In the New Economy, business metrics may surpass traditional training metrics in determining training's return on investment. Many corporate training professionals, along with the decision-makers who approve their programs, would prefer to get that proof in the form of dollars and cents. In addition to improving the organization's bottom line, training is now often expected to improve its own bottom line, through cost savings over previously employed training methods.
Education is still what training does.
But business education is a means to business results, not an end in itself. Indeed, if training is to be accepted as a legitimate business unit, most training professionals accept that they'll have to accomplish more while spending less. In other words, there has to be a point to the training in the first place. A certain fast-food chain with which he worked claimed to measure a lot of things, but what managers tracked most carefully was how much cooked chicken was thrown out. They simply didn't cook any chicken until it was ordered.