In certain industries the learning department is also asked to ensure that the workforce is knowledgeable enough to be compliant with regulatory or legal requirements. Target groups can be the internal workforce or learners in the extended enterprise, such as contractors. We discuss compliance training using SAP Enterprise Learning and SAP Learning Solution and we also explore some lessons learned and tips for learning practitioners.

How to Manage Compliance with a Learning Management System (LMS)

The key objectives of a learning compliance project that uses an LMS (in this example, SAP Learning Solution), are:

1. To provide a single source of truth (one central qualification database) that:

• Defines and document updates of qualification only (e.g., by registering course completions and ensuring online tests are evaluated by an assessor).
• Tracks updated versions of training materials in classrooms and online courses.
• Makes every manager and every employee responsible for compliance, not just one compliance officer.

1. To provide visibility into compliance training gaps and forecast upcoming gaps for managers, employees, and other stakeholders.

Best Practices to Manage Compliance

Here are some best practices to keep in mind when creating processes to keep your company compliant with training mandates.

Organizations should impose these internal mandates as a best practice:

• Manage registrations and track completions and attendance
• Manage resources and logistics for efficient delivery
• Provide e-learning for self-paced learning
• Enable blended learning concepts
• Identify training needs based on job role, location, business unit, and skill level and push out courses accordingly
• Enable progress and completion reporting, and exception reporting
• Give managers approval functionality and reporting authority for the business unit
• Automatically notify users about scheduling required courses, upcoming skills gap training, and recertification courses they need to take

Operations-critical imposed practices (i.e., industry-specific mandates):

• Retain records about employees’ completion and attendance, based on regulations, for a certain number of years
• Provide automatic reassignment of courses to learners to ensure they retake a course at pre-defined intervals
• Control the different versions of content and push out revised versions for learners to retake to remain compliant
• Provide assessments to demonstrate that competency has been achieved

Regulatory-imposed practices (i.e., external mandates):

• Control the different versions of content and report and track on which version a learner has been trained
• Maintain an audit trail using electronic records: what was changed, when, the old value, the new value, and by whom
• Provide an electronic signature
• Provide CD-ROM support with an automatic update of employee learning progress in the LMS or data synchronization mechanisms (e.g., for low bandwidth areas)
• Certify the learning management system implementation with the respective agency (e.g., FDA CFR Part 11)

Compliance Learning Business Process Supported by an LMS

The right LMS supports the complete compliance learning-related business process. Typically it is structured along these steps.

Step 1. New or revised material is published. Standard operating procedures (SOPs) need to be revised because of new methods and material, technological evolution, or standard revision periods.

Step 2. New or revised content is assigned to a training matrix that impacts multiple employees, often across job roles and organizations.

Step 3. Employees (and sometimes their supervisors) receive an automatic notification of new or revised material that is relevant to their roles.

Step 4. Employees can see any actual or upcoming training gap (e.g., an expiring qualification) associated with their role.

Step 5. The training gap can be closed by taking a training course directly linked to the gap, either an instructor-led or self-paced course. In the case of e-learning this is can be achieved completely automatically.

Step 6. Online tests or assessments, including on-the-job training and evaluation can be used to prove that learners can understand and apply the training topics before a qualification is updated.

Step 7. The system keeps track of and notes when employees have achieved compliance with the training requirements and for how long the certification is valid.

Step 8. Reports make it easy to identify employees who are in danger of becoming non-compliant (e.g., if their qualification is outdated, about to expire, or not on the right level) regarding their training and qualification status. Reports can also provide, as needed, information for auditing purposes, such as training activities or the status between existing and required qualifications.

Figure 1 illustrates these process steps.

Figure 1

The compliance learning process (source: SAP AG)

How SAP Enterprise Learning and SAP Learning Solution Manage Compliance

With the acquisition of SuccessFactors, SAP now offers two LMS systems: SAP Enterprise Learning as well as SuccessFactors Learning (formerly Plateau). Both systems have different strengths and delivery models. In this article we focus on how to manage compliance with SAP Enterprise Learning.

