E-Learning at Elevated Software After 15 years of managing one of the leading sales departments, Priya Bandali was excited about her promotion to the position of learning and development manager for Elevated Soft- ware. Elevated had over 300 salespeople and an overall workforce of 2000 employees working in 3 locations across Canada: Victoria, Regina, and Charlottetown. Although located in the head office in Regina, Priya had always been able to deploy new sales practices across the country to keep Elevated ahead of its competitors and felt her knowledge and experience would be valuable to her new position. Elevated continued to experience more competition as there were more companies that were also selling accounting software to small and medium-sized businesses. This increase in competition resulted in lower profits, and Priya was now tasked with finding a way to streamline learning and development programs and lower expenditures by 10%. In strategic planning meetings with the leadership team, it was clear to Priya that Elevated was not decreasing its commitment to learning but needed a new, more cost-effective learning strategy able to meet the "on-demand" learning needs of all employees and managers at varying and distant locations. All employees' roles, not just salespeople's, were increasingly complex, thereby requiring excellent communication skills, superior problem-solving abilities, and the willingness to collaborate effectively with other employees. The president of Elevated clearly stated that one of Priya's first tasks was to con- duct a thorough review of the learning and development function within the organization. The president wanted hard evidence, a "return on investment," to back up learning and development initiatives. Through her research and conversations with colleagues, Priya knew that a few com- petitors had introduced a learning approach that provided online training modules for employees. Priya felt this approach could realize the president's productivity goals and would also allow all employees in the 3 locations across the country to receive the same training, but at their convenience and on their own time. Perhaps this was too good to be true. Priya wondered if the investment in online training would really provide effective learning and development opportunities to employees and what next steps she should take. Questions: 1. What is the first thing that Priya should do before proceeding with implementing online learning across the company? Why is this important? NEL