Approaches to Learning & HR for Large SME's and Enterprise Organisations

There is a gulf between managing learning and development in large SMEs (up to about 1,500 employees) compared to very much larger enterprise organisations but I suspect the gap is narrowing.

A particular challenge for all organisations is meaningful management and reporting. In the past, enterprise organisations have turned to really large off-the-shelf solutions like Sharepoint to help manage their Intranets. This can be an appropriate choice where in-house expertise can be combined with good suppliers. It also opens up the possibility of integration with similar off-the-shelf third-party systems for HR and e-learning delivery. But there are downsides: costs can be eye-watering, the choice of combinations that will work together can be extremely narrow, and flexibility and innovation very difficult to achieve. Large SMEs have other priorities and opportunities compared to the bigger enterprises: they are probably enjoying some successes with a variety of best-of-breed systems already in place (most likely commercially licensed and open source); they may lack a large internal team to resource development through very complex procurement and upscaling.

These factors combined with financial constraints may actually provide much in the way of opportunity. Tailored to meet specific needs, there's a lot to be said for approaches that seek to integrate pre-existing open source solutions to provide innovative, top-flight delivery and management systems at a fraction of the price of off-the-shelf products. Open source systems like Drupal can drive rapid development and deployment of innovative features and services.

Drupal can certainly be used to for e-learning deployment but equally it can be integrated with other open source tools like Moodle if required. Of course, there is a pay-off. HR systems (amongst others) still require data for compliance and staff development. Moving data between systems is always challenging. But using a balanced set of approaches (single sign on, automated data synchronisation and so on) can obviate the need for adoption of one-size-fits-all software and open the way for greater flexibility and choice for larger SMEs.