by Site Staff
December 1, 2004
Thomas Clancy
Vice President, Global Education
EMC Corporation
The global education and productivity division at EMC, which has been branded as Mercer Road, is led by Thomas Clancy, the company’s vice president of global education. In his tenure as head of this department, Clancy has taken a number of steps to ensure learning is aligned to business goals and strategies, including placing representatives on internal business management teams and product management teams to support product launches with learning; implementing a balanced scorecard to review business-critical metrics and targets; establishing a program management office to communicate with and understand business units; and integrating learning functions with corporations recently acquired by EMC.
Through these and other measures, Clancy and his Mercer Road team have saved millions of dollars in terms of costs, exceeding targeted expense savings by 500 percent, and increased loyalty and satisfaction among users inside and outside the company.
Clancy was happy to earn recognition for his achievements. “There’s been so much work over the last two years,” he said. “It was a great feeling because it recognized all the people that have worked so hard. It’s great to have someone outside the company understand how important alignment is with the business units and the business objectives.”
The global education and productivity division at EMC Corp., a provider of information storage systems, software, networks and services, is focused on developing and delivering relevant learning content to approximately 20,000 people around the world. The department’s 230-plus employees produce training for internal functions like sales, professional services, IT and engineering, as well as externally focused learning for EMC customer and partners.
Part of aligning corporate education with company objectives involves ascertaining what kinds of learning programs EMC employees need. “The audience has to be part of the training product definition and development,” Clancy said. “We don’t create anything unless our audience agrees that it’s the right thing to create. They’re part of the spec process while the idea’s being formed. They also provide subject-matter experts to work with us while we’re developing it. The thinking is, if they helped define and develop the training product, when we deploy it, it’s their responsibility to consume it. That’s how they put skin in the game. At the end of the day, it’s their product, not ours.”
“The future of learning is moving faster and faster toward a just-in-time, learner-centric model,” Clancy said. “The only way that any company will be able to achieve that is to have great alignment with their customers and the learner supply chain. At EMC, we think we have that nailed. The alignment is really helping us accelerate toward that just-in-time, learner-centric model.”
Clancy, who has been with EMC since 1993 and served as vice president of global education and productivity since April 2002, said he enjoys playing a role in the overall success of the company. “EMC is the storage and information lifecycle management leader in the world,” he said. “It’s great to work for a leader. In order for us to maintain that leadership position, we have to have the best skilled people as employees, partners and customers. There’s no second place. You have to have the best. It’s my team’s responsibility to make sure we are the best. The enjoyment I get and the reward I get is to help to do my part within EMC to be a leader in the industry.”
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