Research Bulletin | 2010 · BERSIN & ASSOCIATES Research Bulletin | 2010 THIS MATERIAL IS LICENSED TO BLACKBOARD FOR DISTRIBUTION ONLY. Introduction Blackboard is …

BERSIN & ASSOCIATES © 2010

BERSIN & ASSOCIATES

Research Bulletin | 2010

THIS MATERIAL IS LICENSED TO BLACKBOARD FOR DISTRIBUTION ONLY.

Introduction

Blackboard is well-known as one of the most successful software and

services companies in the higher education marketplace. Today, the

company’s revenues are now more than $377 million per year and, despite

the recession, grew by 21 percent in 2009. With almost 1,200 employees

and more than $100 million in free cashflow, Blackboard is also one of the

most profitable software companies in the education and training industry.

Today, Blackboard’s products are ubiquitous in the higher education

market (now well-used in the secondary education market), and are widely

used for business transactions and other applications in education, as

well. Through a customer-focused strategy of making sure their academic

customers gain great value from the software, Blackboard has built a

huge ecosystem of students, academics and administrators who regard

Blackboard as a foundation for their learning and academic experience.

Approximately five years ago, Blackboard set in place a plan to study and

enter the corporate marketplace. The corporate training market (unlike the

academic market) considers a learning management system (LMS) to be an

administrative system, a training catalog, a corporate compliance-reporting

application and a system for learning. In fact, in the business world, the

LMS still functions primarily as an administrative application with the

actual “learning experience” taking place in a classroom, or through the

use of separate e-learning courses, videos and other forms of content,

which are tracked and managed by the LMS.

In the academic world, by contrast, most training and education is still

led by instructors. So Blackboard’s entire system and focus has always

been to support and enable “instructor-facilitated” learning – giving

February 16, 2010 Volume 5, Issue 4

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Blackboard Emerges as a Leader in Corporate Learning Solutions

About the Author

Josh Bersin,Principal Analyst


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Blackboard Emerges as a Leader in Corporate Learning Solutions Josh Bersin | Page 2


teachers and instructors very easy-to-use tools to manage classes, share

content, assess students, bring students together online, post and share

assignments, share grades, and facilitate instructional support activities

that may take place online or in-person.

When Blackboard first studied the corporate market, the company

realized that its system was not really suited to be a corporate LMS.

At that point in time, Blackboard was not designed to have role and

domain management, extensive enterprise reporting, and complex

certification and compliance management built in. So the company

decided to focus on the other problems of learning – giving business

users a platform that makes it very easy and cost-effective for instructors

(or trainers) to build, manage and deliver many forms of training.

In the first few years of Blackboard’s product introduction, the

company patiently sold the solution to small training groups with

specific problems. We profiled several of Blackboard’s early customers

(an insurance company training insurance agents, for example) and

found them to be thrilled with the system’s ease of use, low cost and

tremendous degree of flexibility.

Over time as Blackboard further expanded its corporate successes

(including tremendous penetration into the U.S. Army, in which

instructor-led training accounts for millions of hours of education

per year), the company began to find more and more traction. The

product was expanded to include more robust content management,

full SCORM1 and AICC2 compliance, role-based class and student

management, and robust reporting.

Today, five years later, Blackboard has emerged as a significant and very

important player in this market.

1 “Sharable Content Object Reference Model” (SCORM) is a set of specifications for course content that produces reusable learning objects.

2 The “Aviation Industry CBT Committee” (AICC) is an international association of technology-based training professionals that develops guidelines for the aviation industry in the development, delivery and evaluation of computer-based training (CBT) and related training technologies.

Approximately

five years ago,

Blackboard set in

place a plan to

study and enter

the corporate

marketplace.

KEY POINT


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The Size of Blackboard’s Corporate Business

Blackboard’s corporate learning business rivals that of many of the more

well-known LMS companies. The company has more than 300 licensed

corporate customers, all deployed either on the company’s on-premise,

hosted or SaaS platform. Its revenues (which are not publically disclosed)

put the company in the top 10 LMS vendors in the market.

