A delegation from Ministry of Oil successfully completed the first part of a two month training program in eLearning development and administration conducted by CommLab India. The participants learnt all aspects of elearning implementation – installing and maintaining eLearning infrastructure, developing online portals, instructional design and courseware developments tools such as Photoshop and Flash. In a brief ceremony organized at the CommLab premises on 5th May 2012, the CEO of CommLab Mr. R.K. Prasad awarded certificates to all the participants who completed Part I of the training.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Prasad appreciated the dedication and commitment of the team on both sides to make the program a success. Ms. Atyaf Hamed Obeed, the training supervisor who is leading the team from Iraq expressed her satisfaction on the progress of training. She believes that her team will benefit immensely with the knowledge gained and will be able to implement eLearning across all the Ministry of Oil affiliated centers in Iraq; which include refineries, training institutes, and the ministry center itself.

The training program is a part of a turnkey project that includes setting up fully functional eLearning centers capable of providing synchronous and asynchronous learning solutions, setting up of the Learning Management System (LMS) along with training in developing custom courseware. CommLab is partnering with Ministry of Oil, Iraq to provide comprehensive eLearning solutions comparable with the best in the industry.

About CommLab India:

CommLab India (www.commlabindia.com) is a custom eLearning solutions company based in India. Since 2000, it has been providing state-of-the-art eLearning services to organizations across the world in the areas of Custom eLearning courseware development, content translation, localization services, and learning management system integration services. Some of its reputed clients are BC Hydro, George Washington University, Kawasaki and Deloitte. This Company is the preferred vendor to some Fortune 500 companies such as Alcoa, Unilever, Mettler Toledo and Pepco Holding Inc.

CommLab India celebrated “Annual Loyalty Celebrations” on 3rd of March 2012. On this occasion the CEO, Mr. R K Prasad addressed the employees and their families, who were invited to join in the celebrations. Here are the excerpts from the speech that was delivered by our CEO.

Good morning and welcome to all of you! A special welcome to our dear guests. This is the first time that we invited families of our people to be part of our celebrations. I hope you will enjoy this meeting and will want to come again next year.

Dream come true

When our dreams come true, we are happy. Today, Ayesha and I are happy because 12 years ago when we started this company, one of our dreams was to share our success with our employees. Today, we have taken a small but sure ‘first step’ towards sharing a part of the profit that the company has made with our people.

But the question is how to do we do that? Should we share it in proportion to a person’s current salary, or should we share it based on how well he or she has performed this year? It was a difficult decision for us.

Competence and Loyalty

When we started thinking about it, we realized that a company’s success depends on two things – the first is the competence or performance of its people and second thing, in my opinion a more important factor, is the stability of its people. In other words, loyalty of people. The first one – competence is a quality of the mind and the second one – loyalty is a quality of the heart. And as we all know, it is the heart that wins at the end! With competence, we perform but with loyalty to each other, we survive any hardship and come out stronger.

Loyalty is an old fashioned word these days, especially, in the corporate world. Today, it is the hire and fire policy by companies and job hopping by employees that is widely prevalent. The success of a business is measured, not by how much money it makes in a year but by the length of its existence in business. We make money one year and don’t, the next year. The key is to survive. If we survive, we grow and money has to come. And for survival, we need to stick together.

Loyalty bonus

CommLab is fortunate to have a big number of loyal people. These people became our family, Ayesha’s and mine. They become friends and confidants. We are safe with them and they, with us. These are the people with whom we want to share the profits of the company, in proportion to the number of days they chose to spend with CommLab. Some are with us for 8 years, some 7, some 6 and so on. But the good news is all of you have spent some time with us. So, all of you get a share, but proportionate to the number of days you spent with us. This loyalty bonus as we call it has nothing to do with a person’s current salary, current position or any other criteria. The only thing that is considered is the number of days he or she spent with us.

A piece of advice to youth

As an experienced professional, my advice to the youth is stick to a company. World over, if you see the senior executives in the Fortune companies, they all have spent more than a decade in a single company.

Thank you for listening to me.

CommLab India was invited by the College of Agricultural banking (CAB), the apex training institution of the Reserve Bank of India to address delegates at its annual conference scheduled on Feb 23 and 24, 2012 in Pune. CAB caters to the training needs of commercial banks and cooperative banks of India. The delegates for the conference were the Principals of Apex Training Institutions of Banks, primarily senior officers of the bank heading their training colleges.

