Reprinted from Ag Retailer, September 2002, "E-Business and You"

Seek e-Learning for growth

By Kurt Lawton

Can you trust each and every co-worker to properly deal with your largest, best and most demanding customers?

If you can honestly say yes, congratulations. You're on top of your game.

If not, do you know how and what to invest in to turn potential risks into assets?

Hopefully, you're confronting these challenges and investing properly in your most valuable assets - every co-worker - because they are the lifeblood of your business. And, as you know, they can make or break key customer relationships.

If this vital business vision isn't on your radar screen, stop and grasp a portion of the big picture for a moment - and find the correlation.
- Globalization of agriculture
- Industry consolidation continues to spiral at a greater pace than in the past - losing farmers and retailers and manufacturers.
- Key customers are getting larger and purchasing more.
- Key customers expect a great deal more from retailers and suppliers.
- Good employees are hard to find, and can be hard to keep.

Business-savvy managers comprehend this. And it's driving them to schedule specific training to continually help employees grow, which in turn grows the business ? in a perfect world.

Sans this Utopian view, time needed for hands-on, face-to-face training is next to impossible to find in this day and age where short staffs of multi-tasking workers are the norm. And when you factor in seminar cost, travel expenses, time away from work...it all adds up...sometimes it equals no training at all.

Enter e-Learning. Simply defined, it is instruction delivered electronically through the Internet, Intranet or extranet ? or through other digital platforms such as a CD-ROM, PDA or computer-based technologies. You've no doubt already experienced e-Learning in some form as numerous agricultural input players have and are developing internal and external training/education programs.

"As an industry, agriculture is at a point in time where information is as critical as the inputs. The question is how do you most effectively transfer that knowledge," says John Ahlberg, president and co-founder of Ag Technologies International (ATI). "e-Learning will change how food production businesses educate and transfer knowledge."

ATI, founded in 2000 in Owatonna, MN, proclaims to be the first e-Learning and digital technologies company exclusively focused on food production and agriculture. And companies are listening. ATI's client roster includes the likes of Monsanto, Dow AgroSciences, BASF, Syngenta Seeds, Farm Credit Services, AgStar, AgriBank, Cargill, Nebraska Soybean Board, National Pork Board and more.

"Currently our clientele are primarily turning to us for help with product training and with the development of various online business tools and the training to use them," says Tom Gray, executive VP and co-founder with Ahlberg. "Our aim is to help them improve overall internal and external efficiencies, especially regarding communicating with retailers and the entire supply chain."

"Retailers know they need to improve the knowledge and competency of their employees if they are going to compete and thrive in the future," Gray says. "Unfortunately, the same companies that use to help them with these tasks have merged into others and staffs are depleted...so the bulk of the training load falls on the shoulders of retail managers."

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