Led by a project manager, Libby and another learning specialist joined a project group with 25 subject matter experts (SMEs) from across the company to work together on the daunting training project. It wasn’t long before they ran into challenges.
“We had a lot of emails going back and forth, trying to collect input and content from SMEs, which was cumbersome.”
Libby knew that if they wanted to meet the deadline, they needed to improve efficiency and find a better way to collaborate. In order to coordinate such a large, company-wide initiative, Libby and her colleagues knew that collaboration with SMEs across the business
was key.
First, the SMEs on a particular subject needed to “data dump” their expertise to the L&OD department. Libby and her team would then work with the SMEs to organize knowledge into curriculums and courses that made sense. Then, the L&OD department would use authoring tools to create the content needed. Once the content was finalized, it needed to be passed to the communications team so they could ensure it aligned with brand messaging.
As with all projects, the needs of the team changed over time. Additional SMEs were pulled in to provide further insights and
expertise throughout the project.
Until now, Libby and her colleague had been coordinating the training content in Word documents and email, but this was proving to be ineffective, frustrating, and slow. It was difficult to track document versions, who provided the content, and who suggested changes.
Another member of the L&OD team suggested that Libby and her colleague use Synapse to ease some of the bottlenecks that were slowing the project down. It had already been used by the company for a similar training project with success.