In view of the large scale retirement in the banking sector in the next two years and the consequent influx of a large number of young people in banks, the theme of the conference was chosen as ‘The advent of Gen Y-Capacity building through training‘. Keeping in line with the theme of the conference, Shalini Merugu, the Director for Learning Advocacy at CommLab India, presented a talk on ‘Leveraging Learning Technology to Train Gen Y‘, covering emerging trends, current issues in training, and various methods of training Gen Y employees in banks. The talk covered how technology could be used effectively to train Gen Y both inside and outside classrooms and how training could leverage Learning Technology for a complete learning solution.

CommLab India is a custom eLearning solutions company based in India. Its core business is LEARNING and CONSULTING across various industries and domains. Since 2000, it has been providing state-of-the-art eLearning services to organizations across the world in the areas of Custom eLearning Courseware Development, Translation and Localization of Courses, Learning Management System Integration, and Turnkey Solutions. Today, it has a host of Fortune 500 companies as its clients that have gained a significant advantage by deploying their eLearning solutions.

Some of its reputed clients are BC Hydro, George Washington University, Kawasaki and Deloitte. It is also the preferred vendor to Fortune 500 companies such as Alcoa, Unilever, Mettler Toledo and Pepco Holding Inc.

Product training is the most important aspect of sales training. With changing business scenarios and shorter product life cycles, there is a need to relook the way training has been done in the past -with thick product manuals for reference, rigid schedules for instructor-led training, and limited or no peer-to-peer learning. How can training be aligned to the changing requirements of sales personnel today? How can organizations provide anytime, anywhere access to training and information? How can information be made available in a format those appeals to sales people, while facilitating peer-to-peer interaction for collaborative learning?

On Thursday, February 16, 2012 at 10.30am EST, CommLab India is conducting a live webinar on “A New Paradigm in Product Training – Merging Content, Technology, & Service“. The webinar aims at getting participants acquainted with new solutions to make Product Trainings more relevant and purposeful for sales people.

The webinar is completely free and will include answers to the following questions:

• Why is the traditional paradigm for training no longer relevant?
• What is the new paradigm and how will it change the way we look at product trainings?
• What are the key prerequisites for organizations to implement this new paradigm of training?
• How can we deliver highly effective product trainings by integrating content, technology, and service?

To register for this webinar, please visit: http://www.commlabindia.com/elearning-resources/a-new-paradigm-in-training-webinar.php

About CommLab India:

CommLab India is a custom eLearning solutions provider based in India. Since 2000, it has been providing state-of-the-art eLearning services to organizations across the world in the areas of custom eLearning courseware development, content translation, localization services and learning management system integration services. Some of its reputed clients are BC Hydro, George Washington University, Kawasaki and Deloitte. It is also the preferred vendor to Fortune 500 companies such as Alcoa, Unilever, Mettler Toledo and Pepco Holding Inc.

eLearning edge – an online networking group of elearning professionals now has 3000 members. eLearning edge is CommLab India’s LinkedIn group which facilitates professional conversations between individuals in the eLearning industry since 2009.

Open to both experts and novices, this platform helps members keep themselves up to date with the latest developments in the ‘Learning industry’. They get insights into the changes happening in the industry while interacting with peers across the world. Members exchange their views and observations in the field of corporate training, academic learning, business learning solutions and e-learning.

eLearning edge also provides access to some of its resources for the benefit of its members. Members can download presentations, training materials or courses for their professional betterment and get information about future webinars related to the industry.

To become a member of eLearning edge group on LinkedIn, visit http://linkd.in/uHop8B.

CommLab is pleased to announce that Abdul Razzak Hussain has been promoted as Director – Technology Services, with immediate effect. As the Director-Technology, he will be overall in charge of all LMS platforms for various clients, which includes setting up the systems in place, establishing processes, and maintaining systems on an ongoing basis.

He ably leads a team of software programmers and technologists and provides them the direction to deliver quality deliverables and meet the deadlines of his department and the goals of the organization. Learning Technology Services includes LMS/ LCMS services, initiating the incubation of new technology-enabled applications, and their deployment in business.

Having handled numerous projects at CommLab, Razzak is well-versed with courseware and technology requirements and has successfully led project management and learning design teams to produce quality work. In fact, he is the internal Six Sigma champion at CommLab as well.

The COO of CommLab, Ms. Ayesha Habeeb Omer commented, “Razzak has excellent conceptual grasp of eLearning and the implications of today’s technologically dynamic environment. He has been appreciated by our customers for successfully customizing certain aspects of authoring tools such as Flash, Articulate, Captivate and Lectora in accordance with the needs of the project.”

