group, the customer service group, etc? Once you’ve taken time to consider your original assessment and the infrastructure, take a look at hiring for individual job groups.

When looking at an instructional design area, you’ve already decided on the need for online and content designers. With online staff, the best thing to do is find your Learning Management System (LMS) manager first. He or she will be able to point out the skills needed to create training interventions that work with particular systems. Online designers with an instructional design background are the best to find – they can edit the content for the adult learning environment while creating the technical platform. But overall, you’ll want to look for people with skill in Flash, HTML, and content builders such as Captivate or Rapid Builder. These designers should also have a good eye for color, use of graphics, and appropriateness of fonts. Content instructional designers can typically come from many different backgrounds. As long as they know adult learning principles, instructional design processes, and can manage projects they can usually design anything with the right subject matter experts. For either type of designer, ask for a portfolio or samples of the work they’ve done in the past.

The University’s instructors are like ambassadors and marketers all wrapped into one. If participants have a good learning experience and feel like they can come back because of an instructor, you’ll have no problem filling the classrooms. When you look at your learning assessment, think about how much of the content is heavily internal to the organization and how much of it is general, like sales or customer service. This is one of the ways you can look for instructors. For the heavily internal content, like operations, look for those internal people who show a flair for coaching, mentoring, and communications in general. Ask the key managers and supervisors for recommendations – but do it carefully because you don’t want anyone to think that the University is raiding their talent pool. For the general content, you can look inside and outside the organization. Top sales and customer service trainers can adapt to any organizational standards, but it’s their personalities and abilities to connect with your audience that makes them stand out. For either group, it is imperative that you and other University managers ask for a brief presentation from each candidate in addition to their interviews. You’ll get a great picture of their presentation and communication skills that way.

Your managers will be the glue that holds the group together. If you already have an existing group of instructors, consider which ones have the talent and drive to move into management positions. This is an easy transition and you’ll have a manager that you may have already coached. Training and Development managers on the outside can be expensive, but in some ways you could be saving yourself time and money down the road by choosing one. In the same way you look for instructors, look for managers – both internally and externally.

In general, Corporate University associates should be “coachable”, well-respected in their fields, highly polished and professional, driven, willing to grow, and adaptive to change. When you find training professionals that have these competencies, your University will be well on its way.

Summary: You’ve assessed, determined resources, and now you have the buy-in of your executive team. The next step in building your Corporate University is to create the infrastructure for operations. Let’s take a look at what items to consider.

Your first consideration for the University infrastructure is staff. You’ve estimated your staff needs and now have an idea of how that will unfold based on the funding. There must be an organizational staff structure in place that creates smooth, efficient, and quick operation. To create this structure, look at the University’s design, delivery, management, and administrative areas.

If you have an instructional design area, determine if all of the designers will report to one person or if the unit can be divided into online and content designers. Will designers serve all functional areas, or will they be specialized? Look at the specific skills and abilities of each person and determine if across the board design services will work for the University. In the delivery or instructional areas, determine if the breakdown will be by “college” or by discipline. For example, you may want to have sales instruction delivered by one area, no matter what part of the organization is being served. Or, you may want to have a “college” concept that mirrors the organization itself. Let’s say you have an entire retail division, so the University will have a retail delivery division, specific to that discipline. If the organization is large, it may be a good idea to look at the “college” concept to begin with. With this system, you’ll be able to efficiently utilize your instructors over various disciplines. Don’t forget management – how will the instructional areas be managed? Will they have a “working” instructor who manages the team, or will you be able to devote a manager to each area?

Another staff consideration is standards and professional development. Determine what standards each department will be held accountable for – try starting with professional organizations like the American Society for Training and Development or the Society for Performance Improvement to find minimum standards for instructors and instructional developers. Also, the University’s career mobility should mirror that of the organization as a whole, so decide what career paths exist within departments and between departments – and determine how you’ll publicize that to University associates.

The University’s Learning Management System (LMS) is a consideration unto itself. First, you must decide how the LMS will be administered. In the best cases, a person who has both technical LMS experience and training experience will be a good one to manage the entire system. But beyond the actual staff are determinations as to whether the access to the LMS will be controlled, that is, limited to the LMS manager or administrator, or whether instructors and their managers can access the data. In relation to data, the LMS manager should decide what standards will be used, i.e. how will course times be entered, how will names be reflected, and how will descriptions be standardized. In addition, the LMS should have a front-end “look and feel” that is distinctively branded to the University.

Policies are a tedious matter but your University must have a written set. Your policies should outline a minimum performance standard, i.e. what is considered to be a passing grade across the board. The policy should outline class sizes, stating minimums and maximums in order to be effective and within the limits of the physical locations. Along with class size comes a cancellation policy for classroom instruction: how many students does a course need to have before it is a “go” or a “no go”? Instructional managers should be given standards for annual audits of their courses, as well, to ensure that nothing is stale or outdated. Another consideration is whether the University should charge for training and cancellations. If you have trouble making a business case, the suggestion to charge individual business units for big-ticket training such as new hire courses is always sure to get a nod.

Finally, think about the workflow the University should have. Who will make changes to courses and when? How would a request for new training be handled – and in what time frame should it be required? Who would sign off on new training courses or major revisions?

Once you’ve established your infrastructure, you’re ready to actually build your staff.

Summary: Before you can put your Corporate University assessments and resources into action, you must obtain buy-in from your organization’s executive team – or the executive who controls funding. Since getting and maintaining funding is difficult for training, let’s look at how to present your case.

