The Microsoft Academy has more than 30 people who must coordinate their efforts to develop and deliver online community-based learning for the Enterprise Sales Force. With no central place to manage data related to all stages of course production, staffers wasted time contacting colleagues to double-check the information required for their work. The team deployed a portal-based solution where an editable master catalog provides a single location for current, accurate data. The Academy has used this tool to improve productivity, streamline processes, and easily take on new business.

The Microsoft Academy has been developing and delivering online training for Microsoft sales specialists in the field since 2003. Its goal is to ensure that these specialists are informed about soon-to-be-shipped Microsoft® products and technologies that they are selling to customers.

Over the years, the Academy has produced more than 639 offerings. Originally, it delivered Facilitated Learning: online classrooms where students and instructors meet virtually over a course of 5 weeks. Then it provided self study courses. In 2005, the Academy introduced AcademyLive: daily, interactive one-hour webcasts. Its most recent offering, AcademyMobile, comes in the form of podcasts that provide quick snippets of product, solution, and sales information to a highly mobile field sales staff.

Today, the Academy has evolved into a virtual team (the majority of staffers work out of their homes) of more than 30 members. Staffers developed a system of tracking the development, resourcing, delivery, and follow-up for all course offerings in the Academy master catalog using disparate software and paper-based spreadsheets, phone calls, and e-mail messages.

"While we had a master schedule available on our team's administrative Web site, only one person could update it," recalls Ludovic Fourrage, Group Program Manager at the Academy. "So everyone took the information they needed and created different spreadsheets to track specific data pertaining to their jobs, including class descriptions, product information, instructors, resourcing, final publication dates, and field participation. There was no central place where everyone could get the latest information about the many steps that go into developing a training program. As we varied our offerings, we just added more spreadsheets, resulting in duplicate efforts, miscommunications, and unreliable data."

For Michelle Solon, Business Manager at the Academy, managing that master schedule had become an obstacle for herself and for the team. "I report on all aspects of our offerings, and I need the most up-to-date holistic view of the data to provide Ludovic with accurate information," she explains. "As I was the only one who made changes to the master schedule, I had to manually update other team members' changes. I wasted hours contacting people to verify data."

At the AcademyLive side of the business, staffers used a different master schedule and taxonomy. "Unlike Michelle's situation, everyone working on AcademyLive offerings could make changes to our master schedule," says Mark Kashman, Program Manager for AcademyLive. "That meant no one knew which version reflected the truth."

For Resource and Workflow Manager Chris McFaul, it was difficult to assign resources for upcoming offerings for the entire Academy. "I was constantly switching among the spreadsheets to ensure a balanced course offering across the Product Groups and between the different delivery mechanisms," she says.

These difficulties concerned Fourrage. "My priority is to optimize my team's efficiency so we can take on new business. Our current processes were inefficient, so I looked for a tool that would foster collaboration, knowledge sharing, and streamlined processes."

Fourrage turned to Microsoft portal technologies to consolidate the data collected on the various spreadsheets and make it editable by every member of the Academy team. "We were familiar with the latest version of the software because we had been using Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003 to share documents and to manage our public-facing Web site," he says. "I could use this software to create a custom list, which I envisioned as the master catalog that would replace all those spreadsheets. This was the perfect tool to track all the information pertaining to the development of our offerings."

Team members can create a custom view of the master catalog that contains only the information pertaining to their work. They can also easily update the master catalog, which resides on the team's administrative extranet site, through their Web browsers or offline through spreadsheet software. Any changes to the data are immediately reflected to everyone else through the master catalog.

The catalog itself presents a familiar Microsoft interface. "Staff members can use drop-down boxes or check boxes that allow them to add more specific data to the master catalog than they could using the spreadsheets," explains Ellice Ellenhorn, who as Content Manager at the Academy is responsible for updating the catalog on the public-facing Web site. For example, in a new column titled "Role Type," staffers can use the checkboxes to designate which of the major Microsoft roles in the technology pre-sales community would benefit from the course.

"I couldn't believe how quickly Ludovic developed the master catalog," enthuses McFaul. "He literally did it in a weekend! Then it took only a month for team members to create their own views and start using the new system."

