Informal Learning - Expectations and the current scenario

It is becoming increasingly important to involve and accept informal learning in corporate learning organizations.Much is spoken about this topic in the recent times by the industry specialists and the learning professionals. As the acceptance of the importance of informal learning is increasing, more insights on its intricacies is also being discussed. Josh bersin in his recent blog post, speaks about the increasing acceptance levels and how informal learning can be made formal. To quote him - "Thanks to the slowing economy and the widespread availability of social networking and online wikis and portals, “informal learning” is the next big thing." This makes it clear how analysts see the advantage in utilizing informal learning to bring about effective learning.
When we talk about informal learning, some of the things that pop-up in many of our minds are social networking, blogs, wikis, instant messaging etc. But these cannot exist as 'stand alone functionalities'in the corporate learning environment.Many organizations have indeed started thinking about integrating them with the existing processes and technologies to make them more trackable, to increase the ease in monitoring and more so to obtain increased benefits in terms of employee performance or revenue generation (in the case of partner/customer training).
But is it right to depend on the existing LMS to solve this problem? Will it be cost effective to expect that functionality in a LMS? The answer to this is mostly NO. Moreover not many LMS vendors have much to contribute on these lines except for Saba and CornerStone OnDemand.
Less investments in the technology aspects, increased user adoption, added value to the learning are some of things that are being expected out of these informal learning functionalities. And to address these requirements Learning Portals seem to be the efficient and effective way to go. A recent article by CLO Media discusses how EMC, one of the technology giants found an easy way through, to achieve all the above mentioned. Tom Clancy, VP Education and Performance, says how he made learning available through this portal to his customers and partners and found sharp increase in their learning revenues. The article can be found here: http://www.expertus.com/sites/expertus.com/files/public-files/CLO_Human-Capital-Insights_EMC-Learning-Portals.pdf
Expertus, one of the learning solutions providers has helped EMC to accomplish these advantages through their Smart Learning Portal functionality, a cost effective and efficient approach in fulfilling the requirements.

Obtaining effective, efficient and cost effective results seem to be the need of the hour. Let us hope more to come in this area to address the needs of the current learning scenario.