While the company is still not considered a “first-tier” LMS vendor

in many RFP reviews (because the product is not truly a corporate

administration system), we believe Blackboard can add tremendous

value in any small, midsize or large organization. While most large

companies cannot or will not replace their LMSs (except every seven

to nine years through technology obsolescence), they all have sales

training, customer service training, customer training, IT training and

many other groups that need the functionality of Blackboard to make

their training easy and cost-effective.

Source: Blackboard, 2010.

Figure 1: Sample Screenshot – Blackboard


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Key Capabilities of Blackboard’s Product – A Leader in Informal Learning

Blackboard’s corporate solution is clearly designed for “learning and

training” – not only training administration. The system uses the course

catalog metaphor (just like all other LMSs), but then within a course

the instructor and student can easily create modules and assignments,

which may consist of content, assessments, online videos or any other

form of web activity. In a sense, Blackboard allows an instructor to build

out a course without buying a full-blown content development tool.


Figure 2: Sample Screenshot – Blackboard Content Development


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But moreover, Blackboard’s learning platform also embeds the concepts

of informal learning (which we define as on-demand, social and

embedded learning) right into the platform. An instructor can create

a blog3, wiki4, discussion activity and content-sharing space within any

course – and can actually ask students to contribute an assignment or

other content as part of a structured learning program.

Rather than just “bolt on” social learning tools to the LMS, in

Blackboard they can be integrated and managed within each individual

course. This gives the instructor or trainer the power to configure and

implement informal learning in his / her own special way.

3 “Blog” is a shortened form of the phrase “web log,” which is a form of personal publishing that readers can discuss.

4 “Wiki” is from the Hawaiian word for “fast” – and stands for web pages that can be collectively and collaboratively edited on the fly by readers.


Figure 3: Sample Screenshot – Blackboard Blogs and Journals


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Several examples of this are profiled in our research library. Watson

Pharmaceuticals, for example, uses Blackboard to train its sales team.

Sales training (as we all know well) is best done through a combination

of leader-led training and collaborative sharing by salespeople.

Oftentimes, it is an individual sales rep who has found a highly effective

tool, approach or sales pitch from which others can learn.

In the Watson program, Blackboard is used to not only build core skills,

but to build deep levels of specialization – taking the basic sales training

everyone needs and enhancing it with anecdotal, field-level experiences

that are shared through the online learning experience.

Blackboard has leveraged the platform for many other similar programs,

including Westinghouse’s global training and certification for nuclear

power plant operators. If you question whether Blackboard could

handle an industrial-strength training application, consider the level

of rigor and detail required in nuclear power plant operations. This

problem (like many other training applications) requires a combination

of basic skills and rapid sharing of tacit operational expertise. The

Blackboard solution enables Westinghouse to build and deliver both on

a global scale.

Blackboard Demonstrates a New Model for Corporate Learning Platforms

While Blackboard is not trying to replace most corporate LMS

implementations, the company’s clear and easy-to-use, learning-

focused system is a fresh new solution for corporate training managers.

Companies that want to rapidly build new sales, customer service

and customer training programs (and often find the corporate LMS

too cumbersome to use) can rapidly use Blackboard to manage their

environments. Midsize companies, which do not have the time,

money or staff to support a corporate LMS, can use Blackboard as their

learning platform – and it can be fully managed by a single trainer or

training team.

The company’s patient, customer-focused approach has paid off – and

we expect Blackboard to play an ever larger role in the corporate

learning landscape over time.

Blackboard’s

learning platform

also embeds

the concepts of

informal learning

right into the

platform.

KEY POINT

We expect

Blackboard to play

an ever larger role

in the corporate

learning landscape

over time.

A N A LY S I S


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Research Bulletin | 2010 · BERSIN & ASSOCIATES Research Bulletin | 2010 THIS MATERIAL IS LICENSED TO BLACKBOARD FOR DISTRIBUTION ONLY. Introduction Blackboard is …