Overview Learn why Santa Clara County's Social Services Agency selects Saba to improve training management — more effectively tracking course completions for development and compliance purposes, reducing learning costs, and creating a culture where access to training is desired and valued by employees Business Challenge In the past, the Social Services Agency had manually administered its training program. Costs were escalating, as the agency worked to offer more training to its approximately 2,400 employees and up to 1,000 external users such as nonprofits and other community partners. Business Benefits -Streamline the management of both Web-based and classroom-based learning — decreasing administrative time and expenseƒ -Automate the tracking of course completions and certifications to meet state and federal reporting requirements and better manage individuals’ learning programsƒ -Efficiently support expanded eLearning within the agency, making training easier to schedule and greatly reducing travel costsƒ -Foster a culture where employees take greater responsibility for identifying and obtaining needed trainingƒ -Take advantage of Saba Cloud deployment to eliminate the infrastructure and personnel costs of an on-premises solution

1. Case Study
Santa Clara County —
Social Services Agency
Santa Clara County’s Social Services
Agency Selects Saba Learning to Improve
Training Management and Reduce Costs
Industry
Government
Challenge
Improve training management — more effectively
tracking course completions for development
and compliance purposes, reducing learning
costs, and creating a culture where access to
training is desired and valued by employees
Business Benefits
ƒƒ Streamline the management of both Webbased and classroom-based learning —
decreasing administrative time and expense
ƒƒ Automate the tracking of course completions
and certifications to meet state and federal
reporting requirements and better manage
individuals’ learning programs
ƒƒ Efficiently support expanded eLearning within
the agency, making training easier to schedule
and greatly reducing travel costs
ƒƒ Foster a culture where employees take greater
responsibility for identifying and obtaining
needed training
ƒƒ Take advantage of Saba Cloud deployment, to
eliminate the infrastructure and personnel costs
of an on-premises solution
Solution
ƒƒ Saba Learning
ƒƒ Saba Collaboration
ƒƒ Saba Publisher
The Santa Clara County Social Services Agency is one of the largest public
agencies in the county that is home to California’s famed Silicon Valley.
Overseeing the Departments of Aging and Adult Services, Employment and
Benefit Services, and Family and Children’s Services, the Social Services
Agency provides critical benefits and services to tens of thousands of county
residents annually.
In the past, the Social Services Agency had manually administered its
training program. Costs were escalating, as the agency worked to offer
more training to its approximately 2,400 employees and up to 1,000
external users such as nonprofits and other community partners.
“
We’ve already saved 5,300 hours in
administrative time and more than 2,600
hours in reduced travel time for our
employees taking training. That savings will
only grow as the use of our Saba solutions
continues to increase.
”
Adesh Siddhu
Director of Applications and Business Intelligence
Santa Clara County — Social Services Agency
“It got to the point
where we were
spending almost
as much on
administration as we
were on the learning
itself,” said Adesh
Siddhu, director of
applications and
business intelligence
for the agency. “In
fact, in some cases,
administrative costs
had actually exceeded
training expenses.”
The agency’s
recordkeeping was
also inadequate, making reporting difficult and leading to some employees
unnecessarily repeating courses. So when the federal and state entities
that supply the majority of the funding for training and development to the
county’s Social Services Agency both tightened their budgets and increased
reporting requirements, the county knew it was time to find and implement
an efficient, effective Learning Management System (LMS). After an extensive
RFP process, the county chose Saba Learning.
Comprehensive Management and Tracking
With Saba Learning, the Social Services Agency has been able to publish an
online course catalog, automate the entire registration process, and use the
solution to track attendance, completions, and certifications — easily and
accurately. Automated registration that lets people sign up for training with
just a few mouse clicks has greatly lightened the administrative load for the
agency. In addition, the Saba LMS efficiently tracks data that has simplified
the increasingly burdensome federal and state reporting requirements for the
agency to retain its funding.

2. Case Study
n
Santa Clara County — Social Services Agency
The agency offers a variety of learning content to address a
wide array of needs:
ƒƒ Diversity training such as sexual harassment prevention,
conflict resolution, and leveraging employee diversity to
actually increase productivity
ƒƒ Workplace safety training that includes programs, policies,
and plans such as disaster preparedness
ƒƒ Training for management reviews and appraisals
ƒƒ Job-specific training — comprising 90% of the
learning offered to agency personnel — such as better
communication, writing, interviewing, and even training on
specific tasks such as issuing drivers’ permits
More eLearning Within Reach
With the help of Saba Learning and the powerful Saba
Publisher content-creation tool, the Social Services Agency has
been able to offer Web-based eLearning for the first time. The
eLearning has proven so popular that new Web-based courses
are being developed and existing instructor-led training (ILT)
courses converted to online learning in equal numbers with
new classroom-based courses being created today.
Employees can access eLearning at any time and from
any location, although virtually all classes are still taken by
employees at work. The Social Services Agency hopes to soon
roll out Saba Collaboration to enhance informal learning.
Thousands of Hours Saved
The implementation of Saba Learning and the move toward
more Web-based training are already paying enormous
dividends to the county agency.
“We recently completed a cost analysis on Saba Learning, and
found that we’ve already saved 5,300 hours in administrative
time and more than 2,600 hours in reduced travel time for our
employees taking training,” Siddhu noted. “The reduction of
the equivalent of 200 work weeks is a significant cost savings.
That savings will only grow as the use of our Saba solutions
continues to increase.”
A New Learning Culture
The Social Services Agency elected to implement Saba
Learning and Saba Collaboration as Cloud deployments —
speeding its rollout and eliminating the need to acquire any
additional hardware or software, or dedicate a large number of
support hours to the solutions. When help has been needed,
the county has been able to call upon Saba for skilled, highly
responsive support.
But according to Siddhu, the Social Services Agency had
another reason for selecting a Cloud deployment. The agency
wanted a solution that would be used as is, without a lot of
customization — thus encouraging the agency to change its
processes and how employees approached training
“The agency’s learning culture had evolved to where we had
to chase people down, cajole them into taking the training
they needed, and send multiple reminders to managers to get
people to attend,” explained Siddhu. “Now with more attractive
and convenient Web-based training and a more efficient way
to schedule, register for, and track learning, the onus is on
employees to find and take what they need.”
Improving Learning Across the County
The Social Services Agency’s success has encouraged Santa
Clara County to plan to extend the use of Saba Learning
and potentially other Saba People systems such as Saba
Performance and Saba Centra Web conferencing to other
agencies and departments across county government. The
county plans to expand their deployment to 15,000 users
over time.
“Our goal is to make Saba Learning the repository for all
things learning in the county,” Siddhu remarked. “When we
went through the RFP process, Saba came out ahead on
reportability, ease of use, and cost. We simply felt on all factors,
Saba was the winner.”
Saba enables organizations to build a transformative workplace where they can leverage their people
networks to become more competitive through innovation, speed, agility, and trust.
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