Ward Consulting - Production operations case studies

PRODUCTION OPERATIONS

	Production Operations
	Publishing quality content is just the beginning of the business of learning. The business must supplement the content with all the systems and services required for a comprehensive learning environment that facilitates the transfer of knowledge. The content delivery infrastructure, learning management services (LMS), and virtual classroom production must be supported by e-commerce, fulfillment systems, technical support, and quality assurance. These case studies illustrate what I can do for you.
American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN)	I managed the migration of the AACN’s production LMS to a new provider. We migrated over 15,000 active learners spread across hundreds of independent customer learning portals from the legacy LMS to a major service provider that offered the functionality and capacity required for the accelerated growth the business was experiencing. The learners migrated complete with their continuing education (CE) history. The LMS manage the inventory and issuance of the customers’ end user licenses ensuring that the right content reaches the right learner at the right time. The LMS are integrated with other third-party services that include: ecommerce payment system online exams and reporting CE Center They are also supported by: technical support quality control processes continuous enhancement cycles These all come together to optimize the value of the services provided to our customers as the capabilities of our systems grow. The LMS have delivered AACN E-Learning to well over 30,000 learners and 700 health care facilities. Under my management, the business grew from less than $2-million a year right through the Great Recession to more than a $5-million business in just four years.
Ascolta	As the Manager of e-Business Systems, I was responsible for deploying and managing the Ascolta Virtual classroom. After extensive evaluation and testing, we selected Centra — the most feature-rich virtual classroom server in 1999 — for our synchronous elearning environment. The Ascolta Virtual classroom was supported by: fully-equipped instructor studios and adjoining production rooms a fault-tolerant Internet data center with redundant servers virtual lab pods with live Cisco devices fulfillment and technical support operations train-the-trainer classes for teaching in the virtual classroom online course catalog, schedule of classes, and ecommerce This combined to be the most comprehensive and advanced asynchronous elearning operation of its time. The seamless integration of the virtual classroom with such a full suite of supplementary services is still unrivaled by many leading providers to this day. The Ascolta Virtual classroom served over 10,000 learners, many of them satisfied return customers, over the years I managed it.

Production Operations