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SAP and SuccessFactors, an SAP company, announced the release of SAP Jam Collaboration, a social software platform designed to improve informal learning.
Jam Collaboration supports the SAP SuccessFactors Learning solution in a way to help employees learn in a more engaged and collaborative manner.
The platform provides learning, mentoring, and development communities for sharing content, solving problems, asking questions, or managing learning and content development plans.
Because Jam Collaboration is tightly integrated with an organization’s learning management system (LMS), employees have a seamless experience that fosters a continuous learning culture by for training and development.
“Collaborative learning technologies help companies adapt and maintain their competitive edge by using educators within their organizations,” Sameer Patel, senior vice president of product management and go-to-market at SAP, told eWEEK. “Capturing the knowledge of these experienced and successful leaders in a community structure provides the ideal combination of learning in a social setting.”
He explained embedding social collaboration technology within an organization’s business and learning processes provides simple ways for employees to create, share and discover new content, and connect with colleagues using tools and methods with which they are already familiar.
The platform includes scale mentoring and development programs with plan creation, task assignments, progress tracking and connection with experts.
“With SAP Jam Collaboration for learning, employees have a space to ask instructors, experts or colleagues to discuss and reinforce understanding of information or processes beyond the initial course or training,” he said. “The software can also provide rich content and experiences for mentoring and up-skilling employees. With an internal repository for information, teams or departments can avoid replicating mistakes and overcome past barriers to learning.”
In addition, Jam Collaboration facilitates collaboration on curriculum plans, allowing users to share schedules, assign deliverables, review and edit content as a group, and distribute training materials.
“With learning development being costly at $1,700 an hour, companies are looking to streamline these costs, while at the same time helping employees develop continuously in an effort to remain competitive in today’s rapidly evolving tech and business environment,” Patel said. “Also, engagement extends beyond the company to customers and partners for a comprehensive learning experience. The platform can lead to optimized training costs and increased shared learning and knowledge management.”
Jam Collaboration also allows businesses to leverage expertise with peer-to-peer learning networks, provide forums for questions and insights and promote discovery of courses from SAP SuccessFactors Learning to drive collaborations.