Workflow Automation is a hot word in the SaaS industry, especially with any solution.
It is especially on fire – okay, starting to catch a blaze in the learning system segment and even HCM.
I’m, of course, focused on learning and training, and thus on the learning system space – including talent development, workforce development (which some vendors are tying in the words of workforce intelligence, whereas learning is a core component – and it is not a HCM here).
If your system doesn’t have workflow automation (a functionality) now, it should be on the vendor’s roadmap by either the end of 26, or definitely in play by the end of 27.
From the administrator’s standpoint, the change is caused by AI.
Take a look at what is happening with AI on the administration side.
- Agentic Agents – The ability to perform a variety of tasks, based on what the vendor sees, or for some vendors, the option to create your own Agentic Agent
- Prompt box – Vendors are either referring to them as an AI assistant, chatbot (old school name, so dump it), or some clever name they came up with – remember my fictitious one was Hippy.
- Save as favorites/bookmarks – Another must-have function that very few vendors offer, despite the fact that the industry norm is that an administrator will use only 20% of the capabilities, which results in a lot of ‘support’ calls or e-mails that are really unnecessary because the feature exists. If we understand the 20% and understand how the industry is changing with folks being on the admin side – without knowing anything – then saving a capability or using the most popular piece, as a favorite/bookmark makes absolute sense. Then the admin simply clicks on favorites and bam, off and running, which gets back to… wait for it.
Workflow Automation
In the WA world for vendors that offer it, the easiest way is to click the option, then it appears as cards which you then pick in a flow, so it is more of IF this happens, then it does THIS, or if you select this flow, it can go here and here and here and so forth.
Does it speed up the process, say with compliance – yep.
Onboarding options yep – but and here is the twist, it doesn’t get to the full throttle mode of where the market is heading, because while you can use a 3rd party offering such as Zapier, which in essence is a workflow automation solution, that yep, can go into a learning system – it still requires a dose of IT getting involved – yuck; or a level of a learning curve – who has time for that?
What if I went solely with AI?
This will significantly change the administrator’s role.
And while vendors may or may not recognize this, their additional functionality is honestly heading that way.
The feature sets are heavy on the admin side, and while learning, the learner can, of course, do some stuff; it starts, as everyone knows, there.
An administrator today manually needs to do the following (and this is just a short list)
- Add end users
- Assign end users (learners) to specific groups or a group, if they so choose
- Assign content to end users, or allow end users or groups of end users to access specific content.
- Assign or give access to a catalog to a specific set of users, or to anyone who wants to use the system.
- Assign roles
- Create rules and assign them to this or that. Batch upload users, courses, and content.content, etc.
- Select the theme or design for the front side, depending on what the vendor offers.
- Create courses/content with the built-in authoring tool (if the system has it)
- Create catalogs of content only for job roles tied to skills – a combination. Includes Skill Ratings (by learners), skill level, and feedback from learners on whether or not it met the skill it represents
- Create VILT and webinar sessions, and schedule, create a waitlist, and identify the number of people on the waitlist (and some systems allow additional attributes)
- Create assessments, identify passing grades, establish a quiz bank, set random or non-randomized quizzes, and set other attributes.
- TAGS- Administrator can create TAGS by Skills, Interest, Job Role, etc.
- Skills mapping
- Create and generate reports.
- Deliver reports to specific individuals, such as department heads or managers.
- Create notifications, notification templates
- Anything tied to compliance that the admin needs, and more, depending on system capabilities and business needs.
Administrators manage a wide array of functions.
As learning systems become tied to business outcomes and data intelligence, the administrator’s role needs to adapt to these new demands.
AI, here we are
Take a look at everything I listed above and then add everything else your administrator is currently doing today.
Ask yourself, how much of that could be handled by AI, with minimal input from the administrator?
There are systems today that can
- Batch upload users and assign them to courses, content, groups, specific groups, map skills to each end user, generate reports that the administrator asks for and needs, establish roles and rules – workflow, offers image generation, create content with a built-in authoring tool, create learning paths with adaptive learning, create assessments, scoring, weighing, and so much more.
- If you want advanced analytics, there are systems that can do it.
