Capital One University doesn’t have a campus. It doesn’t even have a building. What it does have is a companywide online presence that has paid dividends, largely because it is seamless and user-oriented.
Capital One’s learning team knew it had to concentrate on each individual user, which meant personalizing the system, making it as intuitive as possible and limiting the number of steps to access information. The university’s portal site follows best practices, intuitively combining information and action.
The Virginia-based financial services company launched its corporate university portal in 2004 as an important step toward eliminating learning redundancies in its numerous business lines.
The university needed to focus on learning and development with a more holistic strategy, which meant putting all its learning and development resources on the portal.
To keep Capital One University as seamless as possible, the company created a portal in which a user can easily access the learning management system (LMS) with only two clicks.
An associate’s first login to the computer each day opens up the corporate portal site, which can be customized, depending on the information the user would like to view. One click takes the user to the university portal and from there into the LMS, which is a single platform across the enterprise.
Capital One University’s LMS offers personal customization because the users control it, with each associate having an individual learning plan.
Capital One used the same branding standards for its LMS that it used on the portal. As a result, associates don’t notice the change from one software environment (the portal) to another (the LMS) because the look and feel are largely the same.
The company generally uses the same metrics to assess the value of the university that it uses for business performance. Learning success can be measured with net present value (NPV) or increase in sales or cycle time reduction. Each business unit is able to quantify the results of learning.
In setting up its virtual learning, Capital One University focuses on three elements:
The university focuses on delivering value by offering programs that help drive sales or reduce costs. For example, a university-designed program to make call center associates more efficient results in an increase in center-generated sales. Another program teaches lean methods that are then applied to business processes, resulting in process re-engineering, which increases worker productivity.
Capital One University does not lack feedback, all students are surveyed upon completing a course, and the company conducts quarterly learning reviews with client organizations. Then, it measures the impact of learning through the application of business metrics.
One series of reviews led to a re-engineering of the onboarding program. An orientation class that lasted nearly three days was shortened to five hours by creating e-learning content easily accessed by new hires before joining the company. The result was a three-year NPV of $1.44 million returned to the business.
