Journal of Information Systems, Research & Practices, Vol.1(1) The Design and Development of an Open and Flexible E-Training System for the Creation of Learning Organizations H. Suraya, Nur Azizan @ Nur Azyan Yusof, Mohamad Taha Ijab, Olivia Leong and Hong Jia Jean Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Email: suraya_hamid@um.edu.my, nur_azyan@perdana.um.edu.my, cpb2413@yahoo.com olivia_leong@perdana.um.edu.my, andrew6055@perdana.um.edu.my Abstract In the rapid development of global market, there is an urgent need for organization to provide training to its employees to ensure their continuous competence in handling their task. The challenge from this scenario is to find a way to enforce employees to enhance their knowledge and skills from time to time by developing an e-training system. Applying the learning organization model through the e-training system would indirectly introduce the learning organization concept into the organization. Apart from e- training, knowledge management system was also implemented to ensure the effectiveness of learning organization. This research is about the design and development of an e-training system using University of Malaya (UM) as the case study. The system would offer Balanced Scorecard (BSC) and Technopreneurship as the sample courses. The discussion scope of this paper is limited to the development of the system framework and architecture which form the initial stage of this research work. Based on the findings, it is shown that e-training system can be used as a tool to create learning organizations in companies and educational institutions. Keywords: E-Training, Balanced Scorecard (BSC), Technopreneurship, Knowledge Management 1.0 Introduction E-training has shown its ability to bring greater good to modern corporations in building their staff competency development. Hewlett-Packard had an arrangement with Microsoft and had to retrain 3,000 workers. By using e-training, instead of taking 3 months to achieve the goal, it had taken them eight weeks and saved them $10 million (Overman 2004). Rockwell Collins decreased 40 percent of their training expenditure when they converted only 25 percent of their training contents and make the training available via online (Strother 2002). Educational organizations such as the higher learning institutions (i.e. universities and colleges) are no exceptions as they also need to constantly keep up with the demanding job prospect to produce high quality employees. In order to meet this challenge, the academic staff of such educational organization has to attend training programs to ensure the continual updating of skills and competencies (Lorange 1996). Competencies come in many forms such as behavioral competency and technical competency. The different level of expertise and experience between staff add to the complexity of developing training programs. Since e-training focuses on structured training (Anohina 2005), this aspect has to be taken into consideration when developing the system. Apart from that, there are many other aspects that needed to be considered by organizations when managing training programs for their staff. Not only they have to identify gaps of the skill among staff, they also need to plan the training schedule and consider the possibility of having an in-house training or outside training. In addition, it is not easy to manage the remaining resources in the office when many staff are sent for training at any one time. The cost of trainings provided by external trainers is also increasing from day to day. By having training materials accessible online, employees are able to sit at the office or at home to partake in the training. In other word, they do not need to specify the exact time or place in order to do the training.