About Our Client
Our client is a global pharmaceutical conglomerate with operations in more than 30 countries, manufacturing and marketing close to 200 drugs for a wide range of diseases. Its twin focus is on innovation and marketing to build drugs that improve quality of life and are accessible to the average person.About Our Client
Our client is a global pharmaceutical conglomerate with operations in more than 30 countries, manufacturing and marketing close to 200 drugs for a wide range of diseases.
Its twin focus is on innovation and marketing to build drugs that improve quality of life and are accessible to the average person.
Client Requirements and Challenges
With a strong presence across the globe and a vast product portfolio, our client has a huge number of sales representatives to be trained.
Requirements
- Cut down classroom time of sales reps
- Get learner buy-in to training by helping them identify areas for improvement
- Identify gaps and assign personalized learning paths based on individual performance
- Set up the adaptive learning framework on their existing LMS
Challenges
- The sales representatives were often not qualified life science professionals.
- They had to sell their products to highly knowledgeable doctors
- They had to gain knowledge on:
- Human anatomy and physiology
- Product knowledge (drugs)
- Competitor analysis
- Selling skills
- Regulatory standards
- Updates and ongoing research
Our Solution
Our solution was to use a combination of online assessments and the reporting facilities of the client’s LMS to set up the adaptive learning framework, and design online training accordingly.
The Online Assessment
The assessment was to be assigned once a year to all sales reps who have completed one year with the organization. The hour-long assessment will be assigned from the client’s LMS to sales reps across the world. They will have one attempt and 15 days to complete the assessment.
We worked with our client’s subject matter experts to build a list of questions on.
- Basics of the human anatomy and physiology
- Product knowledge on the drugs each rep sells (primary responsibility)
- Detailed knowledge on the anatomy and physiology related to their core drug/s
- Knowledge on other drugs in the company portfolio (secondary)
- Competitor analysis on core drug/s
- Selling skills
- Market research and clinical trials
The results of the online assessment will help identify training needs and define personalized learning paths.
Setting up the adaptive learning framework
After building the assessment, we generated custom reports on the client’s LMS to help interpret individual performance on each learning areas and suggest the best-fit personalized learning path for each learner.
Score | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| >90%, | Refer to available performance support tool |
| 80-90% | Related self-paced online learning modules |
| 60-80% | Mandatory online (self-paced) learning module/s |
| < 60% | Mandatory classroom training |
These adaptive learning paths helped learners see their performance, the training topics they need to focus on, thereby gaining their buy-in for subsequent training programs.
Designing the Training
We designed online training in various formats (online modules and performance support tools) that would cater to the on-the-move sales reps within the adaptive framework.
- For self-paced online modules, we converted classroom training material into eLearning courses and/or a curriculum of microlearning courses
- For performance support, we repurposed eLearning courses into learner-friendly, bite-sized how-to videos, job-aids, PDFs, infographics, gamified quizzes, GIFs, FAQ banks, and more.
The Result
The adaptive learning framework built on our client’s existing LMS helped:
- Identify the exact learning needs of 2000 sales reps spread across the globe
- Set and recommend personalized learning paths based on individual scores
The exact training needs identified by the assessments and the personalized learning paths were highly appreciated by both training managers and the sales reps, and our client is now contemplating implementing this adaptive framework for other groups of learners too.