- You need to know how to do something – with AI and some systems, it will show you how to do it – some use text (yuck), others do a show and tell me.
- Need to learn the basics of instructional design – yep, the AI can show you – tell you.
- Everything you currently do as an administrator AI with some systems can either do some of it and more of it, or none of it – bits with content or assessments, for example, but lack the whole monster.
Given AI’s expanding capabilities, is the traditional administrator role still essential?
You will still need to do so, but with the power of workflow automation, those tasks will eventually be massively reduced, and therefore the workload too.
A key component will be changing and leveraging prompting, until the day comes that you move on from prompts (which can occur high token fees, if you do not ask specific questions).
If a system can recall an administrator’s initial instructions it will automatically expand on them, using what is known as a loop (I use them myself – uh, not for the blog or my LinkedIn threads)
While this function exists with AI today, its implementation in learning systems has yet to be observed.
Let’s go back to the favorites side.
You, the administrator, can save your favorite prompts for what you want – and bam, type it, or click it, and the system behind the scenes generates it using AI.
Need a dashboard on abcd?
Why limit yourself to what the system offers at the present time, when with the use of AI, you can build out what you want to see, going beyond what the vendor limits to what you can do, even with widgets?
Agentic Agents – Task-driven that does a lot of the heavy lifting – utilizing workflow automation.
Extensive segmented analytics tapping into the Impact of Learning – the system can do it and show it.
New to L&D or Training or a learning system, and have no idea what you need to do – the AI can do it for you.
Look at customer training; I am surprised at the number of times it goes to the marketing department.
Do you honestly think they know what they need to do and can tap into the system’s capabilities, even if the system offers e-mail?
When an administrator needs to use e-commerce, and even needs to figure out break-even points and ways to increase profitability, tada – the latter not available today, can be done.
Surprise, you – HRIS is now overseeing the system – do you have the time and knowledge? What about that CLO who still thinks ILT is making a comeback or is a must-have?
Associations will maximize workflow automation on the admin side, because for most associations, the administrator is the person overseeing the whole system (I can attest to this, because I ran the ‘education’ side and biz development for a global association, including a certification program), on top of all my other duties.
When I ran training at a lot of companies, I was the admin because I couldn’t hire the resource – due to my budget or the company’s budget, whereas when there are downturns in the global market, the first folks that companies take a gutting at are always HR, Training, and L&D.
With AI, you can offer suggestions, which will greatly help the administrator, but if a vendor’s AI could automatically, via agents or whatever happens next, enhance that, is that resource, i.e., the person (not you), a complete need for everything, or can that administrator do quarterly time for the system, and then handle other tasks needed in your department?
The Role Pivot for an Administrator with AI
Whoever is overseeing the system on the back-end, and let’s be real, it could be the person in charge of L&D, Training, and so forth, once the AI automation really gets rumbling, will still have to review everything before just accepting it, because AI is not error-free.
Human review is necessary, as AI may produce errors.
Even if it’s your own content and your sources, which a learner can see, the AI can still make a mistake or output false information.
But reviewing doesn’t take a lot of time, once you start the process of doing it – not the AI review here – you, the person in charge.
Validate the sources by clicking the content and checking whether the information is actually there and sourced accurately.
Same thing with anything else the system outputs, think of it as a quicker Q/A mode, rather than finding out later you are about to be sued because the content produced by your AI is wrong.
Surprise!
I know there will be large enterprises with several administrators who will say, “We are really big, and we will need all of them,” – no, actually, you won’t.
Just as roles and those skills will need to pivot in the new age of AI, the same will hold true on the administrative side of your system, and yes, even for you and your role.
Bottom Line
Workforce Automation is here.
Administrators are here.
AI is here.
What a vendor can offer now will only expand as they utilize AI on the admin side.
Just as formal instructional designers are taking a hit with built-in authoring tools, whereas the skill sets needed are basic to create content with AI, why would you expect the administrator role to stay the same?
Everything is changing.
What was a year ago is a fading memory.
Thankfully, workforce automation tied to the administrator’s role and responsibilities will work.
The question then is,
Are you willing to tap into this
Or stay with the flow?
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