Lloyds TSB is using the SumTotal Enterprise Suite, including the TotalPerformance module, to drive its Performance Learning Management System (PLMS) initiative. Performance management at the company, which includes a scorecard that rates employee performance in customer service, growth, risk and other areas, had traditionally been a manual, paper-based process. This made it challenging to ensure comprehensive distribution and completion of learning activities across the global workforce. In addition, the manual processes made it difficult to measure results and align the goals of the employee with those of the business, within individual divisions and the enterprise as a whole.

By centralising and automating the learning and performance functions, the PLMS gives the company greater insight into employee performance ratings across the organisation. The system also helps Lloyds TSB identify skills and competency gaps easily and prescribe learning to help close those gaps, also distributing information throughout the organisation to the people who need it.

"Lloyds TSB's Talent and Learning organisation has to support the goals of the entire enterprise, as well as the goals of individual business units. The SumTotal solution is proving to be flexible enough to meet the requirements of both," said Rob Briggs, Head of PLMS implementation, Lloyds TSB. "When we were developing the PLMS, we put together a lot of plausible scenarios to test the system, and SumTotal was the solution that most effectively mirrored our current processes and organisational structure. There was no need to redesign our processes to fit the limitations of a software solution, or to significantly customise the product to get it to function the way we needed it to."

In addition to streamlining performance management, SumTotal enables Lloyds TSB to better address other mission critical business goals, such as compliance, by consolidating several different systems being used into a single platform. "Banking regulations in the United Kingdom are now much wider and apply to everyone across the bank, so having smaller solutions implemented in different divisions makes it difficult for Lloyds TSB to show enterprise-wide compliance," said Briggs. "Deploying a single platform eliminates significant duplication of effort and ensures a single view of training and compliance results across the organisation." To further centralise employee data, the company will integrate the SumTotal platform with its Oracle HRMS system.

"We believe more and more that large organisations understand the benefits of enterprise-wide control of their performance and learning programs, and that it has become vital in order to meet the business goals set out by senior management," said Don Fowler, SumTotal CEO. "Lloyds TSB is relying on SumTotal's solution to link individual employee learning paths and job goals to larger business objectives. In our view, that's a significant achievement that will ultimately help Lloyds TSB further separate itself from its competitors."