Corporate University for Employees AND Customers?

[Kerry Kaczorowski]

I'd be interested in any perspective or experiences related to starting a corporate university with two separate audiences in mind - internal employees and external customers and partners. I've been tasked with this and of the research I have done, it seems it is not typical to combine the two audiences into one platform. Does anyone know of an organization who has accomplished this successfully (or unsuccessfully for that matter)? Any insight as to why this may or may not be a good idea? Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

[Gary Williams]

Having done this in the past, one important consideration is financial--will customers or partners "pay" for the products/services or will the cost be carried within the Business Unit somehow? The only real challenges to meeting the needs of customer, partners and employees is financial management (and any related "sales" needs). Feel free to contact me to discuss challenges related to "accounting" and "business management". [e-mail]

[Laura Verheyen]

Hi Gregory:
What platform do you have for UL University?
Thank you
Gregory Reed said:

At UL (www.ul.com) we have a corporate university www.uluniversity.com that has 3 colleges that are focused to the internal audiences and an external facing customer college. This has worked very well for UL and is one of growth areas within the corpoartion.

The learning material that is created to support and develop our staff to aid their career development particularly in the Technical college has great commercial and intelectual value to the organisation. We are able to make minor changes to meet the needs of the audience that are looking to gain UL certification on products.