Aetna Develops a Winning Wiki

The collaborative tool allows less technically trained business users to add and maintain content for their specific area.
Article | Mon, 02/28/2011 - 02:00
By Margery Weinstein In an effort to better support service and clinical employees and build a high-performance organization, Aetna Inc. developed a Wiki-based architecture that leverages a collaborative approach to content development. Using a Microsoft SharePoint site template, the company developed dynamic, blended learning and online support tools that, through the use of an automated menu structure, allows less technically trained business users to add and maintain content for their specific area. The company shares highlights from the experience:
  • More than 25 online support tools and blended learning programs have been developed using the Wiki-based framework. Feedback from both end-users and business clients has been positive. This new architecture includes additional search capabilities, which have enabled end-users to locate information more efficiently while servicing customers. Initially developed to support the implementation of a national customer, Aetna’s intent was to provide a medium that would allow content from nine different areas to be placed into a single content repository by multiple contributors to reduce development time needed to meet stipulated performance guarantees.
  • Training for the initial national customer was developed within timelines, and feedback from the customer who reviewed all training materials indicated that the online support tool was vital to the success of the ongoing integration.
  • Prior to this approach, creating a typical online support tool required a significant amount of the project timeline as it demanded a technical programmer to make the revisions. Enabling business contacts to edit content pages in a simplified format eliminated the need for a technical programmer to act as a liaison, thereby reducing development time and associated costs by 11 percent.
  • Additionally, allowing business contacts to draft and enter content directly into Wiki pages reduced the overall time involvement of a technical resource by 30 percent (based on a typical online support tool development timeline.). This savings allowed an increase in overall production by allowing the technical resource to work with multiple business initiatives within the same time period.
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by tmcfaul | Tue, 03/01/2011 - 13:47
We are undergoing a similar effort in our service organization. Providing users with the ability to create content is a big help to our instructional design team and gives users a greater sense of ownership. Our audience is also better served by having content in an easily accessible wiki where they can 'learn and return'. This in contrast to courses controlled by SCORM and locked away in an LMS where few, if any users come back to use the content as reference. There are some challenges with this approach as few, if any, standards exist but I see this as the future of e-learning and performance support. Easily accessible user-centric environments where users can consume and generate content, communicate with peers, and take advantage of evolving web 2.0 technologies.