Question

Go to www.roiinstitute.net, the website for ROI Institute, Inc., the leading resource on research, training, and networking for practitioners of the Phillips ROI Methodology \(^{\text {TM }}\). Click on "Free Tools," Review the "Nations Hotels - Measuring the ROl in Business Coaching." What are the strengths of this approach for determining ROI? What are the weaknesses?

Watch the video about how Skillsoft and IBM are using big data at HTTP://www.youtube.com/Watch?ve=Texn4xpazow. How is using big data to analyze employees learning usage patterns useful for companies? For employees?

Answer 1

1. National Hotel Corporation (NHC) is one of the best in the global lodging industry. The lodging industry was a highly competitive and cyclical industry. The major issue was that profits decreased as customers were price sensitive in the competitive industry and when the operations cost increased. Hence, the NHC executives were constantly trying to find ways to improve the operational efficiency, productivity, customer satisfaction, increased revenue and retention of high performing employees. To meet this growing need, NHC decided to provide a structured executive coaching program (VPs and above) which is the Coaching for the Business Impact (CBI). To implement this program, a 14 step process for coaching was determined. The objectives of the coaching program were very clear and concise such as reaction, learning, application, impact and ROI. The results were analyzed from the collected data. The results were very specific which helped the management to take strategic decisions. For example, the executives were required to connect their performance goals with the factors that had great impact such as productivity/efficiency, customer satisfaction, direct cost savings in operations, etc. The action plan after determining the needs were detailed. The action plan was very detailed which helped the executives to have a focus in their actions. The major benefits of the program were increased commitment, increased job satisfaction, increased customer service which led to increase in customer satisfaction, improved communication and more involvement in team work.

The program had weaknesses such as the data used were only of the first year; the measures varied in robustness and the system used were sensitivity analysis in which compelled the decision maker to make decisions. It failed to identify the connectivity or interrelationship between the variables.

2. Some type of content has many common users. Some content have unrelated usage patterns. Big data analytics is used across the company to identify across many users to identify such usage patterns. How this pattern evolves with time can also be identified by the company. Skillsoft is built in the powerful big data engine that analyzes the consumption pattern of the users. With the help of big data analytics, companies can create personalized learning recommendations and explain the user why it is important to the user. For example, the content was used in the past by many executives or the content is becoming popular in the growing industry. With the help of big data analytics, the company can decide the right time that the executive can be engaged. The system monitors the activity and the week/day preferences for the learning system. These factors are then aligned with the knowledge interaction frequency of the user. This helps the user to have a seamless learning experience for both the companies and employees.