SAP Chief Learning Officer Calls for More Focused Employee Education and Measurable Business Outcomes

JEDDAH, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - March 10, 2014 - The Chief Learning Officer of the world's largest business software company today urged Saudi Arabian businesses to embrace big data and disruptive technologies to improve employee prospects and profitability.

Speaking at in Jeddah at ASTD MENA 2014, the premier training and development event in the region, Jenny Dearborn said that, more than ever before, smart companies are "redefining" workplace education and precisely aligning it with business objectives to dramatic, positive effect.

"Big Data and disruptive technologies can be game-changers for businesses in Saudi Arabia when it comes to training and education," she explained.

"But changes are needed. Moving forward, learning needs to care more about business results and less about the traditional training metrics like number of learners trained.  The smartest companies are reinventing workplace learning in an effort to make their programs more relevant and effective. This entails creating a culture that encourages continuous learning and develops innovative leaders at all levels of the organization."

"With big data and predictive analytics there is no longer any excuse for not connecting learning to business-impact metrics," she added.

"Learning success can be assessed in terms of sales cycles, deal win rate, service response times, customer satisfaction, product quality and other business metrics, as well as employee engagement and productivity. When we redesigned workplace learning at SAP, for example, employee attrition dropped 80 percent. That was a big win for our company."

As the Chief Learning Officer at SAP, Dearborn leads an internationally-acclaimed and award-winning team, which has been recognized as the best performing corporate learning department in the world by eLearning Magazine. Responsible for the educative improvement of over 67,000 employees at SAP, she is accountable to design, align and drive overall learning activities to enable measurable business impact.

-Ends-

Reethu Thachil
Wallis Marketing Consultants
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
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Email: reethu.thachil@wallis-mc.com
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© Press Release 2014