Blended Learning on Product Portfolio for Global Teams

The Challenge: Develop an effective training on their huge product portfolio for their globally dispersed salesforce who were finding it difficult to retain the learning from the previous training.

CommLab India’s Solution: An engaging and immersive blended solution with a mix of formal, informal, and experiential learning:

Self-paced eLearning
Hands-on classroom training
Online quizzes & challenges
Video recordings
Performance support through mobile apps

The Result: Learners could confidently demonstrate the value of their products to customers.

Our client is a leading global manufacturer and marketer of precision weighing instruments for use in laboratory, industrial, and food retailing applications. They are a market leader for several analytical instruments, automated chemistry systems used in drug development and metal detection systems used in production and packaging.

Their products are used around the world for applications in research and development, quality control, production, logistics, and retail. They also offer a full range of support and service options for all their solutions, including flexible service packages, technical assistance, validation services, obsolescence advice, and instrument training. Their instruments are designed to gather valuable data and facilitate the processing and transfer of this data into customers’ management information systems.

With a presence in 7 locations around the globe and more than 16500 employees globally, their revenues amounted to $3.0B in 2020.

CommLab India’s association with the client started way back in 2007 with an eLearning project worth $5310 on Global Account Management. The client came to know about our company and services through our marketing efforts. They chose to try us out as we are one of the very few eLearning vendors offering multiple services, all under one roof – classroom to eLearning conversion, Flash to HTML5 conversion, eLearning translations, and LMS services.

With Commlab India, they could avoid the hassle of trying out multiple, local eLearning vendors who neither had the ability to handle all their global training requirements nor the bandwidth to roll out large numbers of courses, within timelines, and at a pricing that works!

Added to that was CommLab India’s expertise in most of the popular eLearning authoring tools including Articulate, Lectora, Captivate, iSpring, and dominKnow.

They did have concerns initially about CommLab India’s ability to work and deliver effectively considering the different time zones involved. But when they saw our quality, responsiveness, speed of execution, and 24/7 availability, they continued to partner with us till date.

We have worked on more than 2600 projects for them (eLearning development, Flash to HTML 5 conversions, LMS support services, eLearning translations, webinar conversions, video development and editing, development of microlearning assets, etc.) Today, we are proud to be recognized as their preferred vendor, having worked with around 220 stakeholders in the organization.

The organization was one of the first ones to introduce eLearning for employee training. They were training their globally dispersed salesforce through eLearning and traditional classroom instructor-led training. The training was aimed at improving the sales personnel’s knowledge of their huge portfolio of products so they would be able to demonstrate the value of their products and interact with customers confidently.

But it was found that most (if not all) the learners failed to retain the learning from the training, and were forgetting most of what they learned within a few weeks to months, because of the effects of the forgetting curve.

So, the requirement was for training that would effectively beat the forgetting curve and encourage a culture of continual learning in the organization, thereby improving the performance of their sales and service personnel.

Through blended learning, of course!

Simply put, blended learning is a strategy where a mix of face-to-face classroom-based training and online training programs are used to address different phases of learning for maximum effectiveness.

So, the requirement for CommLab India was to design and develop an engaging and highly immersive blended solution for their sales and service personnel. The brief also included translating all the components of the blended learning into 6 languages (German, Spanish, Chinese, French, Japanese and Russian) to cater to their global audiences.

Commlab India’s wealth of expertise and experience in different modes and formats of training (classroom ILT, VILT, videos, simulations, interactive PPTs, etc.) and translations made them an automatic choice for this project.

The solution of blended learning perfectly met the requirement for an engaging learning experience as it offers a mix of classroom instructor-led training, online learning (that can be synchronous and asynchronous), and performance support in the form of searchable microlearning assets and job aids for instant access to the required content.

A major advantage of blended learning is that it leverages the benefits of all formats of training, addressing learning as a process and battling the ‘forgetting curve’. It also enables learners to apply learning at the workplace and bridges the gaps in learning through efficient performance support.

As the target audience for this product training were the sales and service people who are constantly on the move, they needed comprehensive, up-to-date information about their products, and access to learning resources for handy reference – all provided by blended learning in different formats. The solution can be provided:

Before the actual training to introduce basic concepts, or gauge learners through a short quiz
As the actual training – either classroom ILT or self-paced eLearning
After the training to provide performance support

Here is a diagrammatic representation of the strategy decided upon for the product training.

The training started with a very basic quiz on foundational concepts that served as a filter. Those who did very well in the quiz went on directly to the hands-on training. The rest went for self-paced eLearning. This was followed by an online challenge where learners got a chance to demonstrate what they learned.

This was followed by actual video recordings of top performers doing their sales pitch to customers. Once this part of the training was done, learners were buddied up with coaches who helped them model the skills they saw in the videos and identify gaps in their performance.

This was followed by performance support through mobile apps to help them when they were in the field. As you can see, this included interactive PDFs, videos, audio podcasts, simulations, strategic games, infographics, etc.