Building an Online Learning Academy to Serve as a Continuous Performance Support System
About The Client
The client is an American global corporation focused in the business areas of diagnostics, life science research, food, environmental and industrial testing. Its capabilities include detection, imaging, informatics, and service.
Business Need
At the start of year 2020, the client defined one of their strategic priorities as ‘ensuring a customer first mindset’. In order to do this, it was essential to educate all their business segments on the full breadth of their solution portfolio. At that moment, there was no single repository of information about their products, services, and solutions and there was no system which would enable such collaboration. That’s when they decided to invest in a corporate learning academy which would create a learner-driven continuous performance support system. Unlike their traditional training initiatives, which were largely classroom based, the learning modality for this product academy was decided to be eLearning.
Harbinger’s Solution
Harbinger helped the client by helping them build an eLearning academy which broadly educates their employees about the client’s product and service portfolios. The below listed objectives were used as the foundation for selecting a relevant instructional design approach for the modules:
- Enabling effective communication with customers stakeholders, facilitated via thorough knowledge of all products
- Transferring learners’ personal enthusiasm and belief in the product, processes, and technologies to the customers, through a deep understanding of the features and benefits of the product
- Feeling confident about their products, which will help them move towards a customer-first mindset
- Overcoming customer objections by supplementing their product knowledge with factual
information about the market trends and competitive landscape
Harbinger developed 24 learning modules for the client that provide a high-level understanding of the products, the applications they’re used for, competitors, differentiators, and their go-to market strategy. Each course is of approximately 30 minutes in duration and is developed using Storyline 360. An agile development methodology was used to ensure a rapid roll out of the learning program. The key contributor to being agile was the design decision of creating a template library. The templated approach ensured the following:
- More modules following a similar approach can be rapidly added
- Design consistency and brand recall value with similar look and feel of courses
A primary objective of the learning academy was to make this learning program available in the flow of work. To achieve that objective, the client created an intuitive user interface on their SharePoint portal, which was integrated with the LMS at the backend, where the courses were hosted. This enabled learners to access learning in the flow of work.
Business Outcomes
Over 800 employees have enrolled in the academy since its launch, with a 100% completion rate. Apart from helping in meeting the strategic goal of ensuring a customer-first mindset, here are some benefits that the organization has seen from the learning academy.
- It has helped educate employees at all levels of the organization with complex scientific information in an easy to understand and engaging format, and most importantly, at their own pace.
- It has enabled faster onboarding of new employees – they can leverage the suite of courses to learn about the organization and its products and get upto speed quickly.
- The academy now serves as a ready reference for new product implementation.
- The academy has helped register marked improvement in certain pre-defined competencies.
- It has brought about a consistency in learning experiences across products, regions, and segments while creating a learner-driven continuous performance support system.
