For many companies, e-learning is primarily about one thing: achieving degrees in the most cost- and resource-efficient way possible. The number of successful completions of the e-learning course is then – literally – the measure of all things. It is easy to explain why many personnel development departments rely on this key figure: Completions are easy to measure. But can you really talk about “successful completion” if the course is a presentation that you clicked through? Does an e-learning course even deserve that name if it’s a video that you’ve only followed sporadically? No, we think, as an experienced e-learning provider. For e-learning to be successful, two things are needed: a professional e-learning solution worthy of the name, and valid e-learning KPIs. Only with meaningful e-learning KPI’s can you get more accurate feedback on the quality of the training, the learning success and finally the evaluation of the investment for the e-learning solution.

Let’s start with a basic question: What are e-learning metrics or e-learning KPIs anyway? They are numbers that are assigned to certain measurable variables in a project. One identifies the measurable variables and assigns them a target value. After the project has been implemented, its success can be reviewed using these metrics.

For example: you want to roll out a compliance e-learning training to all employees. You have 10,000 employees in the company. Since they want everyone to complete the training, they have set a target of 10,000 for the metric. After implementing the project, check how many of those 10,000 completed the e-learning in the first year.

The number of graduates does give you an indication of how and whether the e-learning offer has been accepted by your employees. But in the area of e-learning KPIs, much more is possible.

We know from experience that companies are often guided by KPIs that, by definition, are not performance indicators. While they are important for project managers as they negotiate budgets, for example, the following indicators do not make sense for HR development that wants to measure e-learning success:

• Training costs
• Number of training hours
• Evaluations after the course

These metrics say nothing about whether the goal of e-learning has really been achieved. After all, continuing education in the form of e-learning offerings should improve job performance and not cost little or involve many hours of training.

Here’s another example: Imagine you’re creating a digital sales training course using our interactive learning video format skillvid. After the e-learning training has been completed, monitor the sales turnover or sales success of new employees who have attended the training. This gives you a concrete number, the turnover, which you can monitor and compare. Of course, there are other examples and expressions with different variables. The following e-learning metrics are also useful:

• Return on investment of the training in %.
• Cost reduction in %
• Sales increase in %
• Time savings in %
• Reduction of the error rate in %.
• Improvement of the work result in %.

To measure the impact of the e-learning offering, you can additionally ask your employees how completing the sales training helped you sell the products.

A little tip: The better the e-learning training, the more positive the result will be when measuring your KPISs!

However, there is no point in measuring something that has no reference values. e-Learning metrics need a baseline value that can be set as a measurement value. In order to successfully measure e-learning metrics, valid legacy data, for example from reporting, is needed.

Of course, factors that are not primarily attributable to the e-learning offering can also have an impact on the KPIs. For example, after sales training, sales could suddenly increase due to seasonal conditions or a major advertising campaign. Such external factors need to be taken into account when measuring e-learning KPIs in order to get meaningful results that will form the basis for future e-learning solutions.

With the help of these two elements, valid e-learning metrics and reference values, you can see the success of your e-learning training in numbers. Since it can take some time before the first results are reflected in figures, the measurement should be carried out over a longer period of time. In the end, you’ll get metrics that clearly show you how your investment in e-learning is impacting your business success. For example, if the number of sales has increased by 10%, you can certainly attribute this success to the e-learning offering.