MICROLEARNING CURRICULUMS
PRODUCT SALES TRAINING
THE CLIENT
Our client, a subsidiary of a reputed global healthcare company that employs around 113,000 people and has a presence in over 160 countries, is one of the oldest and most admired healthcare companies in India. They provide a diverse range of diagnostics solutions, medical devices, nutritional products, and pharmaceuticals that span the continuum of care. With over 14,000 employees, they offer solutions for the healthcare needs of consumers, patients, doctors, hospitals, blood banks, and laboratories throughout India’s rural and urban areas.
With over 400 trusted pharmaceutical brands; a variety of nutritional products for infants, children, active adults, and people with special dietary needs; medical devices and diagnostic solutions, they take pride in offering high-quality medicines in multiple therapeutic areas such as women’s health, gastroenterology, cardiology, metabolic disorders, and primary care.
THE RELATIONSHIP
The client first approached us in 2014 by filling the ‘Contact Us’ form on our website. After going through samples of our previous work and client testimonials, they decided to try us out with our first project – Medical Modules – worth $127103.
By going with Commlab India, they could avoid the hassle of working with multiple, local eLearning vendors who neither had the ability to handle all their training requirements nor the bandwidth to roll out large numbers of courses, within timelines, and at a pricing that works! Added to that was our expertise in most of the popular eLearning authoring tools of the day.
Though the client was totally new to eLearning (having only used classroom training to train their employees until then), they took a leap of faith and awarded us the project. And we did not disappoint them!
We are now on the client’s list of approved vendors and have worked with 10 stakeholders from the organization to date.
THE REQUIREMENT
The client had a huge portfolio of medicines on which their new sales representatives needed to be trained. Until now, the new hires were being trained through a 6-week instructor-led training (ILT) in the classroom. This training program, though well designed and structured, was not producing the desired results of quickly increasing the sales reps’ proficiency, leading to delays in their readiness to meet potential customers (medical practitioners). The company’s ever-expanding product portfolio also necessitated the induction of more sales reps and increased training requirements. Organizing classroom sessions regularly was found to be a logistic nightmare, and was a drain on instructors’ time and efforts. So, the client was looking to transform their product and sales training with the aim to:
- Reduce the duration of their training sessions
- Improve how their sales reps market their brands to medical practitioners
- Help their sales personnel handle doctors’ queries and objections better
How does a pharmaceutical leader help their sales team better market their brands to medical practitioners while reducing training duration?
Through online training of course!
The client was wanting to introduce eLearning in their organization with this project.
THE SOLUTION
The main challenge in developing the training was going through the massive amount of information available on each drug and condense it into easily understandable and accessible online learning for the sales reps, most of whom were not from a pharmaceutical background. This meant that most of the learners had no clue about the human body nor about how the drug would produce its action in the treatment of a disease. As they would be interacting with experienced medical practitioners, in addition to information about the drug they also needed to know at least the basics of human anatomy and physiology that was relevant to the drug they were marketing.
It was also challenging to deal with the subject matter experts (SMEs) who were new to eLearning and did not understand the difference between ‘need to know’ and ‘nice to know’ content. We overcame this challenge by conducting onsite training for the SMEs on eLearning, basic instructional design, and on generating the right kind of content. We also invited SMEs to visit our premises and work with our instructional designers and developers, so they could understand how the courses were designed and developed. Just because the SMEs were with us all the time and were giving us immediate feedback, we could deliver almost 21 modules in just 3 days. This is how we helped the SMEs gain insights into the nitty-gritty of eLearning.
Considering also the very limited time the sales reps had available for training, CommLab India, in consultation with the client, decided on a microlearning approach. We created a curriculum of 5 to 6 (sometimes more) microlearning modules for each drug, each around 10-15 minutes in duration. The modules were developed in Articulate Storyline (it was the best tool for multi-device compatible content at the time) and were accessible on a range of devices.
The modules for each product would include:
- Anatomy and physiology of the organ/system targeted by the drug
- Pathophysiology of the disease
- Drugs used in the management of the disease
- Composition, indications, contraindications, dosage, and limitations of the drug
- Performance of the drug vis-à-vis its competition
The training was also intended to be delivered as refresher training for senior employees in the organization. These modules included infographics and animations to explain the action of the drug on the human body, keeping learners engaged and interested in the training. Clinical application scenarios (of a sales rep answering potential questions from a doctor) and research findings of the drug were also added at the end of the modules to help sales reps interact better with their customers.
Deliverables
0
Microlearning Modules
0
Learning Hours
This huge project needed a big team to work on it – that included 8 instructional designers, 2 visual designers, and 10 courseware developers, overseen by a dedicated project manager. We also utilized the services of a medical practitioner as the learning consultant for the project because of the highly technical nature of the content. This made for zero errors in the way the content was handled and presented and also helped with the graphics.
Standardization, reusability, and repeatability was our mantra for scaling up the eLearning development for the entire brand portfolio.
It took 2 years to complete the project of designing and developing 400 microlearning modules that came to around 100 learning hours.
THE RESULTS
The training was very well received by learners and resulted in 98% completion rates, which was previously unheard of in the company. The microlearning training strategy helped our client:
- Reduce the duration of the training (classroom) from 6 weeks to 2 weeks (microlearning)
- Make the courses available on laptops and iPads
- Ensure learning was accessible anytime, anywhere (at the time of need, as a job-aid, or performance support)
- Use clinical application scenarios to help learners (sales reps) have informed discussions with doctors about the drugs
THE REVIEWS
Here are a few reviews different stakeholders from the organization posted about CommLab India on eLearning Industry.
Previous
Next