Interactive eLearning for Customer Training on Logistics

The Challenge: Develop engaging training on ‘Essentials of Logistics Operations’ to help customers improve their logistics capabilities, enhance trade opportunities, navigate customs, and improve sales.

CommLab India’s Solution: eLearning modules on ‘Logistics Operations’ that could be accessed by customers through the client’s SharePoint. The interactive elements used in the modules included:

Videos
Puzzles based on case studies
Learning activities
Real-world scenarios
Client success stories

Job-aids and resources were also provided for customers’ future reference.

Our client is a German logistics company providing courier, package delivery, and express mail services. They have an unrivalled portfolio of logistics products and solutions ranging from domestic and international parcel delivery (delivering more than 1.8 billion parcels every year!) to international express, road, air, and ocean freight to end-to-end supply chain management.

They connect people in over 220 countries and territories globally with their international team of over 380,000 shipping professionals with a passion for logistics. Their revenue in 2021 and was around €81,7 billion. They specialize in offering innovative solutions for complex logistics challenges in the areas of sports, arts, and culture.

They also enable collaboration of customers, research and academic institutions, industry partners, and logistics experts, and invest in research into trends and developing solutions. They have several firsts to their credit, including pioneering the first green logistics product and becoming the first logistics company to commit to a zero-emissions target.

The client became aware of CommLab India’s services through our inbound marketing efforts (blogs, newsletters, and webinars). We first started working with them in 2013 on a project worth €4275 that required the re-creation of 3 Flash courses into Articulate Storyline.

The quality of our work, our customer focus, team of experienced instructional designers, expertise in most of the popular eLearning authoring tools, and competitive pricing kept them coming back with more projects over the years. The fact that CommLab India offers a variety of services (classroom to eLearning and VILT conversion, Flash [legacy courses] to HTML5 conversion, and eLearning translations), all under one roof, was an added incentive!

We started with one stakeholder and one small project. Today, we are on their list of approved vendors, having worked with 23 stakeholders in the company. The 275 projects we have done for the client to date include course conversions, end-to-end eLearning projects, and translations.

The client approached CommLab India to develop a course on ‘Essentials of Logistics Operations’. This course was to be part of a training curriculum that was being designed in a blended format, with a combination of virtual instructor-led training (VILT) and eLearning modules. The entire curriculum was aimed at their customers (mostly entrepreneurs) and also employees whose role included advising their customers on the practicalities of logistics operations. The training had a two-fold goal. The first was for customers to improve their logistics capabilities, enhance trade and growth opportunities, navigate customs processes, enhance sales capabilities, and develop business acumen. The second was for their employees to improve their dealings with customers by advising them better.

The entire content was divided into 4 sections with a separate module for the Final Challenge. Learners had to score a passing score to get certification on course completion.

We included multiple interactive elements for the content, such as videos, puzzle questions, learning activities, real-world scenarios, success stories of clients, job aids, and resources for learners’ future reference. We also asked the client for case studies, based on which we developed questions that would help the learner apply the freshly gained knowledge.

The team that worked on the project included a dedicated project manager, two instructional designers, and two course developers.

It was challenging but fun to create different types of interactivities (the client was very clear that activities were not to be repeated!) for each module to keep the learner engaged with the content, and encourage them to think, practice, remember, and apply the knowledge in future.

The client’s choice of Storyline 360 as the authoring tool also worked very well for us as its intuitive interface, content library, ability to add interactions, and above all, its responsive output made it the ideal tool for this project.