SAP Enterprise Learning contains the following components:

• Learning portal: the Web-based learner's personalized learning environment
• Instructor portal: gives instructors the ability to manage the participations and activities of their courses
• LMS: controls learning processes and manages course offerings and catalogs
• Authoring environment: supports the creation of tests and structuring, and the publishing of e-learning content
• Virtual learning tool: provides a virtual learning tool powered by Adobe Connect to conduct virtual learning events
• Content management system (CMS):  stores and manages learning content
• Synchronous and asynchronous collaboration: ensures that your people can share best practices throughout the organization

SAP Enterprise Learning provides close integration with SAP ERP HCM software implementation and beyond — with back-office functionality for competency management, along with assessment functionality for employee performance management. From the delivery model it is on-premise. SAP Enterprise Learning also features analytical capabilities, including support for ad hoc reporting (Figure 2).

Figure 2

SAP Enterprise Learning provides integration across SAP ERP HCM and ERP (source: SAP AG)

SAP Learning Solution’s LMS provides support for compliance. It uses one enterprise-wide database for tracking personal data as well as learning data. This ensures consistent data and simple and fast access to data, and maximizes re-use of data. Following are the functionalities provided by SAP Enterprise Learning and SAP Learning Solution.

Training Catalog

This catalog manages all training in the organization and supports instructor-led classrooms as well as e-learning and virtual learning offerings and their registrations and completions. Training can be managed in different languages. Since all the data is centrally located, it enables managers to answer the regulatory system audit questions using one consistent set of data, supported by standard reporting. For example:

• What was trained (content) and how (delivery method)
• When did it take place (date)
• Who was registered as well as who attended  and who did not
• Who completed the training and, if necessary, who passed or failed

Qualification Tracking

Requirement profiles and qualifications, expiration of qualifications, and refresh needs are available throughout the whole business suite, not just in SAP ERP HCM or in the LMS. This provides the ability to track role-based, required training and supports tracking qualifications and missing requirements from a centralized database. This, in turn, can be used easily from an access control system to grant access to special buildings or locations of a company based on qualifications.

Mandatory Training

Management of mandatory training using an already-existing organizational structure, master data, and profiles is offered. This means that the structural data used to prescribe the necessary training is already in place and is simply reused for the LMS, ensuring consistency and an audit-proof data foundation. In addition, standard reporting to see what is mandatory for a learner and what the learning status of a mandatory course is available.

Course Content Management

Provides a centralized location for training documentation and tracks changes to content. It provides current versions for training purposes and tracks which version of the training content is being taught to which learner. Content updates can be classified into different change categories such as minor or major. This way, based on certain criteria, the relevant content is automatically pushed to current learners taking the e-learning course to ensure that they get the latest version of the content.

Testing for Competency

Testing plays an important role in compliance learning as the competency needs to be validated before it is granted in the system. Test authoring and the e-learning option allow authors in SAP Enterprise Learning to structure the content according to completion needs. In addition, it provides authors with the ability to create and administer tests in the integrated test authoring environment or with available third-party tools, such as the Questionmark^® Perception^® assessment management system. Tests can be in different formats (multiple choice, randomized questions, or ratings) and can be used for a variety of purposes (self-tests, pre-tests, or post-tests). The results of such tests can be stored, and easily reported on.

Electronic Signature Functionality

Some regulatory agencies, such as the FDA, require that learners make an explicit confirmation of their course participation. Through the learning portal, learners can confirm participation with electronic signatures. Alternatively, another role, such as an instructor teaching the class, can verify course participation, report the pass or fail result, certify the course content, and validate the dates the course was taken, for the learner participant, with or without an e-signature. The e-signature is listed in the standard reports such as the participant list.

Electronic Records and Change Documents

The SAP system-wide standard functionality can be activated to track the system activities of business processes simply by switching on the tracking and reporting option. This allows you to track who changed, what was changed, what the old value was, what the new value is, and what actions have been taken.

Self-Services Functionality

Self-services for learners, managers, and instructors are available for all involved users.

Learning portal for learners:

• Provides role-based, required training to learners as well as access to the training catalog, 24/7.
• Supports the ability to identify expiring and missing qualifications and easily review courses prescribed as mandatory.
• Updates qualifications with the new validity date based on defined rules with no manual intervention.
• Supports e-signatures.

Just recently, as part of SAP Learning Solution, SAP has released a new learning portal based on Web Dynpro for ABAP technology. This is available with the enhancement package 6 delivery.

