Mobile Learning Provides a Lot of Advantage for the Banking and Financial Services Industry: An Insight

Many BFSI organizations already are utilizing the mobile advantage by providing pre-loaded hand-held devices to their employees – particularly, the sales staff. This provides just-in-time delivery of information, which is often at the crux of making a successful sales call. Instead of overwhelming the customer with unnecessary load of pamphlets and other literature, sales personnel now prefer to show their prospective customers interactive presentations. The paper-brochures can now be utilized as a reminder to the customer, but the actual benefits of a product can now be better explained as well as shown through hand-held devices.

While mobile devices are now increasingly becoming the norm in BFSI sector, there is another benefit that can be derived out of them – that of mobile learning and training. This is a considerably newer concept, but suitable for the sector as most employees are already adept at using the delivery device. Varied mobile learning solutions can be developed, keeping in mind the needs of the learners as well as the strength of the mobile platform.

• E-Courses via Mobile LMS: Most new-age Learning Management Systems (LMSs) are mobile compatible, keeping in mind the growing demand for learning on-the-go. Creating a mobile LMS is more than just making a web-based enterprise LMS available on the mobile platform. A mobile LMS has to be suitably customized for mobile delivery platform. Most importantly, the mobile LMS should be accessible to the learners at all times and the development tool should be chosen to ensure seamless accessibility. A mobile LMS developed with newer technology like HTML5 can be uniformly accessed on a laptop, smart phone or tablet, even if these devices run on different OS or have different web-browsers. This makes learning easier to access for the learners. For the BFSI sector — which often has to train extensively within limited timelines — it is the easier and cheaper option to enable cross-platform delivery of media-rich mobile learning content. In addition, the employees of the BFSI sector come from a higher educational background and are well aware of the technological developments in IT. They have come to expect the same from their learning as well. With intuitive design strategies like floating panels and tiled structure, it is possible to create a compact, yet visually attractive, UI that enhances the learner’s experience with the platform and takes it to the level of other IT-enabled platforms that learners often work with.
• Video/Audio based learning solutions: Video and audio align very well to the mobile platform. Short videos can be created very easily – with the help of modern animation tools. These provide an opportunity of impactful visual learning and can be developed easily, even on minimal budgets. Even when the learning time is limited and there is plenty of external stimuli, an impactful video can impart knowledge successfully. This makes it most suitable for mobile learning delivery, even when the topic is complicated or dreary. For instance, for a leading BFSI company, G-Cube created a short whiteboard animation on Bribery. Most employees would find the subject not too comfortable, but with attractive figures and conversations woven within the video, the topic was well received by all. Similarly, audio can also be utilized to create mobile learning solutions. Though listening to a podcast might not be as impactful as watching a learning video, audio can be utilized well when external stimuli is limited – like waiting for a sales call. This is the time when most learners need to refresh the learning and an audio learning solutions will be apt for this situation. Most BFSI sales executives work on targets and the way they conduct themselves during sales calls often affect their sales as well. For a leading training company, G-Cube developed a mobile-enabled solution that provided short bursts of learning for BFSI employees through podcasts. The learning modules shared tips on body language, eye contact, pitch of voice, and so on. This immensely popular solution was successful in providing just-in-time learning that could be utilized immediately.
• Short learning capsules: Though a variety of e-courses can be provided on the mobile platform, it is best to keep in mind that the attention span of the learner will not be prolonged while on–the-go – which is often true for many employees in the BFSI sector. If a learner is at his or her desk, a 20-minutes learning course can be effective. But while travelling to work, the learner may have just a few minutes to spare and e-learning developers have to keep this in mind when creating learning solutions for the mobile platform. Short and concise learning capsules, not more than 5-7 minutes at length, work best for the mobile platform.  In the absence of text, graphics and images can be utilized to make the e-course informative as well as interesting. For instance, infographics can be created to explain various processes or workflows – instead of descriptive text. Not only the logical flow of the process or workflow is better presented, the learner finds it easier to retain as well.
• Social learning on the Mobile Platform: There is yet another less-explored side of mobile learning that is also very impactful for training sales personnel – social or collaborative learning on the mobile platform. Sales personnel spend a lot of time outside office and there is a definite lack of peer interactions – which can create gaps in learning. The mobile platform can provide a forum of learning together as well as from each other. BFSI employees can share documents or files with pertinent information on their learning – customer feedback or selling techniques, which have worked for them. To encourage increased sharing behaviour, video/audio sharing can also be included. This saves precious time and effort as learners can simply record short videos or audio on their mobiles and upload them on to the platform. From time to time, managers and higher management personnel could also share organizational beliefs and visions – to give the learners a morale boost.

With the fast developing mobile technologies, the trend of mobile learning is on a continuous rise. By adopting the right combination of technology, learning strategy and delivery mechanism we can create training solutions that are specific to the requirements of the learners across diverse industries, including BFSI.