Novartis have used Echelon's publishing services to offer electronic learning in support of their core training courses. This has the potential to reduce radically the costs of training through a reduction in classroom time for each course.

Employees access the learning prior to attending a training course to ensure their knowledge on the subject is at a certain level. This enables the facilitator to spend less time on 'chalk and talk' allowing maximum time for developing and practising skills. Employees are referred to the electronic resource at the end of the training as part of ongoing self-development or as a reminder of the course's learning. This can be drawn from learningmatters.com or derived from the course manuals.

Each module is supported by a preview of the content and an interactive validation, written in HTML, of the learning, which is stored and logged by the individual and the company. Access is via Novartis's intranet to a discrete part of Echelon's server.

Book-ended learning – the phrase Echelon adopts as being more accurate for this form of learning than the term blended – offers a wide range of benefits. It places the emphasis on using the real advantages of facilitated training - the ability to exchange experiences and practice new found skills – while optimising the power of technology to distribute and track thereby ensuring less time is wasted by pre-course knowledge building, and offering post-course refresher learning for successful performance.

This form of learning results in more cost effective training and more effective performance.