State of Wisconsin: Enterprise Learning Management System Implementation

At a glance

The State of Wisconsin found themselves in a situation where various agencies within the state had different training solutions in place to offer training to their employees. Some of the agencies were on legacy systems that did not provide the latest and greatest technology in the Training & Development space. Other departments had multiple instances of the same platform that duplicated administration and content curation efforts. The Department of Administration (DOA) took the lead to consolidate Training Management across all departments in the state within a single enterprise-wide Training & Development solution that met the goals and requirements of all areas of the business.

Being a leader in the space and with five of the agencies already utilizing the Cornerstone Learning Management System, the State of Wisconsin decided to migrate all twenty-six departments with over 40,000 active users to a centralized single instance of Cornerstone Learning. Wisconsin’s seasoned administrators were able to provide guidance on features and processes they had familiarity with. However, the task of gathering input from all departments and translating to a comprehensive strategy for enterprise LMS configurations and deployment that would meet the needs of all groups was no small feat.

eSkillz follows a proven methodology and approach for its implementations of the Cornerstone solution across an enterprise. With that in mind, our team recognized that every client has its unique scenarios and intricacies to consider and adapt as we lead our clients through the implementation journey. In the case of the State of Wisconsin implementation, the eSkillz implementation team started by working closely with the State’s system owners to conduct extensive and in-depth requirements analysis to define current state, desired future state, and determine the scope for the migration and other technical projects to ensure the immediate needs of the various stakeholders are met upon system go-live.

Both the eSkillz and the State of Wisconsin teams played critical roles in making this a successful implementation and deployment of a new enterprise-wide Talent Management System. eSkillz partnered closely with the State’s system owner to manage all operations and progress of this implementation. After initial discovery, the client lead recognized early on that a more realistic timeline is critical for a successful implementation (do it right vs. do it fast) and advocated to its internal executive sponsors to approve a later rollout than the client initially had set for themselves prior to fully understanding all that will go into the implementation effort. The State also took full responsibility to manage internal decision-making process to solicit feedback from each agency document final decisions to present to the eSkillz team. Throughout the process, the client team was open and receptive to recommendations provided by the eSkillz implementation team. Clear, concise, and timely communication between the State and eSkillz teams in addition to open, honest, and meaningful discussions to set clear and honest expectations were key to the success of the engagement.

While adhering to our standardized service delivery process, the eSkillz team had to be flexible to adjust our approach to ensure we fully understood, addressed, and satisfied challenges and requirements that were specific to the State of Wisconsin, including the various audiences of each agency. As eSkillz conducted configuration activities, we made sure to highlight areas where all groups had to come to a consensus for global level settings in the system and those where each department had the option to modify those configurations and workflows specific to their unique needs, such as welcome page design, workflow approvals, security roles and permissions, etc. The team maintained detailed documentation of decisions that were made at all levels.

In addition to a compressed timeline, managing input from numerous stakeholders to balance between individual department and enterprise-wide needs, another major challenge that the teams had to overcome was the large data migration effort from various disparate systems into the new LMS. The data migration effort involved extraction, transformation, load, and configuration of over 3,000 learning objects, and 40,000+ user accounts into the new LMS. Other technical integrations that eSkillz deployed for the State are Single Sign-On (SSO) integration and web services integration with an external system to exchange user and training completion data.

The State of Wisconsin welcomed 40,000 employees from twenty-six agencies into the Cornerstone Learning Management system which will be maintained by over twenty administrators. Enterprise-wide training can now be launched and managed consistently while allowing the agencies to focus on their specific training initiatives. As the State of Wisconsin team manages their way through shared waters, initial system adoption has been a success for not only end users but administrators alike.

eSkillz’s expertise with complex system deployments and large government clients along with strong leadership on the client side led the State of Wisconsin to realize the full potential of an enterprise-wide Training & Development Cornerstone solution configured to meet the needs of its various stakeholders.

Together, let’s make your success your reality.

​From best practices in industry standards to help you create a talent management process that your employees and managers will use to the actual system configuration of a seamless workflow, eSkillz Professional Services are here to help.