"I wanted a tool that we could pick up quickly and continue with our work," Fourrage says. "We developed a new taxonomy and then built the master catalog as we worked. It's so user friendly and dynamic that the team members could quickly verify if the columns we named were mapping to our business needs or not."

Kashman and the AcademyLive staffers have added their own columns to the new master catalog, which forms a data view for staffers dedicated to AcademyLive courses. "Now we have the same naming conventions as the rest of the team, which provides valuable consistency to the data for people who work across both jurisdictions," says Kashman.

Today, all members of the Academy Team work with the master catalog for course development, delivery, and follow-up. Using the new solution for the first three months of 2007, the Academy has already reached more than 11,000 people in the field.

"I wanted a tool that our team could use to streamline internal processes, improve communications, standardize data management, and grow the business. Our master catalog, built on flexible, user-friendly portal technology, is that tool," says Fourrage.

Kashman concurs: "When you can find the information you need right away and stay productive, it gives you a sense of pride. The new master catalog has made all of us at the Academy feel empowered."

The master catalog is the central point around which individual team members have developed new ways of streamlining workflow. Ellenhorn created a personal view of the master catalog that replicates the catalog on the public Web site. "Then when it comes time to update the public calendar for the field, all I have to do is a copy and paste," she explains. "I can access the master catalog at any time to see who updated what, and when. No more hours of fact checking!"

For Registrar and Tools Integration Program Manager Kim Ritchie, creating the registration pages for an average of 18 Academy offerings a month is much easier now that she doesn't have to search for information required by the registration tools she uses. "Instead of looking through spreadsheets for data, it's all there in the master catalog," she says. "It's saving many hours of my time for every course I register."

And for McFaul, the new master catalog gives her a global view of all instructional designers' current and upcoming assignments. Now she can divide work fairly among available resources across both jurisdictions, without comparing spreadsheets.

According to Kashman, with accessible, up-to-date information in the master catalog, team members are saving hours of waiting for e-mail responses or for phone calls to be returned. There are now far fewer communication time gaps that force people to set aside their work until they get an answer.

Many team members are also using the catalog as a conduit for communication that's further improving productivity. "I have a comments field where I can put my notes, so that everyone can see what I'm up to, or if there is anything special to know about a particular class," says Ritchie.

According to all team members, the most important benefit of the master catalog is easy access to quality, up-to-date information available throughout the life cycle of a training course. "Now that everyone uses the catalog to take a more active role in managing their own data, it's more accurate and timely," says Solon. "And with the time that I've saved not having to manually update the master catalog, I can do additional data quality assurance, refining the taxonomy, making sure we reference hyperlinks the same way, and ensuring that our naming conventions are being followed."

Some team members are taking advantage of the portal technology to set up alerts on specific columns in their view of the master catalog to notify them of any changes that have been made. "I rely on this feature to keep up with collecting key pieces of information for all the new courses for registration," explains Ritchie.

When Fourrage joined the Academy, one of his top goals was to grow the business by reaching out to different constituencies within Microsoft so he made sure that the portal technology he chose for the team would be scalable and flexible. "Recently, the new catalog helped me bring on board a whole new line of business, with minimal disruptions," he confirms. "The Academy is going to take on 120 new webcasts and up to 15 facilitated courses for an audience of 1,000 people in the field for the Developer and Platform Evangelist team. All we did was add some extra columns to introduce the new naming conventions and branding to the master catalog."

Staffers can use the master catalog in other ways to help provide better service and grow the business. For example, now that it is possible to add roles-based data to the master catalog, Ellenhorn can publish that information to the public-facing catalog. Now, visitors to the site can take advantage of new search capabilities in Office SharePoint Server 2007 to find exactly what they need. "We can advertise our classes as being appropriate to certain roles so people can search for offerings that are directly related to their role, product expertise, and training needs," she explains.

Fourrage and his team are using the new tool to improve process efficiency and streamline communication. "We took Microsoft portal technologies and fashioned a tool that we all use every day to be more productive," he concludes. "The return on investment is that we can produce more training materials to better serve the field by adding new business—all within my budget. That makes everyone happy."

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