Razzak joined CommLab India as a Programmer Trainee in 2004, on completion of a Masters in Computer Science from Osmania University. He has grown with the organization, accepting various responsibilities in Production, Project management and R & D departments.

CommLab India has been awarded an eLearning contract by the Ministry of Oil, Republic of Iraq. This turnkey project is the first of its kind for the Ministry of Oil. The first phase of this project involves a one-year pilot across three of their locations – a refinery, a training center and the oil ministry. CommLab India will be providing the entire gamut of eLearning services– setting up eLearning centers, synchronous & asynchronous learning solutions, LMS and training their L&D staff and of course, custom courseware development.

This project was the culmination of a series of meetings with key stakeholders from the Ministry of Oil who saw the tremendous value CommLab India could provide them in launching their eLearning initiative. CommLab India will be using state-of-the-art information and communication technology combined with Industry-standard e-learning design practices and world-class project management to help Ministry of Oil achieve its training goals.

Speaking on this memorable milestone, the CEO RK Prasad, said “We are proud of being awarded this project. We got this order against industry leaders in Oil and Gas training in the Middle East. We really look forward to lending our expertise in corporate training, the development of custom content, implementation of LMS, and offering extensive training and support to help the Ministry of Oil roll out this exciting initiative”. The COO Dr. Ayesha Omer added “Our multi-discipline expertise in all aspects of corporate training and eLearning, coupled with our proven track record and solid testimonials from delighted customers were the key factors for winning the contract.”

CommLab India is looking forward to partnering with the Ministry of Oil to help their people acquire the relevant skills, knowledge and qualifications for contributing effectively to the oil and gas industry.

About CommLab India:

CommLab India (www.commlabindia.com) is a custom e-learning solutions company based in India. Since 2000, it has been providing state-of-the-art e-learning services to organizations across the world in the areas of Custom e-learning courseware development, content translation, localization services, and learning management system integration services. Some of its reputed clients are BC Hydro, George Washington University, Kawasaki and Deloitte. This Company is the preferred vendor to some Fortune 500 companies such as Alcoa, Unilever, Mettler Toledo and Pepco Holding Inc.

Many organizations launch an array of e-learning courses based on the assumption that it will cater to their training needs. But they miss the fact that employee participation in their e-learning initiatives is the most crucial factor for their training implementation success. At CommLab India, we have helped organizations in not only e-learning design and development but also in making e-learning implementation a success with good employee buy-in for these e-training courses.

On Thursday, October 27, 2011 at 10 am EDT, we are conducting a live webinar on Communication Strategies for Marketing e-Learning. The webinar aims to cover the main reasons for employee resistance to e-learning adoption and effective ways to overcome this resistance.

The webinar is completely free and specifically covers:

• Why do you need to market e-learning?
• What are the drawbacks of a typical approach to rolling out e-learning?
• How can you use a basic promotional mix to promote e-learning among your employees?
• What communication strategies can you use for each aspect of the promotional mix?
• What are a few challenges of marketing e-learning?
• What are a few best practices to overcoming resistance to e-learning?

To register for this webinar, please visit: http://www.commlabindia.com/e-learning-resources/strategies-for-marketing-e-learning-webinar.php

About CommLab India:

CommLab India is a custom e-learning solutions company based in India. Since 2000, it has been providing state-of-the-art e-learning services to organizations across the world in the areas of custom e-learning courseware development, content translation, localization services and learning management system integration services. Some of its reputed clients are BC Hydro, George Washington University, Kawasaki and Deloitte. It is also the preferred vendor to Fortune 500 companies such as Alcoa, Unilever, Mettler Toledo and Pepco Holding Inc.

Training employees is a must in every organization- either because of new employees joining the organization or the experienced employees upgraded to new posts. Both require to learn new techniques and apply the same to their jobs. The challenge for these organizations is to train such professionals on the job within a minimum period of time and at affordable costs. To overcome this challenge, most organizations adapting to unconventional modes of training. The transition from the traditional classroom training to new learning methods including e-learning, m-learning and so on is very high.

In a global market where the organization has a geographically distributed workforce and most communication is done online via chat, mail, telecommunication rather than face-to-face, most professionals prefer online communication and adopting online learning.  eLearning can cater to the needs of these employees from culturally diverse backgrounds who speak different languages by being amenable to translation.

We at CommLab India, offer e-learning design and development services to more than 50 Fortune companies across seven countries. Here is a video to give you a quick tour of our services provided to the leading organizations around the world.