Manager self-service (MSS):

• Managers can easily review the bookings, qualifications, and mandatory course status of their employees.
• Managers can add mandatory course prescriptions for their teams or individual employees.
• The complete training history of an employee is visible to a manager.
• Managers can book courses on behalf of learners or pre-book employees in courses.
• Companies have the option to switch on a workflow-based approval for managers of learners’ self-bookings and course cancellations.

Instructor portal:

• Instructors have full access to view all the courses they are teaching or tutoring.
• Follow-up activities such as confirming attendance, evaluating participants, grading participants as pass/fail, and renewing qualifications can be done directly by the instructor and are recorded immediately in the system, providing up-to-date information for audits and managers.
• Supports e-signatures.

Appraisals

The appraisal functionality of the SAP ERP HCM suite can be used to rate and grade employees and assess and reassess their level of knowledge and refresh their qualifications. For example, after employees successfully take courses, their qualifications are granted automatically. In order to renew qualifications, employees can take a refresher course or supervisors can assess their work practices and record their assessments in the system. Based on the outcome the system can grant the qualification again or renew it.

Security and Access

Extensive authorization mechanisms are delivered to support the restriction of data access or manipulation of data, such as role-based authorizations as well as structural authorizations. As part of SAP Enterprise Learning, predefined security roles are delivered for the different roles. These can be used or extended to satisfy the company’s individual security requirements.

Reporting and Visualization

Various reports support access to data and functionality (if the reports are authorized to access the data). The reporting results can be visualized differently based on the target role. For example, for managers, the compliance status their responsible organizational unit is visualized in an aggregated format in the MSS, with the option to drill down. For learners a detailed view of their own compliance status is available in the learner portal. For administrators there is a detailed report in the LMS back end with various options to customize the depth of the information and how it is grouped.

Compliance Management Trends

Mobility is also a growing trend in compliance management. It is becoming increasingly popular and there is more demand for mobile applications that can track these processes.

Figure 3 shows how managers can use their iPads with a manager mobile application (in this case, SkillScanner) to track their employees’ updated training compliance statuses as well as any upcoming compliance training requirements.

Figure 3

The SkillScanner mobile application, an SAP partner product that can be used with the standard SAP ERP HCM suite (source: EPI-USE, www.skillscanner.com)

SAP has also recently released a mobile application for the iPad for learners to access their learning offerings, their personalized profiles, and their qualification statuses, called the SAP Learning Assistant app.

Another hot trend is the expansion of learning to the extended enterprise, such as contractors or partners. SAP has recently addressed this need by releasing an extension of the Learning Solution to manage external learners, called SAP Learning Solution, Option for the Extended Learning Community. Technically, this is an add-on to the SAP Learning Solution to support clients in driving education, compliance, or user adoption in their entire business network from supplier to end customer. This add-on has some functionality dedicated to external learners such as e-commerce or self-registration. Therefore, the above functionality which is important to manage compliance, can also be used for the extended learning community. You can read more about this topic in Thomas Jenewein’s article “Use SAP Learning Solution to Manage Your Extended Learning Community,” or watch his Webinar: 

Figure 4 shows the new Web front end for external learners (catalog view).

Figure 4

Web UI for external learners in SAP Learning Solution, Option for the Extended Learning Community (catalog view)

Thomas Jenewein

Thomas Jenewein is in charge of business development and solution management at SAP Education. Before this role, he led an SAP internal learning and development team responsible for strategic learning programs and new media. He studied organizational psychology in Mannheim, Germany, and San Diego, California, and is passionate about learning management, new media, knowledge management, and people development. You may contact Thomas via LinkedIn or via his Twitter Account.

You may contact the author at thomas.jenewein@sap.com.

If you have comments about this article or publication, or would like to submit an article idea, please contact the editor.

Simone Buchwald

Simone Buchwald is the global Solution Principal for Learning and Talent Management at EPI-USE, consulting with global clients in SAP ERP HCM Talent Management and beyond. Before Simone joined EPI-USE, she was with SAP AG in Walldorf, Germany, for more than 12 years in HCM (Human Capital Management). Her main role during this time was driving the product development for SAP Learning Solution and SAP Enterprise Learning as a product manager. Simone has a degree in Business Administration and a background in IT. She is enthusiastic about learning and the latest technological trends.

You may contact the author at simone.buchwald@epiuse.de.

If you have comments about this article or publication, or would like to submit an article idea, please contact the editor.