The latest addition to Monitor’s range of value-added services, Monitor Academy, is an E-learning platform like no other. It offers a new way of learning the ins and outs of Monitor at one’s own pace regardless of time and location. The lessons inside are constantly updated to make sure you get the most updated content to match Monitor’s continued improvements.

Before we delve further into the benefits and value of Monitor Academy, let us understand the story behind it, who masterminded it and how it came to be.

Meet Robert Djeerf, the mastermind of not only Monitor Academy, but also the latest iteration of Monitor, the G5. Robert started his career with Monitor in 1997, right after university. He wore many hats within the organization, spending a couple of years as a consultant and moved on to be a G4 system specialist.

After gaining much experience with G4, he started the G5 project as the Project Owner and Lead approximately 8 years ago. A new department was setup to develop Monitor ERP, leading to the system that we have today.

Being the creator that he was, Robert soon started to explore new possibilities to make internal learning efficient. At the time, there was a growing need to make training new employees on multiple subjects more efficient. With that, Robert became the Head of Monitor Academy, where he created most of the initial courses. He eventually brought on more people to join the team, and today there are 12 people in the team creating courses on subjects covering G5, internal processes, sales strategies, support, development, and many more.

As of today, there are four people working on four different courses at the same time, greatly speeding up course production. There are over 100 courses in both Swedish and English on Academy at the moment. The library of courses continues to grow with each passing day.

A solution that was initially created to significantly cut down on manual training time for employees would soon see its scope expanded to become a fast track education system for customers. Now you may be wondering what is in it for me. How does an E-learning platform have any relation to my manufacturing business?

We believe that any forward-looking organization will take employee education seriously, as a skilled workforce is an important asset to the company. Let us go through the common challenges that organizations face with internal education of their employees using traditional methodologies.

Restricted Accessibility and Knowledge Distribution
The most common challenge in traditional training is finding a suitable venue and time that suits all participants. Employees usually have busy work schedules and it is even more difficult to have everyone agree on a set training schedule. The situation gets even more complicated for multinational companies with dispersed locations. In such situation, accessibility to training is heavily restricted to only employees of certain geographic locations and inadvertently results in inconsistent knowledge distribution among employees.

Costly
Organizing training sessions can be costly. The trainer fees, venue rental, and refreshments can add up to a large sum. Even if internal experts are used as trainers, their time is also a cost to the company. The cost can go up even higher if a trainer is brought in from overseas for some specific training.

Low Engagement Rates
Much to our dismay, not all employees are positive about attending training courses. They may often question the need to do so and even think that it is a waste of their time as oftentimes training courses may take up days of an employee’s time. This may lead to low engagement rates as employees are in a way forced to attend pre-arranged training sessions that may clash with their own work schedules and deadlines.

Limited Learning Resources
Employees are unable to revisit a lesson after the training session has ended. Should they need to revise certain topics, the only resources available to them would be any notes that were distributed during the class or taken by themselves. They are also unable to contact the trainer for revision classes without incurring additional costs.

These are the challenges that Monitor Academy was designed to address internally in the beginning but has proven to be of great value to our customers. Monitor Academy has proven to extend the value of precious training hours by our consultants, making training sessions so much more effective for existing and new customers alike.

Monitor Academy has been well received by our customers since its official launch about two and half months ago. Customers really loved how it helped their staff to be more efficient during implementation projects.
We have seen the following benefits from users of Monitor Academy:

Unrestricted Accessibility and Knowledge Distribution
Being an E-learning platform, Monitor Academy allows access to its courses to users from all over the world. No longer are we bounded by location and time. Users can even access the Academy on the best device that is available to them at any point in time. The biggest advantage of E-learning is being able to distribute knowledge across the entire organization regardless of the location of employees.

Highly Cost Effective
Training hundreds and even thousands of employees from different geographic locations can now be done without racking up astronomical numbers on invoices. The cost to access Monitor Academy is reasonable for the value it can bring to an organization.

Effective Self-paced Learning
E-learning can really take the pressure off employees as they are no longer forced to squeeze in time to attend pre-arranged training sessions during peak seasons. Instead they can now take training courses online at a time and location that is comfortable to them. This results in increased engagement rates and higher concentration during the lessons leading to a more fruitful learning session. Monitor Academy also allows users to track their learning progress and compare it to their peers via gamification features. This may put in some positive competition between employees to see who is able to complete more courses and collect more certificates.

Unlimited Learning Resources
With Monitor Academy, users have unlimited learning resources at their fingertips. If they went through a lesson two months ago and needs a refresher now, they can easily log in to Academy and revisit that specific lesson an unlimited number of times. We are also constantly adding new courses and updating existing courses, so you can be sure that learning never stops with Monitor Academy.

The benefits we mentioned above are only a handful we can talk about without writing an entire book on Monitor Academy. Our courses are unique as it not only address the how in the lesson but also the why of learning said lesson. In Robert’s own words, “The How without a Why is quite pointless”, and this is what sets Monitor Academy apart from the competition.

To date, there are 250 – 300 Swedish customers who are using it. Out of that, 20 customers have bought licenses for their new employees and as a library of training material, they can easily review when needed.

We have received numerous customer feedback about how Monitor Academy has helped them make the best out of consultant training hours by allowing them to prepare beforehand with basic knowledge of the upcoming lesson.

In the new normal, the number of people who start to see the value of E-learning can only increase. E-learning is not the latest trend in town, instead, it is a growing need to help your organization better equip employees with essential skills, and knowledge while helping you save on training costs and indirectly produce a work-force that has the self-discipline and initiative to upskill themselves with continued education.