You’ve taken quite a bit of time and effort to assess your organization’s learning needs across the board as well as make estimates of your resource needs. For you, it’s a highly detailed picture of what to expect as you build your University. But you can’t present your view to the executives and expect to get their buy-in. Instead, you must put your business case together in “executive-ese”, that is, drill down to the specifics of how the University is going to positively impact the organization as a whole.

You’ve determined what needs to be trained and have probably decided how that needs to be trained. The question your executive team will have is, “why,” and your answer must tie into the overall strategy and mission of the organization. First, take the hard data you’ve gained from your assessment and lay it out in general terms. For example, you can say that regular customer service surveys show that clients are not as satisfied as they could be with the organization’s service. You can say that sales are great, but there are definite ways to improve them, from X percent to X percent. When you put this in strategic terms, you can estimate that by teaching every customer-facing associate the ins and outs of how to deliver a top-notch experience, the organization’s customer service numbers will improve by X percent. In relation to new hire training, you can report that the organization hires X number of people per month, spends X amount to train them, and will spend X time and money to replace them if they leave. Along with this, you can report that the training program will address X out of X issues reported by supervisors and managers within X days of hire – and thus save the organization X amount of time and money. This is obviously a quick glance through setting up the numbers.

When you get to your business case, attack each area of your proposal with strategic implications – talk about how each course or competency area can impact strategy and overall business. If the University’s plan is to train all customer service associates on the proper form for each experience, you can link that directly to the organization’s customer service mission. And if training can improve the customer service experience, it stands to reason that the training can impact the organization’s overall image. If the help desk presently spends a certain amount of time on certain technical issues, make the link between “quick reference guides” and the ability to focus the help desk on more important issues. Your business case must not leave any part of the University’s proposed courses in “limbo”. Each one must have a specific purpose and link to the overall strategy.

As with any business case, especially at executive levels, think about presenting information in the most efficient, least wordy fashion. Don’t go into great detail unless you’re asked – training departments sometimes get the reputation of being “out of touch” with the rest of the organization, so your sharp, to-the-point Corporate University presentation will show that this training area will be in touch.

When you put your presentation together, focus on how the University, after the initial expense, can save money or time in every strategic area. In addition, focus on how the University can improve efficiency both in what is being trained and how it’s being trained. For example, online learning is one of the most cost-efficient methods to deliver knowledge training that doesn’t necessarily need a human interaction element – show that in your presentation. If you can, think about how the University can create a dollar impact by helping the organization meet its goals – again, it can be an estimate but it will put the dollar figures into the heads of the people with the purse strings.

Summary: Our next step in building a Corporate University is to determine resources. You must take into account the costs, staff needs, delivery systems, locations, and marketing before going to your executive team for funding.

You’ve taken the time to assess learning needs and possible delivery methods across the board, removing the “nice to know” and taking a hard look at the “need to know”. Now you must consider the resources you’ll need to make it all happen, not only from a cost perspective but also to paint a picture of how big the enterprise is going to be.

When it comes to staff, a Corporate University is a difficult proposition. It’s hard to know how many instructors you’ll need or how many people you’ll need to manage those groups. But it’s worth an estimate in the very beginning. Look at first things first: what is it going to take to develop and design all of the training? How much of your assessment indicates you’ll need e-learning designers and how much indicates you’ll need classroom or self-paced instructional designers? Typically, a combination of the two types of designers will create a flow between content and online development. You’ll also need a person to manage that group and its project flow. One way to make an estimate on this staff is to find a consultant who is willing to divulge how long it should take to create certain courses – and go from there.

Next, look at your classroom delivery needs. From the cost perspective, it is sometimes more feasible to pick instructors from the field, that is, those people who have a natural ability to coach or teach others. In addition, consider the possibility of rotating instructors – work out a deal with certain business units to use their key people for a week a month to teach classes if necessary. Will you need to regionalize your training based on the number of people who are not close to the corporate headquarters? This may also require more instructors in more areas. When you’re looking at instructors, think about the possibility of hiring experienced training professionals who can develop courses as well as teach them – this will save time and money.

What about delivery systems? How will people register for courses, look at the course catalogue, record grades, and take online courses? A Learning Management System (LMS) can help you do all of these things, but be sure to understand what you want to do with your LMS before you buy it. You don’t want to have to add features to the LMS as you go along because this can be quite costly. If you don’t need to customize, can you buy an LMS “off the shelf” or is your IT department skilled and staffed enough to build it themselves? Remember that an LMS is more than an online grade book – it can manage learning plans to keep job groups mobile, track required training, like compliance, and deliver online training to the most remote populations. In any case, you’ll also need someone to manage the LMS, so be sure to place that in your staff resources.

When it comes to training locations, you must look at the population. If most people in the organization are concentrated in one area, you obviously only need one training center. But if you have an organization that has a multiple location network, you’ll have to think about creating training space for those groups. First look at available space that the organization already owns or leases – corporate architects can do wonders with spaces and sometimes the cost may be less than leasing a new space. Do you want the training center to simply meet the need, or does it need to be a state-of-the-art facility? These are all considerations that you’ll need to make before moving forward.

Finally, think about marketing your University. Is the marketing of the University, its courses, and its benefits something that you and your staff can do on your own, or do you want to involve an internal marketing department? If your organization contracts its marketing to an outside firm, find out how to get a consultation on cost and time. Remember that you’ll want the marketing of the University to mix in with the overall marketing of the company, so be aware that you may have to develop logos, signage, color palettes, websites, etc, for any aspect of the University that faces your clients.

These are the major considerations when determining resources. If you look at all of these aspects, along with your needs assessment, you should be able to present an accurate cost-benefit analysis when you take the next step, obtaining buy-in.